The Last Supper

Marcus arranged the vitamins in neat rows on the kitchen counter—C, D3, B-complex, the little gelatinous capsules glistening under the fluorescent light. He'd started taking them six months ago, after the promotion, as if swallowing enough supplements could compensate for what the job was taking out of him.

"You're like a zombie," Sarah had said last night, her voice flat with exhaustion rather than accusation. She'd been saying it for months. "You come home, you eat, you sleep, you go back. I don't even know who you are anymore."

Barnaby, their cat of seven years, wound around Marcus's legs, purring insistently. Sarah had left Barnaby behind when she walked out yesterday afternoon. Probably forgot him in the chaos of packing, or maybe she simply couldn't bear to take the last living reminder of what they'd built together.

Marcus stared at his reflection in the darkened window—hollow eyes, skin gone waxy from endless fluorescent office days, mouth set in the permanent neutral expression he wore through meetings that meant nothing. He really had become one of them. The corporate undead. Not a ghost, because ghosts had once been fully alive. A zombie—still moving, still going through motions, but the essential self had been consumed years ago.

The vitamins wouldn't bring him back. He knew that now. He'd been hoping they would, secretly, irrationally hoping that some combination of minerals and compounds could reverse the slow death of twenty-hour workdays and the steady erosion of everything that used to matter.

Barnaby meowed, jumping onto the counter and batting at a vitamin D capsule. Marcus picked him up, buried his face in the cat's fur, and for the first time in months, felt something real. The solid warmth of a living thing that needed him, that didn't care about his performance metrics or his optimized workflow.

"I'm still here," he whispered to the empty kitchen. "I think."

The vitamins sat there, useless little promises. He swept them into the trash—all those neat, colorful rows—and fed the cat instead.