Vitamins for the Corporate Dead

The morning ritual began with the vitamin cocktail — three capsules swallowed without water, like medicine for a disease I couldn't name. My hair was thinning at thirty-five, each lost strand a receipt for the corporate pyramid scheme I'd been paying into for a decade. Standing in the bathroom mirror, I applied pomade to cover the temples, a daily renovation project on a crumbling structure.

'You look like a zombie,' Elena had said six months ago, the morning she left. She was right. I'd been walking dead since the promotion, since the corner office with its view of the city's financial district, since I stopped catching baseball games with my father because Thursday meetings were more important. Now Elena's shampoo still sat in the shower, ghost evidence of a life I'd half-lived.

The train ride downtown was a funeral procession for the living. We stood shoulder to shoulder, hundreds of us, staring into screens, practicing for the afterlife. At the office, Gary from accounting stopped by my desk with his spreadsheet eyes and practiced grin.

'Big presentation today,' he said. 'You ready?'

I'd been ready since I sold my soul, but I nodded. Gary's hair was perfect, product-sculpted immovable. He was what they wanted us to become.

The presentation was a pyramid scheme of buzzwords and projected revenue, a masterpiece of corporate theater. I delivered it standing up, moving my hands like I'd seen in the TED talks, feeling like I was channeling someone else's conviction. They applauded. I was golden, a success story, a zombie who'd learned to pass for alive.

But driving home that evening, I caught a baseball game on the radio. Bottom of the ninth, two outs, full count — the perfect tension of something that actually mattered. For a moment, I remembered the way Elena's hair had smelled after games, how she'd rest her head on my shoulder as we walked home, how for years I'd thought that was enough.

I pulled over and bought a bottle of vitamins I didn't need, then sat in the car and listened until the final out. Something was ending. Something was beginning. Tomorrow, I'd stop taking the pills. Tomorrow, I'd call my father. Tomorrow, I'd learn how to be alive again.