The Vitamin of Survival

Marcus swallowed the vitamin B12 with lukewarm office coffee, its bright yellow capsule a tiny rebellion against the corporate gray. His husband Elena had pressed it into his palm that morning, her fingers lingering. "You look like a zombie," she'd said, not unkindly. "You need something to make you feel alive again."

At 11:47 AM, the fire alarm interrupted his quarterly report meeting. Everyone shuffled to the parking lot, a herd of corporate undead in blazers and dress shoes. That's when Marcus saw the fox—a russet phantom darting between parked cars, wild electric eyes fixed on him before vanishing into the adjacent forest preserve.

"Did you see that?" Marcus asked his colleague Sarah.

"See what?" She was already scrolling through emails on her phone, walking dead.

The fox returned that night in his dream. It led him through forests of spreadsheet trees and rivers of quarterly projections until they reached an indoor court. Elena stood there, holding a padel racket, challenging him to a match. The ball became a vitamin capsule, bouncing between them like a heartbeat.

He woke at 3 AM to find Elena's side of the bed empty. The bathroom light seeped through the crack. Marcus found her sitting on the tub's edge, wet-haired from swimming, her swimsuit clinging to skin made translucent by fluorescent lights.

"I went to the 24-hour pool," she said. "I needed to feel something besides this..." She gestured vaguely at their life together. "This performance."

Marcus knelt beside her. "I saw a fox today."

Elena's eyes met his—really met his—for the first time in months. "Wild thing."

"It looked right at me. Like it knew."

"Knew what?"

"That we're pretending to be alive."

She rested her forehead against his, chlorine and warmth mingling. "So what do we do?"

The vitamin had dissolved into his blood hours ago, but something else was circulating now—something real.

"We stop pretending," he said. "We play padel tomorrow. Actually play. And you teach me to swim at night."

The fox watched from the window, satisfied, before slipping back into the darkness where wild things belong.