The Other Side of the Glass

The apartment was always too quiet after midnight. Elena fed her cat, Barnaby, watching him ripple like gray silk across the floorboards, then pressed her forehead against the cool glass of the goldfish bowl. The fish inside—she called him Solomon—swam in endless circles, mouth opening and closing in silent screams.

Three years as a corporate spy, and Elena had never felt more like Solomon. Trapped in transparent walls, visible to anyone who cared to look, going nowhere.

Her phone buzzed on the counter. Another target. Another marriage to dismantle, another executive's emails to harvest. She'd spent the evening installing keyloggers on a therapist's laptop, swallowing back the bile that rose whenever she remembered she was doing this to pay off student loans for a degree she'd never used.

The water in Solomon's bowl rippled as she changed it—her Sunday ritual, the only honest thing she did all week. She wondered what it would be like to dissolve completely, to let the water take you under and carry you somewhere else. Somewhere where you didn't have to become other people to survive.

Barnaby wound around her ankles, puring like a small engine. He'd been with her through three apartments and two breakdowns. He didn't care that she made her living violating privacy, that she'd stopped recognizing the woman in the mirror three careers ago.

"At least you're honest about what you are," she told Solomon, watching him drift through his artificial ocean. "You're just a fish. I'm a monster who tells herself she's practical."

The email notification chimed—deposit confirmed. Her payment for the therapist's secrets. Tomorrow she'd start on the politician's wife. The cycle continued, swimming upstream until she died.

Elena turned off the lights. In the darkness, Solomon's bowl glowed faintly, a private galaxy in a room full of stolen secrets. Barnaby jumped onto her chest, pinning her to the mattress with seventeen pounds of judgment.

She lay there, suspended between sleep and waking, wondering if somewhere, someone was watching her through glass of their own, and what they saw when they looked at the woman who'd become exactly what she'd promised herself she'd never be.