The Fox Who Made Me Remember

Three years of corporate existence had transformed me into something that moved and spoke but didn't quite live. My zombie-like state wasn't dramatic—it was the slow erosion that happens when you stop expecting anything from your days. Wake, commute, spreadsheet, commute, sleep, repeat. I'd become excellent at being present in body while absent in spirit.

Then came the fox in accounting—Riley, with sharp features and sharper wit, who somehow saw the remaining embers of whatever I used to be. They didn't look at me like everyone else did, with that polite disinterest reserved for furniture or colleagues who'd long ago lost their spark. Riley looked like they were genuinely curious, which was infinitely more dangerous.

"You're always staring out that window," Riley said, sliding into the chair opposite me in the break room. "What's out there?"

"My cat," I said, before I could stop myself. "I live on the fourth floor. Sometimes I think he's the only thing keeping me tethered to anything real."

Riley's eyebrows rose. "You name him?"

"Barnaby. He has this way of demanding attention, like he knows I need to be reminded I'm alive."

The conversation that followed was the first genuine one I'd had in years. Riley spoke about their childhood in the mountains, about the foxes that would creep near their cabin at dusk—wild, clever things that survived on the edges of human territories. "They're beautiful," Riley said, "but they'll eat you if you let them get too comfortable."

"I think I might be okay with that," I said, and the air between us shifted.

We began meeting in the break room daily. Riley told me about their passion for painting, something they'd abandoned for the stability of corporate life. I found myself talking about the novel I'd started writing a decade ago, then quit when I decided to be practical instead of alive.

One Tuesday, Riley brought a small canvas to work. It was a fox, rendered in oranges and reds and golds, eyes intelligent and watchful. "For you," they said. "In case you need reminded what wild looks like."

That night, Barnaby climbed onto my chest as I lay in bed, purring against the ribcage that had held its breath for three years. I thought about Riley's painting, about the way their eyes found mine across meetings, about how some creatures—foxes, people—remind you that survival isn't the same as living.

The next morning, I opened the document I'd abandoned years ago. Barnaby curled around my ankles as I typed, and for the first time in forever, the zombie didn't show up to work at all.