The Last Fish

The goldfish had been swimming in its bowl for three years — longer than Maya had been with the company, longer than she'd been with David. Its name was Gerald, though no one remembered who'd named it. The fish moved in endless circles, orange scales catching the fluorescent light of the open-plan office.

Maya watched it while her computer restarted AGAIN. The IT guy had said it was the ethernet cable, then the power cable, then some cable she'd never heard of that apparently controlled everything. She'd stopped asking questions.

"You're going to miss this place," David had said that morning, over coffee that tasted like resignation. "The stability, the routine."

She'd almost laughed. The routine was killing her. The routine was Gerald, swimming his eternal circles while she answered emails about synergies and deliverables and ways to leverage their core competencies. The routine was coming home too tired to talk, too tired to care about David's promotion or his mother's comments about settling down.

Outside, lightning cracked the sky open — sudden, violent, illuminating the parking lot with an almost holy brightness. For a second, everyone in the office looked up from their screens. The moment of collective awe lasted three seconds. Then they all looked back down.

Gerald swam on.

Maya's screen flickered back to life. An email from HR: "Exit Interview Reminder."

She stood up. Her legs felt strange, like she'd been sitting for years. She walked to the fishbowl. Gerald regarded her with his permanent expression of mild surprise.

"You deserve an ocean," she whispered.

Security would stop her. She knew they would. But she'd figure something out. She'd come back tonight, after the building locked down, and she'd liberate him. It was a small rebellion, but it was something.

Outside her window, the storm had passed. The sky was that impossible blue that only comes after rain, after lightning, after something breaks open.

Maya pressed send on her resignation letter. Then she unplugged her charging cable, coiled it like a snake on her desk, and walked toward the door with Gerald's bowl in her hands.