The Goldfish and the Gray

The rain started at 7:43 AM, a relentless sheet of water that turned the morning commute into a succession of gray blurs and brake lights. I sat in my car watching droplets race across the windshield, thinking about how easily things could be different, and how they never were.

At the office, the lobby aquarium sat empty except for one goldfish — the last survivor of whatever corporate plague had killed the others three weeks ago. It floated near the surface, pulsing weakly. I'd started timing my visits to match its feeding schedule, watching it rise sluggishly to the flakes, thinking about how we all just kept swimming until we didn't.

"That fish is dead," Sarah said from behind me. She was wearing an orange scarf today, violent and bright against the beige walls. "You know that, right?"

"It's still moving."

"That's just reflex." She adjusted the scarf. "Like how we keep showing up here."

Sarah from Accounting, who I'd slept with twice after the holiday party, who wore bright colors like armor against the fluorescent hum of the building. We never talked about it. We never talked about anything real, except the fish.

I looked at my reflection in the glass — dark circles, eyes that had stopped expecting anything different. My father had worn hats like this, gray fedoras pulled low, like he could hide from whatever was eating him alive. I'd bought one last week. It sat on my desk like an admission.

"You look like a zombie today," Sarah said, not unkindly.

"Feel like one."

"Yeah. Me too."

The goldfish rolled slightly, caught in the filter's current. Orange and white flashes against the blue-tinted glass.

"You think fish know?" I asked. "When they're dying?"

Sarah studied me for a long moment. Outside, the rain intensified. "I think they just know something's wrong."

She touched my arm briefly, then walked toward the elevators, her orange scarf the only color in the hallway. I watched the goldfish drift to the bottom, settle into the gravel, and stop moving.

Tomorrow, someone would flush it. Tomorrow, I'd wear the hat. Tomorrow, I'd do this again. For now, I just stood there listening to the water moving through the tank, one more thing that wouldn't stop until it ran dry.