Dead Lines

The iphone buzzed against the nightstand at 2 AM, and Mara's hand moved before her consciousness caught up. Work email. Always work email. She'd become something else in the three years since the promotion — a corporate zombie, shuffling through meetings she couldn't remember, responding to messages she didn't read, her vital signs reduced to screen glow and caffeine levels.

"You should come," the text from Rachel read. "It's been months."

Mara typed "Can't, deadline" before remembering the deadline was last week. The lies came easier than the truth: she'd forgotten how to be the person Rachel knew. The friend who'd dragged her to terrible karaoke nights, who'd held her hair back after the disastrous office holiday party, who'd somehow kept her human.

The bear appeared on her morning run, a massive grizzly emerging from the fog like some prehistoric ghost. Mara froze, her iphone clutched in her sweating hand, its flashlight beam cutting through the mist to reveal matted fur and teeth that belonged to another epoch.

She stood there, heart hammering against ribs that felt suddenly fragile, and thought about how she'd almost died without ever living. The bear sniffed the air, eyes dark as old blood, then turned away. It moved with the indifference of something that had never received a work email at 2 AM, that had never zombie-walked through a life it hadn't chosen.

Mara sat on the trail until her legs stopped shaking, then dialed Rachel.

"I'm coming over," she said when her friend answered, voice rusty from disuse. "With whiskey. The good stuff we stole from your dad's cabinet."

"Now? It's 6 AM."

"Now. Before I forget how."

The iphone battery died two miles from Rachel's house, screen going dark like an eye closing for good. Mara kept walking anyway, finally awake after three years of sleepwalking through her own life.