When I woke up the day after Memorial Day, I realized I was a seahorse. The tedium of approaching work siphoned through my slightly gaping mouth, passing out of my gills with a viscous fluid slowness, nearly suffocating me into consciousness. I gazed out with eyes widened as if in terror. I don't think my eyes had ever closed. They never saw any more or less when I was awake than when I was asleep. I felt like I was supposed to be apprehensive about starting the workweek, so I made a point of being grumpy, but I'd already stopped caring at some point, my skin had already hardened into bony ringlets around my body. I knew I wasn't dreaming; in a dream, I would be able to move much faster than the slow drifting my lazily flapping dorsal fin allowed. There wasn't anything like breakfast waiting for me in the kitchen. The only things women had given me in life were debt and commitments I wasn't ready for. My metabolism was very slow, so I decided to skip breakfast and head straight to work. My tail's grasp on the briefcase was as tenuous as my reasoning for working at that job.
There was really nothing different about being a seahorse.