Supplements for the Living Dead

The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting that familiar gray pallor on everything—my skin, my cubicle walls, the endless stacks of Vitamin D3 bottles I'd been analyzing for seven years. I caught my reflection in the monitor: graying hair tied back in a knot I'd worn since college, eyes that had forgotten how to brighten at anything. A corporate zombie, that's what I'd become. Moving through motions, hitting targets, swallowing my own company's vitamins like some desperate promise that tomorrow might feel different.

Then Sarah transferred from Marketing, trailing coconut-scented lotion and palm trees in her voice. She'd just returned from Bali—of course she had. When she grabbed my hand during that fire drill, tracing the lines in my palm with disturbing intensity, I wanted to pull away. Instead, I let her stay there.

"Your lifeline's shorter than your heart line," she said, too loud. "That means you're living for someone else."

The fire alarm silenced. Everyone returned to their spreadsheets. I didn't.

We ended up at the pier after work, industrial water stretching dark and impassive toward a city that never slept. Sarah produced a flask—coconut rum, naturally—and talked about her divorce, her mother's death, the way she'd spent her 40th birthday getting palm readings from strangers who promised meaning in exchange for fifty bucks.

"My ex told me I was dead inside," she said, passing the flask. "Said I moved through life like a zombie. He wasn't wrong."

I thought about my vitamins. My cubicle. The nights I'd sat staring at my ceiling, wondering if this hollow routine was all that remained of the dreams I'd once carried.

Sarah's hand found mine again in the dark. "We could be alive together," she said, "or we could keep dying alone. Your call."

The water lapped against pilings below. Somewhere, a siren wailed. I chose the terrifying promise of her palm against mine, deciding that maybe some vitamins couldn't be swallowed—that some, you had to let yourself metabolize the hard way.