Bone Dry

Elena swallowed the orange vitamin D gelcap with lukewarm office coffee, the third one she'd taken that week. Dr. Harrison had promised it would help with the fatigue, but what did a pill know about the particular exhaustion of being thirty-four and realizing you'd chosen the wrong life three years ago?

She moved through the open-plan office like a zombie—not the pop-culture brain-eating kind, but the walking dead variety: eyes glazed, feet dragging, soul packed away in a storage unit she couldn't afford. Her coworkers' laughter at the watercooler sounded like it was coming from underwater. Everything was underwater these days.

"Earth to Elena?" Marcus waved a hand in her face. "The Q3 numbers?"

"Right. Numbers." She pulled up the spreadsheet, the cells blurring together. Last night, she'd stared at her ceiling for three hours, calculating the financial logistics of leaving everything behind. The vitamin deficiency was the least of what was killing her.

When she finally got home at 7:14 PM, the apartment was too quiet. Marcus—the other Marcus, the one who'd packed his things last Tuesday—had taken the dog. Buster, the golden retriever mix they'd adopted during what she now recognized as their desperation phase. He'd left the cat, though.

"Needy," he'd said, zipping his suitcase. "You two deserve each other."

Luna wove between Elena's ankles, meowing plaintively. Elena scooped her up, burying her face in soft gray fur. The cat purred, a rumble that vibrated through Elena's hollow chest.

"He's right, you know," Elena whispered to the empty apartment. "We're both just waiting around for someone who's not coming back."

She placed two vitamin C tablets on her tongue. They tasted like artificial orange and false hope. Luna watched with predatory indifference.

"Tomorrow," Elena said aloud. "Tomorrow I'll feel better."

The cat blinked, unconvinced.

In the bedroom, Elena spotted Buster's favorite toy under the bed where the vacuum cleaner couldn't reach it. She didn't pick it up. Some things you left alone because touching them would break something that was already barely holding together.

She lay down fully clothed, Luna curling against her hip. Through the window, the city hummed with other people's real lives. Elena closed her eyes and practiced being dead, just for a little while. Tomorrow she'd try the vitamins again. Tomorrow she'd try to be a person who didn't feel like she was haunting her own existence.

Tomorrow always came. That was the problem.