A Day Like Any Other, Unironically

Wake up an hour before the alarm is set to go off. I should go outside and clean up all the dropped arms and legs and viscera from last night's attack, but I can't be bothered. I close my eyes for a second, and then the alarm goes off, right on schedule. Oh well. Time flies when you're having fun, right? Then again, I don't know if anyone calls sleep "fun."

Micturate, like anyone would, then rouse the boy for breakfast. Open the curtains to let some sunshine help me in this endeavor. I can see our longish driveway from the window, all the way to the street. Not nearly as streaked with goo and guts as usual. Maybe their hearts just weren't in it last night. Or not in them. Which is why they didn't have as much to leave behind. There's a dad joke in there somewhere. Let me get my coffee and I'll try to make one up.

I descend the stairs with the boy right behind me. What do you want for breakfast I say. He's going to say cereal. He always says cereal. Before he says cereal, I check the fridge. Move the baggie with the hand in it aside, grab the milk. As I feared it's almost empty. And then, as I feared, the boy requests cereal. Because I'm a selfish bastard, I first pour a wee dram of milk into my coffee mug, and start the Keurig a brewin'. Then I make the boy his bowl.

And now we're out of milk. The boy crunches, and I plop down on the sofa, pull out my phone, start browsing tik tok. I know I've seen that hand before, which is why I save it. There's a tattoo in the back, a skull and crossbones of all the things, but decorated in a certain style. Lots of swirls and dots, Day of The Dead Sugar Skull style. I grin to myself thinking about it. They're going to have to start calling it Decade of the Dead, way things have been.

Or maybe they can switch it up, call it "Day of The Dead But Stayed In The Damned Ground Like They're Supposed To." Or am I not being woke enough? Or the shuffling hordes worthy of the same consideration we would give other minority groups? Or am I now insulting minority groups by comparing them to rotting corpses who occasionally attack houses in the middle of the night? I'm 50. I'm too old to figure these things out.

The boy is six, and eats at roughly the speed of sound. He's done and off the chair and zooming upstairs to brush his teeth and get dressed for school. I'm too old to be a dad, too, probably. But I can still swing an axe, as they say, can still change a flat tire fast enough to get back on the road before the distant mob of shufflers descends upon us. That only happened once, but, well, let's just say the misses was impressed enough that nine-months later, the boy showed up.

I keep on scrolling, wasting my time, really. What's going to happen if I DO find the owner of that hand? Call the police? They're busy enough as it is. I could send a DM to the account, see if anyone is monitoring it, maybe. And then what? My message gets screen-shotted, and posted on whatever sub-reddit these days makes fun of creepy old men who save ladies'es hands in plastic bags. And you know there IS a subreddit for that. There's a sub-reddit for everything.

The boy returns. He has books. His ability to read has gone from confusing Ws and Ms to parsing multi-syllabic words and figuring out how to say them with context clues. His mom and I have a plan, to keep him safe from the streets- make him a book nerd who never wants to leave home. He plops down next to me, uses me as a backrest, and starts reading. Out loud, so it's hard for me to hear the tik-toks. Probably for the best.

I keep an eye on the clock and when it says we're going to be late if we don't get moving five minutes ago, we get moving. Lunch, prepared the night before, into his backpack. A bottle of water. His face-mask. Yeah, they've lifted the mandate, but he's in Kindergarten, for crying out loud. As long as he and the other little monsters are willing to wear masks and not bring home every snot-dripping illness they come across, we'll make sure he wears one. Also, there's a rumor that masks hold back the kind of aromas from breathing that shufflers can smell. I think it's bullshit but I've neither the desire nor energy to test it. So the masks stay on.

Out the door and into the car. The usual piles of bits and pieces are not too bad today. The boy buckles his own belt. I buckle mine. We're out of the driveway and it's three blocks and waiting at a light before we even see one. Often it's annoying, but sometimes they break your heart. It's a little girl, maybe eight or nine, wearing ripped jeans, a filthy shirt that looks like it was pink once. Half her head is gone. No shoes. Limping along the sidewalk like she was any one else her age, heading to school. 

Before the light turns green, an old fella gets out of a dented pick up truck with a shotgun, walks over to her, and pulls the trigger. Her head is vaporized and the old man has turned around before the body even hits the ground. There's a sadness hanging off his face. He gets back into his truck and when the light turns green, and he doesn't move right away. The Tesla behind him coughs a polite little beep, almost embarrassed to shoo the old man and his dented pick-up truck along.

The boy asks me to tell him a story as we drive. We're literally two minutes from his school; heaven forbid he have to dwell in the boredom of his own thoughts. Whatever. Once upon a time there was a blah blah who blah blahed in a blah blah blah. We get to the school. To be continued, I say.

We pull up into the drop-off zone, and of course the ass-hat in front of me has stopped right in front of the front doors, instead of driving the extra fifty feet to fill in the space behind the preceding car. Fifty fucking feet. These assholes are so lazy they can't even conceive of theirs kids walking an extra fifty fucking feet. Jesus Christ. If anything, maybe we need more zombies walking around, take out these selfish motherfuckers.

Whatever. My own boy is out of the car, backpack on, mask on, a wave and blown kiss and a bye dad and he's running towards the door. A zombie emerges from a bush, tattered suit, green-blotched skin, flashing blackened teeth. My son ignores him, goes inside. The zombie turns towards another kid, who also ignores him. This happens two more times before another small polite beep reminds me to move on. I chuckle to myself, drive forward and around the corner.

I sigh, then tell my phone to call the school. If your child will be absent or tardy, press one and leave a message; please include your child's name, grade, and reason for their absence. To hear updates on late buses, press two. If you've spotted an ambulatory deceased on school grounds, press three, and leave a message. I tell my phone to press three. I leave a message.

There, I've done my duty as a citizen and a member of our community. I deserve a second cup of coffee. Then I remember we're out of milk. You know what I haven't had in a long time? A matcha-tea latte with soy. So I head to Starbucks. A left here, a right there, and I'm on a busy street. I can hardly believe it when I see it: two, no three, women dressed in high heels, short skirts, and short-cropped fake-fur jackets. It's eight o'clock in the morning!

But who am I to question their entrepreneurial spirit? The bikini baristas up and down this street are open at six-am, to catch the perverts-who-need-coffee-on-the-way-to-work crowd, so why not? One of them, in a red skirt, is looking at her phone with one hand and fending off a shuffler with the other. It's such a practiced, nonchalant effort on her part. And then I'm through an intersection, making a left turn onto the Starbucks.

I order my matcha latte with soy, and fake-flirt with the young lady who takes me card. I call it fake-flirting because I'm not hitting on her, just saying things to be conversational. But in a non-threatening way. Have you ever had Matcha? Me neither, so if this is awful, I'm coming back for a mocha. Now, a mocha-matcha, that would be good. She smiles and laughs in the right places. She knows people don't pay five dollars for coffee; they pay five dollars for someone to be nice to them for a few minutes.

She hands me something that isn't my order, and I actually reach for it before I realize it's not mine. My fingers brush hers very briefly, and I am acutely embarrassed. She doesn't even notice. But my cheeks are hot and now there's no way I can ever come back to this Starbucks for the next several years. She hands me my matcha-soy with a gentle smile. I garble a thank-you and do everything I can not to burn rubber as I leave.

I head back home, and try my best to get over myself. No one cares, dude, I tell myself. You are fifty years old. Even if you were a perv, getting your jollies by touching the odd barista's finger, they still wouldn't care. You're about as dangerous as, well, that walker right there. The one crossing the street. I watch as two cars swerve around it, and then I realize it's the same zomb from when I dropped off my son. 

I should hit him. Take him out of my misery. Just plow right into him. It's supposed to be a nice day today, sunny, and I have to get out the hose to clean our driveway, anyway, so I can clean the zombie's guts off my car too, if it comes to that. Yeah. I speed up a little.

And at the last-second, I swerve too. Because, well, I don't know. Not like taking out this one's gonna change anything. The sun comes up, the sun goes down, the ambulatory deceased walk the earth, and that's just the way life is. I'll tell my wife I accidentally brushed the barista's finger, and the only thing she'll say is, you went to starbucks and didn't get me one?