Still Water Runs Deep

Elena watched the goldfish circle its bowl, the same route, hour after hour. She'd been doing her own circles for three years now—corporate espionage for a pharmaceutical company that didn't deserve its secrets. Somewhere around month six, she'd stopped feeling like a spy and started feeling like a zombie, haunting her own life.

The water in the fishbowl rippled as she tapped the glass. The fish didn't startle. Neither did she, anymore.

"You're lucky," she murmured. "Your biggest problem is someone forgot to feed you last Tuesday. Mine is that I remember everything."

She'd been running in place for so long she'd forgotten what forward motion felt like. The affair with Marcus from legal had ended badly—messy, loud, with shattered glass and threats she'd meant at the time. Now she sat in her apartment on a Friday night, watching a fish that couldn't remember beyond three seconds, and she envied it.

Her phone buzzed. Another target. Another life to dismantle, piece by piece, for a quarterly report she'd never read.

Elena stood up, walked to the sink, and turned on the water. Cold. It filled the glass she held, rising past the halfway point, past three-quarters. She watched the surface tremble, thinking about how easy it would be. How simple to just...

The goldfish swam to the front of its bowl, mouth opening and closing in silent bubbles.

"Right," she said, and drank the water in one long swallow. "Someone has to feed you."

She turned off her phone. Not tomorrow—she wasn't ready for that kind of running—but maybe next week. Maybe next month. For now, she sprinkled flakes into the bowl and watched the fish rise to meet them, a small, deliberate motion in all that still water.