Craig closed his eyes and ran his free hand down his face. “I’m not going to spy on your neighbors for you, Aunt Sylvia,” he said into the phone.

“Spy?" said Sylvia. "Don’t be ridiculous! I’m not asking you to spy on anyone! But if you should happen to befriend the young lady, perhaps you could tell me a bit more about her.”

"Seriously? You’re seriously asking me to do this?” Craig walked over to his Bush Antonia TV Stand and pulled out the media basket containing his video games. He suddenly felt the need to play something involving incredible violence.

“Can’t I just come over, fix whatever you’ve broken this time and call it an evening?”

“Ah, see,” she said, “I’ve already worked that part out. I’ve going to invite her over for dinner next week and I want you to be here ‘fixing’ my laptop when she shows up. Then we’ll all have a nice meal and a nice chat and then maybe…”

Craig was already shaking his head as he placed a disc into his game console and switched on the HDTV sitting atop the Aged Tobacco finish of the stand. “No. No no no. Not doing it. No way.”

“She’s really quite lovely, I think. A little dowdy, but prettier than the women you normally date. She may even be single, not that I’d know because I DON’T KNOW ANYONE WHO IS FRIENDS WITH HER.”

His knuckles whitened as he gripped his controller. Zombies, he thought. Focus on killing zombies. “NO.”

“And it isn’t like you couldn’t use a healthy home-cooked meal, dear. That is, if someone delivers home-cooked meals to the building, of course.”

“Aunt Sylvia, I’m hanging up the phone now.”

“There’s twenty bucks in it for you.”

Craig brought the phone back up to his ear and thought silently for a moment. This was a bad idea, one of the worst his aunt had ever come to him with. She shouldn’t get off so cheaply. “Make it fifty.”

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