Dead Man Swimming

The corporate headquarters rose like a glass pyramid against the Sacramento skyline, trapping light even at dusk. Elena pressed her forehead against the fifteenth-floor window, watching the dots of headlights below. She'd become something else this year—something that moved and spoke and negotiated contracts, but hollowed out inside. A zombie in a pantsuit.

"They want you in Phoenix," Marcus said, not looking up from his phone. "The regional VP position."

"I heard," she said.

He didn't ask if she wanted it. They'd stopped asking each other things.

The apartment complex pool glowed turquoise in the courtyard below. Elena imagined sinking into it, letting the water fill her mouth, the silence rising around her like prayer. Instead she drove home, where Buster—her elderly golden retriever—met her at the door with a tail that thumped hope against the linoleum. Luna, the black cat, watched from the kitchen counter, yellow eyes unimpressed.

At least they still needed her.

She slipped into the pool at midnight, when the other residents slept. The water was shock-cold, shocking her heart into rhythm. She floated on her back, staring up at the pyramid building glowing in the distance, and understood something about becoming undead—you had to die first, and nobody had noticed she already had.

Her phone buzzed on the pool deck. Marcus, probably. Or the office. Elena let it ring out, then silence. She kicked toward the bottom, holding her breath until her lungs burned, because pain was better than nothing.

When she surfaced, gasping, the air tasted sweet. The dog barked from their balcony. The cat's silhouette sat in the window. Elena climbed from the water, shivering, and thought: maybe tomorrow she'd start living again. Maybe tomorrow she wouldn't.

For tonight, she was still here. Still breathing. That had to be enough.