The Goldfish Monday

Elena woke to the sound of her cat, Barnaby, knocking his water bowl across the kitchen floor. Again. She groaned and checked her phone—6:43 AM. The first bolt of lightning cracked through the gray dawn as she shuffled to the kitchen, her bare feet cold on the linoleum.

She'd forgotten her vitamin D supplements again. Three days running now. The bottle sat on the counter like a judgment, alongside her half-full coffee mug from yesterday morning and a sad-looking banana that had seen better days.

"You're like a zombie," her sister had said over brunch yesterday, watching Elena stare blankly at the menu. "But not the fun kind that eats brains. The sad kind that works in accounts receivable and forgets to return phone calls."

Elena had wanted to argue, but she'd been too tired. Instead she'd nodded and ordered the bottomless mimosas, hoping the alcohol would jumpstart something—passion, ambition, anything.

Now she scooped coffee into the filter with practiced autopilot. Barnaby wound around her ankles, purring like a small engine demanding fuel. She fed him, then leaned against the counter watching her goldfish, Gerald, drift through his bowl. Sarah had bought him for her two years ago, a housewarming gift after the divorce. "Low maintenance," she'd promised. "Can't cheat on you, won't leave you for someone younger."

Gerald's mouth opened and closed, opened and closed. A tiny, silent scream in fluorescent water.

Another lightning strike illuminated the apartment's emptiness. Elena felt it then—that sharp, terrible clarity that comes before tears. She was thirty-nine years old, alone in a rental apartment with a cat and a fish and a job that made her want to drive off the highway on her morning commute.

She poured the coffee, black and bitter. Tomorrow she'd call her mother. Tomorrow she'd update her resume. Tomorrow she'd start taking the vitamins again. But for now, she watched Gerald swim in endless circles and told herself it wasn't really that bad.