The Corpse in the Mirror

The bathroom mirror on floor 7 showed a woman who'd been hollowed out by fluorescent lights. Sarah leaned in, fingers tracing the dark circles under her eyes, and twisted the faucet. Water rushed into the sink, drowning out the cubicle murmur, the photocopier's rhythmic cough, the ceaseless ping of emails demanding immediate attention.

Her hair, once thick and auburn, hung in lank strands against her cheeks. She'd stopped caring about it months ago—around the same time she'd stopped caring about anything else. The corporate restructure had turned her department into a revolving door of redundancies, and somehow she was still spinning.

"You look like shit," Mark had told her yesterday by the coffee machine. His shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, revealing that patch of chest hair he always exposed when he wanted to appear vulnerable. "Sarah, seriously. When was the last time you slept?"

She'd wanted to kiss him. She'd wanted to scream. Instead she'd muttered something about quarterly reports and escaped to her desk, where she spent the next three hours updating spreadsheets that no one would read.

Now she splashed cold water on her face, feeling nothing. The numbness had started in her toes last November, worked its way through her body until her entire being felt encased in glass. She was a zombie, really—the living dead, sitting in meetings and nodding at strategies she didn't believe in, making small talk about weekends she spent staring at ceilings.

Her phone buzzed on the counter. Mark. " Drinks tonight? Just you and me. No work talk."

Sarah stared at his message, fingers hovering over the screen. She could say yes. She could let him take her to that bar near the river, let his hand brush against hers, let herself feel something real. She could remember what it was like to be alive.

The water kept running, swirling down the drain in endless circles. She watched it go, thinking about all the things she'd let slip away while she was busy not living.

She turned off the tap. The sudden silence was deafening.

Then she picked up her phone and typed: Yes. For the first time in eight months, her reflection smiled back.