Dead Bear Walking

The vitamin C pills sat on Maya's kitchen counter like a promise she kept breaking. Take one daily, the bottle said. For immune support. As if her immune system was the problem.

Maya caught her reflection in the darkened iPhone screen — hollow eyes, skin that had gone too long without seeing actual sun. She was thirty-four and felt like she'd been walking through her own life for years, a spectator with voting rights. The irony wasn't lost on her: she worked at a startup selling "mindfulness" apps to people who checked their phones the moment they woke up. She was selling the cure while dying of the disease.

The bear market had hit tech hard. Her options were underwater, her lease was up, and her mother had called yesterday to say she wasn't sure if Maya's father was actually dead or just sleeping a lot. "He's been lying there for three days, honey. Should I call someone?" The bear — they'd called it that since the recession, when everything went into hibernation — had claimed another soul, even if the body was still technically warm.

Maya had told her mother to call 911. What else was there to say?

She'd stood in her apartment afterward, iPhone in hand, scrolling through photos of a trip to Big Sur she'd taken with Daniel three years ago. Back when she'd still believed in the future, in incremental improvements, in the compound interest of happiness. Daniel had left the day before her company's first layoffs, as if he'd seen the bear coming and decided to outrun it. Smart man.

Now she walked through the city at dusk, the vitamin C bottle heavy in her pocket. She passed restaurants where people sat with friends, lovers, family. They looked alive. They looked like they weren't performing their own existence. A real bear would have more dignity than this, she thought — at least a bear got to hibernate honestly.

Her iPhone buzzed. A notification: Your subscription expires in 3 days. Renew now for uninterrupted mindfulness.

Maya laughed, a sharp sound that startled a passing couple. She was a zombie, and the product she sold was the brains. The bear had eaten her slowly, over years, and she'd thanked it for the privilege.

She tossed the vitamin bottle into a trash can. Some promises were better broken.

The bear was coming out of hibernation. This time, Maya decided, she wouldn't be the one it ate.