The wail of the sirens is deafening. Call me naive, but until now I’ve never been subjected to such a level of auditory assault. Sure, noise can drive you crazy—ask anyone living in a city that never…

I know it’s stupid, but I still try the door of the apartment to see how the situation in the stairwell is developing. Only the emergency lighting is on, casting the corridor outside in even deeper shadows…

I check twice that the door and windows are locked as securely as I can get them. Adrenaline is making my entire body shake. The more I think about what happened, the more irrational it gets. Group-meth-murder-hobo-neighbors…

I do what most people in this situation would do: I freeze. Why? Because I have time to think. This situation is beyond surreal. Sure, living in a city of millions might mean that I could, theoretically,…

Mario appears in the doorway. How do I know it’s him? Well, do you know that “don’t forget leg day?” workout meme? Mario needs better friends to remind him of that. What he lacks in height, he…

I end up staring at my phone for several seconds straight. What the fuck is going on? I check the street down below again. It does look more deserted than usual. The air smells normal when I…

The entire way home I spend with my teeth clenched, grumbling inside my head. Don’t lie—you know exactly what I mean. Nobody just shrugs off losing a pointless argument. Least of all me. It gets better as…

The annoying chime of my phone wakes me up what feels like moments after my head hits the pillow again, but the dastardly device lets me know it’s actually early in the afternoon—what usually constitutes an early…

I’m rudely awakened by loud pounding on my door. Squinting at my phone reveals that it’s 10 A.M. Fuck my life. Blindly, I grope for a hoodie to put on over my PJs. The pounding resumes, going…

As soon as I’m back home, I sag against the inside of my door, the coke bottles clutched to my chest. It’s only then that I realize that I forgot to pick up some food, as the…