The Goldfish Cemetery

Maya watched the goldfish float at the top of its bowl, that peculiar stillness that meant either deep meditation or the end. Three years of corporate M&A work, and this orange fish was the only thing in her apartment that didn't ask for anything.

"Bullshit," she said to the empty room. The fish didn't respond.

Her phone litened. David's name. The man she'd slept with exactly twice, both times after work drinks that stretched until 3am. He was brilliant and unreliable, a fox in a world of sheep, constantly pivoting, always landing on his feet while others burned out around him.

"Market's up," he'd told her the first night, his hand on her thigh in the booth of a dive bar. "Bull market means we can do no wrong. Even the zombies can get funded."

He was talking about zombie companies—those walking dead startups that should have died years ago but kept getting acquired, their worthless intellectual property absorbed into larger conglomerates. Maya worked for one now. She spent twelve hours a day preparing due diligence documents for deals that made no economic sense, destroying companies that had already died.

She touched the fish bowl. The goldfish twitched.

"Live," she whispered.

She thought about her mother, who'd kept dying plants in every window of their childhood home. A resurrection garden, she'd called it. Maya had stopped visiting after the funeral.

The phone buzzed again. David wanted to see her. Something about a new opportunity, a pivot, a chance to get out before the end. He always had exits. He always survived.

Maya felt like a zombie herself lately—going through motions, her consciousness narrowed to the next deadline, the next presentation, the next night of empty sleep. Her attention span had shrunk to the size of a goldfish's memory, seven seconds of focus before the next notification.

The goldfish righted itself and swam toward the glass.

Maya stood up, turned off her phone, and began to pack a bag. She didn't know where she was going. Somewhere without deals, without zombies, without the endless bull that kept them all charging toward nothing.

"At least one of us is getting out," she told the fish. It swam in circles, beautiful and trapped and entirely oblivious to its own rescue.