The Corporate Dead Pool

I swallowed my vitamin D supplement with lukewarm coffee, staring at the spreadsheet floating in my inbox. The office dead pool had expanded—three more names added since yesterday, each representing a colleague suspected of imminent resignation or termination. At forty-two, I recognized the look in their eyes: that hollow, vacant gaze of the corporate zombie, moving through quarterly reports and Zoom meetings with no real memory of why any of it mattered.

The fluorescent lights hummed, pressing down on us like a physical weight. I needed air.

In the breakroom, Sarah picked at a fruit salad, spearing an orange wedge with deliberate precision. "They're restructuring again," she said, not looking up. "Heard it from Janet in Accounting."

"Who's going?" I asked, though I could guess.

"Whole marketing department. Maybe sales." She finally met my eyes. "You should update your resume, Mark. Before you become another name on that pool."

I reached for a piece of papaya, its flesh impossibly soft against my fingers. "I can't. Elena's pregnant, the mortgage—"

"That's what they all say." She stood up, fruit abandoned. "Until one morning you're staring at another vitamin pill and wondering when your life became something that happened to other people."

That evening, I skipped my vitamin. I sat by the pool in our apartment complex, watching the water ripple in the artificial blue darkness, and for the first time in years, I didn't feel like a zombie. I felt like someone who might finally be waking up.