Dead in the Water

The office aquarium glowed in the corner, three goldfish drifting through illuminated silence. Elena watched them from her desk, spreadsheet numbers blurring into swimming forms. Her colleagues moved like zombies through the fluorescent-lit space—dead-eyed, surviving on caffeine and resentment.

"Bullshit," Marcus whispered, leaning over her shoulder. He smelled like expensive cologne and desperation. "The revenue projections are pure fiction."

She'd been sleeping with Marcus for six months. The affair had started in a moment of weakness after her divorce—finalized last January, when the winter had felt endless. Now she was forty-three, a senior analyst at a company that wasn't quite failing but wasn't succeeding either. A zombie corporation, her ex-husband had called it before he left her for his twenty-six-year-old personal trainer.

"I have to go," Elena said, grabbing her bag. "Meeting with development."

The real meeting was at the Marriott. She and Marcus had rented a room for the afternoon, a weekly ritual that felt increasingly like drowning.

She stopped at the aquarium on her way out. The largest goldfish floated near the glass, its eyes wide and unblinking. It turned in slow circles, trapped in its illuminated prison. Beautiful and doomed.

"You too," she whispered.

Outside, heat waves rose from the asphalt. The swimming pool at her apartment complex beckoned—she'd been going there after work lately, cutting through the water until her muscles burned and her mind went quiet. For twenty minutes, she could be nothing but motion, suspended in cool blue silence.

Marcus would be waiting. He'd tell her he was leaving his wife. He'd been saying it for three weeks.

Her phone buzzed. A text from her ex: Saw your LinkedIn. Thinking of you.

Elena stood on the sidewalk, the office rising behind her like a tombstone. She could go to the Marriott. She could go back to her desk and finish the projections. Or she could go swimming.

The goldfish turned again, endlessly circling its small world.

She walked toward her car, away from the hotel, away from the office, away from everything she was supposed to want. Some things, she decided, deserved to stay dead.