Dead Things Don't Dream

The vitamin D bottle sat on Marcus's nightstand, next to his wedding ring. Three months since she left, and he was still taking them—her advice, her voice in his head, the ghost of who they used to be. He swallowed two dry, like medicine for a disease that had already killed him.

At forty-two, Marcus had become what he once pitied: a zombie in a suit. He commuted to downtown, sat in cubicles under fluorescent lights that made everyone look dead, and went through motions that had lost meaning years ago. His coworkers—eager young things with their dreams intact—looked at him with something between pity and fear. They smelled the death on him.

The office Christmas party changed everything.

"You have a long lifeline," Elena said, tracing the palm of his hand with fingernails painted dark as dried blood. "But it's broken in the middle. Something—or someone—interrupted it."

She was the new hire in graphics, twenty-six with eyes that had seen too much. A fox in a henhouse, sharp and suspicious, watching everyone with predatory intelligence. She'd caught him staring at his phone in the breakroom, waiting for messages that never came.

"My wife left," Marcus said, the first time he'd admitted it aloud to anyone.

"Not your wife anymore. Not in here." Elena tapped his palm. "This part—after the break—it's someone else's lifeline now. But you have to choose to let them in."

The fox's laughter was soft, understanding. She'd left someone too. A fiancé who couldn't handle her darkness.

Three months later, Marcus threw away the vitamins. He stopped checking his phone for ghosts. He started taking lunch breaks with Elena, talking about everything and nothing, two broken things learning to fit together.

Some nights, watching her sleep, he thought about palm lines and lifelines and how maybe the dead could dream after all.