Zombie Heart

Laura stared at the goldfish bowl on her desk. The fish—she called him Marvin despite knowing fish don't have names—swam in endless circles, the same translucent orange against glass, day after day. At 38, she felt like she'd become something worse than dead: a zombie moving through her corporate job, her apartment, her life, performing the motions without the machinery of feeling inside.

Her friend Rachel had noticed first. "You've been taking those vitamin supplements since January," Rachel said over coffee three weeks ago, stirring her latte with too much concentration. "Is everything okay?" Laura had shrugged, popped another D3 capsule, and changed the subject. The vitamins were something she could control. Something measurable.

Now Rachel wasn't returning texts.

Laura ran a hand through her hair. More gray at the temples than last month. Her mother had gone silver at forty. Genetics marching forward regardless of whether she showed up for the march.

"You're becoming a zombie," her ex had told her during the divorce. "Dead inside. Just going through the motions."

She'd thought he was being cruel. Now she wondered if he'd simply been observant.

The goldfish slowed its circling. Laura watched it through the glass of her office door, her coworkers moving likeBackground actors in a film she'd stopped watching years ago. Same spreadsheets. Same quarterly reports. Same fluorescent hum that made everything feel clinical and wrong.

Her phone lit up. Rachel.

"I'm worried about you," Rachel's voicemail said when Laura didn't answer. "You don't have to be okay, but you have to be something. This walking dead thing—it's scaring me."

Laura deleted the message. Then opened her vitamin bottle and swallowed three pills.

The goldfish stopped swimming.

Laura stood up. She walked to the window, pressed her palm against the glass. Somewhere under all the numbness, something stirred. Not much. But something.

"Marvin," she said aloud. The fish darted, sudden and alive.

She picked up her phone and dialed Rachel. "I think," Laura said, her voice cracking, "I think I might need help."

"Finally," Rachel said. "Come over. I'll make dinner."

The zombie sensation didn't vanish. But the goldfish kept swimming, and for the first time in months, Laura swam with it.