I’ll quit being so dramatic and just tell you: it's a zombie. A shuffling, stumbling zombie come to eat my brains, lurching and dressed in tatters, gray skin, open sores, maggots, coffin dirt caked in its hair.

And this is not a metaphor. Not some euphemism. I don’t have any issue with the government, nor they me. This isn’t some elaborate tax situation. Neither lottery nor religious observance. Just your run of the mill gnashing moaning zombies, fingers hooked in crooked talons, reaching and greedy to see me bleed freely and shrieking.

I can hear him. Why James the doorman would let such a beast into our building is beyond me. James lets people in on the most fragile pretext. I thought, at least, they had to ask for someone by name. How could a zombie give James my name? Zombies can’t talk. If they manage a word, it’s just the word BRAINS, gurgling and drooling black ichor from their mouths, yawning and hungry for living flesh.

I can just picture the damn thing trying to work the buttons on the elevator. Because even a zombie won’t shuffle up seven flights of stairs. Pawing at the buttons and pounding rotted fists iron strong against the door, making dents and smearing desiccated skin. Why won’t James stop him?

James, who said things to me in a harsh tone just for closing my mailbox too loudly! Three days after my birthday this year, right in the middle of the week. No card from my no good son on the actual day itself, that’s fine, maybe it’s in the mail still. And no phone call on the actual day itself either, of course, because he knows better than to call, knows that he’d have to listen to what I have to say about his own filthy child and that wife of his, I don’t care what her father wears around his collar she’s no good for my son. And no card the next day. But no card three days later? I could’ve screamed.

So I’m angry, so I slam the mailbox door a bit louder than usual, James has to say “Mrs. Ogletree, careful with the mailbox door!” The nerve. When’s Christmas again? James will know it’s Christmas because he won’t be getting any tips from me on that day.

If I’m still alive, that is. If the zombie doesn’t somehow stumble into the elevator when some brutish pizza delivery boy stabs the button for the ninth floor. That’s all you have to do to get past James, is carry a greasy box and say “Name, I don’t know no names pal, got a pie for 9F, it says, you wanna take it up?” They scrawl it, 9F, right there on the cardboard, in crayon, and I see the soggy boxes piled up when I walk Cyrus, stacked up in the alley, so many pizza boxes, all from 9F, they’re going to get rickets.

So the zombie rides up with him and the pizza boy ignores him and the zombie just stares at him, not breathing, but mouth agape, eyeballs twitching, or should I say eyeball singular, God knows what happened to the other one, good Christian women simply do not think about happens to eyeballs that go missing.

I’m not even think about calling 911. First of all the phone would be answered by an ethnic minority. Not that there’s anything wrong with being an ethnic, I’m just being descriptive. Then they’d want all kinds of personal information like my name and address. Why can’t they just keep the zombies away from the building in the first place? Why can’t they just do their jobs? But it’s no use arguing with an ethnic minority. And no matter what I say, they’re not going to believe it’s urgent. Is the zombie currently riding the elevator, ma’am? And they way they say ma’am, it’s like the opposite of what the word means. Can you identify the delivery man who let the zombie on the elevator, ma’am? Of course not! I don’t eat pizza!

There’s Mr. Ogletrees shotgun, of course, but I don’t know a thing about guns. Only what he taught me, the saint. A Remington 870 Wingmaster, tuned by Vang Comp, pump action, 18 inch barrel, packed with 12 gauge shot and good for stopping anything close enough to smell you. Mr. Ogletree claimed it could cut a man in half at 10 feet, but frankly that’s a bunch of malarkey, and truth be told I wouldn’t want to just blast a zombie in half, because, oh my lord, what if the top half kept crawling after me? Sign me up for the funny farm.

I suppose I should just run, gather up Cyrus and my pills and my purse, may have to swallow my pride and actually take the big one, the one that makes me look like I shop at discount stores, the one my son’s wife gave me and I haven’t had the time to donate to the thrift, the Vera Wang ruched satchel, the one she gave me on Christmas, and yes, I opened the gift on Christmas day, not Christmas eve like you’re supposed to, her more excited than me, saying It’s a Vera Wang, mother, well, Simply Vera, but I didn’t even know Vera Wang makes handbags, and I replied, I don’t even know who Vera Wang is, although of course I do, I’ve seen an episode or two of Sex in the City. Pornography. But if I’m going to run away from a bile drooling blood thirsty zombie relentlessly pursuing me across the seven boroughs I’m going to need to take more supplies than I can fit into my St. John’s Bay Alana leather hobo!

Yes, that makes sense. I’ll put the brown sweater on Cyrus, he always looks so dapper in his little doggie sweater, and I’ll pack a few nibbles, some hard candies for me and some of those bacon atrocities that Cyrus seems to love so much despite his upbringing. Oh, and I’ll need poopy bags, in case Cyrus makes a stinky in the park. Would it be safe to run through the park? I suppose not, I suppose that’s just what the zombie would want me to do, to run through the park, with the trees and the ground gnarled and bumpy with stones, of course the night would come on faster than one expects, the wind howling, no one hearing me scream, not that they would do anything if I did scream; I saw Kitty Genovese murdered that night, I know what people are like.

But the streets! I can’t be seen running down the street, Cyrus clutched to my heaving, sobbing breast, that awful green and putrid zombie shuffling behind me, no matter how fast I go, always somehow getting closer. What will people think? They’ll stare, they’ll point, some of them might laugh! The only ones who don’t laugh won’t because they’ve been chased by zombies themselves, their own loved ones ripped limb-from-limb, eaten alive, brains mashed in broken fingers and shoved in fistfuls into the gaping leering craws of those unliving abominations. Oh, boo-hoo, I can hear them say now, Old lady on a pension carrying a midget jack russell, being chased by one zombie, only one, cry me a river, lady, wait till there’s a horde of them breaking into your country home and coming after your wife and four kids! Well, it’s not my fault you breed like rabbits you redneck hillbillies! Zombies might do you some good, thin the heard so you can afford shoes for the remaining little terrors that the zombie didn’t get to!

I really shouldn’t have to put up with this. I’m 62, all alone, I shouldn’t have to choose between running down the street like a hooligan or running through the park like a hippie or using a shotgun like a lesbian on a camping trip. I shouldn’t have to argue with ethnic minorities on the phone or listen to acne-scarred delivery boys carry greasy smelly pizzas past my door or up the stairs or up the elevator or anywhere at all. I shouldn’t have to wait for my son to call, shouldn’t have to give up on even a civil word from that woman he married, shouldn’t have to wash my clothes in extra-strength laundry detergent because that spawn of theirs was crawling all over my lap calling me Nana like he couldn’t even pronounce grandmother! I don’t care if he’s only three!

I am really fed up. All I have anymore is my peace and quiet and now that’s been shattered by this horrible zombie. And Cyrus. I have Cyrus. Cyrus, come here boy, that’s a good boy. Mommy’s going to just open the door a crack and you scoot outside, there you go. Bark when you see the zombie, I’m just going to shut the door now. Maybe if he gets a taste of your brains instead that’ll satisfy him and he’ll just leave me alone.