The Goldfish at the End of the Hall

Margot had become a zombie at thirty-two. Not the brain-eating kind, but the corporate variety: moving through quarterly reports in a fog of fluorescent lights and numb routine. She swallowed her daily vitamin with lukewarm office coffee, the orange tablet mocking her from the bottom of her mug.

"You look like hell," said Ben, the only colleague whose name she still bothered to remember. He gestured toward the building's lobby aquarium. "Like that goldfish. Just swimming in circles."

The goldfish—orange against fake-green plastic plants—did indeed circle endlessly. Margot had worked here four years and never seen it fed. Yet it survived, somehow.

"My therapist says I need more vitamin D," she said, though she hadn't seen a therapist since grad school.

Ben laughed humorlessly. "My wife left me because I was already dead, Margot. She said she married a man with ambition, not this." He gestured at himself, at their shared open-plan grave.

That night, Margot found herself back at the office at 2 AM. Not because of deadlines—she was beyond caring about those—but because she'd forgotten her umbrella and the rain had been unexpected. The lobby was dark except for the aquarium's blue glow.

The goldfish was floating at the surface.

She pressed her hand to the glass. The fish didn't move. Dead, probably. Or maybe just sleeping like the rest of them—dreaming of oceans it would never see, currents it would never feel.

Margot unlocked her phone and opened the dating app she'd abandoned months ago. One message from someone named Luis: "Your profile says you like jazz. There's a place on 4th, Friday?"

Her thumb hovered over delete. Then she typed: "Yes."

The goldfish flicked its tail once, a tiny rebellion against the glass, before sinking back into its artificial depths. Margot walked out into the rain, vitamin untouched on her desk, and for the first time in years, she didn't feel quite so dead.