The Last Real Day

The bull-eyed stare of Derek's computer monitor hadn't changed in three hours. Neither had Derek. He'd become something else since the merger—a corporate zombie moving through fluorescent-lit halls, jaw slack, responding to emails with automatic efficiency while his actual self watched from somewhere far away, screaming.

"You need to be more aggressive," his boss had told him that morning. "Grab the market by the horns. Be a bull."

Derek had nodded. He always nodded.

The subway ride home felt like swimming upstream through molasses. Everyone else was underwater too—lips pressed thin, eyes unfocused, all of them holding their breath for something that would never come. The man across from him had a briefcase pressed to his chest like a shield. The woman beside him was crying silently, headphones in, tears tracking through makeup she'd applied at dawn.

Lightning cracked as he emerged onto the street—a sudden, violent fissure of white that left afterimages burned onto his retinas. The storm broke then, really broke, and still he walked. His shirt plastered to his back, water dripping from his hair into his eyes. A car hissed through a puddle, soaking him further. He kept walking.

"Hey!" someone shouted.

He kept walking.

He found himself at the sculpture garden in the park, standing before the bronze sphinx that had somehow remained dry beneath the overhang of the museum entrance. The creature's stone eyes regarded him with ancient indifference. Who are you? the sphinx seemed to ask. What do you want?

Derek thought of his wife at home, probably already asleep. Thought of the promotion he'd turned down two years ago. Thought of the novel he'd never finished. The bull in him—the part that should charge, that should want—was quiet. Had always been quiet.

"I don't know," he said aloud.

A couple ran past, laughing, shielding each other from the rain with a single coat. And suddenly, violently, he wanted to be them. Not young—never young again—but alive. Whatever that meant.

The sphinx said nothing. The lightning flashed again, illuminating the wet sculpture garden like a stage set, and for a moment, just a moment, Derek wasn't swimming anymore. He was treading water, but that was something. That was a start.