The Last Bear Market

Marcus stood before his floor-to-ceiling window on the forty-second floor, watching the city's lights blur through tears he refused to shed. At forty-seven, he'd become a master of the corporate climb—until today.

"They're calling it a bear market," his assistant had whispered earlier, her voice thick with implication. "But we both know what it really means."

The bulls had been running the show since before Marcus could remember, their testosterone-fueled strategies driving quarter after quarter of impossible growth. Now, as the economy nosedived, someone needed to take the fall. Someone old enough to be expensive, young enough to be expendable.

His phone buzzed: a message from Elena, the sphinx of the executive suite. She'd been eyeing his corner office for years, her enigmatic smile never quite reaching those cold, calculating eyes. "Dinner tonight? We should talk."

Marcus laughed bitterly. Talk about what? The way she'd systematically dismantled every ally he'd built? The way she spoke in corporate riddles while sharpening her knife?

He turned from the window and walked toward his apartment's small aquarium, watching his daughter's goldfish navigate its crystal castle. She'd left it behind when she moved out last month—another reminder of how quickly things disappeared. "Their memories last three seconds," she'd told him once. "Sometimes I envy them."

His cat, Minerva, wound between his legs, purring with the supreme indifference of creatures who'd never worried about 401(k)s or performance reviews. She'd been his ex-wife's cat, originally. Another thing that stayed.

The bull on Wall Street had finally stumbled, and Marcus had been caught in the stampede. Tomorrow, he'd clear his desk. Tomorrow, he'd become something else. But tonight, he poured another drink and considered the peculiar mercy of forgetting.

Outside, the city churned with ambition and desperation, indifferent to the small creatures swimming in circles, sleeping, or simply staring at the darkened sky, wondering what came after the fall.