The Last One Alive

You're not supposed to have favorites among the office pets. But somewhere between the third quarter collapse and Elena's resignation, I became the person who fed General Finbar. The goldfish — a carnival prize someone's kid won and then abandoned in the breakroom — became my only real companion at Johnson & Klein. Not that I'd admit it to anyone.

'You look like a zombie,' Sarah said, sliding into the chair beside me. She was my friend once, back when we both believed this job meant something. Now she studied my face with clinical detachment, like I was one of the spreadsheets she audited for errors. 'When's the last time you went home before midnight?'

'Finbar needs me,' I said, gesturing to the bowl on my desk. 'Someone has to remember to feed him.'

Sarah sighed. The sound carried the weight of everything we'd lost: the passion projects, the after-work drinks where we plotted our escape, the version of ourselves that still believed we could become something different. 'He's a fish, Marcus. He doesn't care about you. He doesn't even have a three-second memory.'

'That's a myth.' I tapped the glass. General Finbar swam to the surface, his mouth opening and closing in perpetual supplication. 'They remember longer than that. They recognize faces. They form attachments.'

Sarah watched me for a long moment. Something unreadable passed behind her eyes — regret, maybe, or pity, or the quiet recognition that we were both trapped in the same tank, swimming in circles while someone else shook the flakes from above.

'I'm leaving,' she said quietly. 'I got the offer from that startup in Austin.'

The fluorescent lights hummed. Someone three desks over laughed too loud at something that wasn't funny. My chest opened up, hollow and terrible.

'Good,' I said. 'That's good.'

'Come with me,' she said. 'We could get a place. Find different jobs. Start over.'

I looked at General Finbar, floating suspended in his tiny universe, and then at Sarah, who'd somehow kept her humanity in a place designed to strip it away. Outside, the city moved forward without us. Somewhere, people were living lives that felt real.

'What about Finbar?' I asked, and hated myself immediately.

Sarah's smile was small and infinitely sad. 'He's a fish, Marcus.' She stood up, already halfway gone. 'And you're not a zombie. Not yet. But you will be if you stay.'

She left two weeks later. I stayed. The goldfish died on a Tuesday while I was in a meeting about synergies. I flushed him myself, standing in the bathroom that smelled of lemon cleaner and desperation, and realized too late that Sarah had been trying to save me, not the fish. Some mornings I still look at my reflection and don't recognize the person staring back. But at least I never have to remember to feed anyone anymore.