The Unbecoming

Miranda stood before the bathroom mirror at 3 AM, fluorescent light humming like an insect trapped in glass. She pulled off her wig — the expensive auburn one she'd bought after chemotherapy — and set it on the glass shelf. Underneath, her real **hair** was growing back in soft tufts, gray at the temples, defiant and honest.

She placed the corporate **hat** on the counter next to it. The literal hat from the office retreat — embroidered with 'TEAM SYNERGY 2024' — but also the metaphorical one she'd been wearing for fifteen years. The one that said 'I'm fine' and 'I love this job' and 'this mortgage is worth my soul.'

Her phone lit up with a Slack notification from David. Are you up?

David, with his easy charm and office flirtation that had spiraled into something dangerous last month. David, who'd held her in the supply closet last Tuesday while she cried about her mother's death. David, who was married to someone named Sarah.

She peeled a **vitamin** D supplement from its foil packaging. The doctor said she needed them. The lack of sunlight from her windowless office was literally making her brittle. She swallowed it dry, thinking about how her body had become a machine that required maintenance just to keep functioning as a cog in a system that would replace her in two weeks if she died.

In the kitchen, she found an **orange** in the bowl. Her hands shook as she peeled it, citrus spray sharp in the quiet air. She remembered bringing oranges to her mother's hospital room. The way the scent cut through the sterile smell of machines and impending death.

That's when it hit her: she was living like a **zombie**. Not the pop-culture brain-eating kind, but something worse — the real kind. The kind that shows up, answers emails, attends meetings, smiles at colleagues, goes through motions, and feels nothing. The kind that died years ago but never got the memo to lie down.

David's phone burned in her pocket.

She ate the orange in the dark, juice running down her chin, and realized she had two choices: keep wearing all the hats, or finally take them off. Finally be the woman with graying hair and a broken heart and nothing left to lose.

She deleted David's message without opening it.

Tomorrow, she would tell her boss about the HR director who'd touched her shoulder too often, and too familiarly. Tomorrow, she would stop taking vitamins for a job that was killing her. Tonight, she would sleep as herself.