The Walking Unalive

Mara swallowed the vitamin D gel capsule with lukewarm office coffee, the neon yellow pill sliding down her throat like false hope. Three years of selling wellness supplements had taught her that Americans would pay anything to believe they could buy their way out of exhaustion, out of loneliness, out of themselves. She was the worst kind of hypocrite—a zombie in sensible heels, shilling vitality while running on caffeine and resentment.

The fluorescent lights of the Metro Elevate headquarters hummed their usual headache-inducing frequency. Mara's cubicle mate, Chris, caught her eye across the divider and offered a sympathetic grimace. They were both undead, going through the motions, spreading the gospel of gut health and immune support to customers who were just trying to survive late-stage capitalism with their serotonin somewhat intact.

Her phone buzzed—her mother again, asking if she'd found a "nice man" yet. Mara typed a quick lie about being "focused on career," though what she was actually focused on was the structural integrity of her apartment's fire escape, where a stray calico cat had started appearing at dusk. She'd named her Vita—a private joke that felt less pathetic than admitting she'd created a tiny, fragile reason to come home.

Tonight, Vita was waiting. The cat's emerald eyes reflected the city lights as she accepted the tuna Mara had sacrificed from her sad dinner. The animal's warmth against Mara's cold hand was the first genuine thing she'd felt in months. Not the manufactured contentment promised by the vitamin infographics she designed. Not the hollow competence she performed in performance reviews. This.

"You're the only real thing in my life," she whispered to the cat. "That's pathetic, isn't it?"

Vita purred, unconcerned with existential crisis.

Mara's phone lit up with a text from Chris: "You okay? You seemed gone today."

She typed back: "Zombie hours."

"Want to get a drink? Actually talk about it?"

Mara looked at the cat, at the city stretched out below her fire escape like a circuit board of lonely people. She thought about her vitamin stash at home—the D, the B12, the magnesium that supposedly helped with "mood support." None of them worked. Maybe connection wouldn't either. But as Vita head-butted her hand, demanding affection, Mara realized she didn't want to be dead anymore.

"Yes," she typed. "Tonight."

The vitamin D in her system wouldn't do a thing against the darkness gathering at the edges of her life. But this—this tentative, terrifying reach toward another human being—might.