Zones of the Living

Marcus stared at himself in the restroom mirror—pale skin, dark circles, the unmistakable look of a man who'd become a **zombie** somewhere around year seven at the firm. His own eyes stared back as if they belonged to a stranger. He finished washing his hands and walked out, dreading the inevitable.

"Marcus!" Jenkins bellowed from his corner office. "The **bull** market isn't going to wait for your weekend plans."

"Actually, sir," Marcus said, surprising himself, "I have plans."

Jenkins looked genuinely shocked. Marcus didn't wait for a response. He grabbed his **padel** racket from the desk—Elena had gifted it to him six months ago, saying he needed something that wasn't work—and headed to the courts.

She was already there, stretching in that way that made his chest tight. They'd been playing together weekly since last winter, dancing around something neither would name. Her husband left in February. She'd started wearing her hair differently.

They played in silence at first, the rhythm of the game filling the space between them. Then Elena smashed a winner past him and laughed—that real laugh, the one he'd heard only three times since they'd met.

"You're distracted," she said.

He **orange** light was fading from the sky as they sat on the bench afterward, both breathing hard. The concession stand worker had left a crate of fruit out—imperfect oranges with skins like rough terrain.

"I feel dead," he admitted. "Like I'm walking through my own life."

Elena took his hand. Her palm was calloused from the racket, warm and undeniable. "So do something about it."

"Like what?"

"Like start with this." She kissed him then—first kisses are supposed to be awkward but theirs was fierce, desperate, like two people who'd been holding their breath underwater.

They left separately, but she followed him home. They didn't speak. They didn't need to. In her bedroom, with moonlight through the blinds, he finally felt something again. Not passion exactly—something messier, something that acknowledged all the time they'd wasted.

"I'm leaving Jenkins," he said afterward, lying beside her.

"Good."

"And I'm going to be something else. I don't know what yet."

Elena turned to face him. "We'll figure it out."

He believed her. Somewhere in the city, Jenkins was probably shouting about something that wouldn't matter in a year. Somewhere, the markets were doing whatever markets did. Marcus pulled Elena closer and thought about oranges—how they grew from flowers, how something sweet could come from something bitter first.

He wasn't a zombie anymore. He was something far more dangerous: alive.