Jennifer's Apartment, 131 E 18th St, 10.25 PM

Jennifer led us out of the elevator on the third floor, bringing us to her apartment unit. She inserted her key into the keyhole on her apartment door, twisting as the lock clicked and unlocked. She turned the doorknob down as she pushed the door open, revealing the interior of her apartment to Enrique and me.

"So, welcome to this haven of mine. It's not anything special, but it's a lot safer than being at Dunkin' Donuts or a garbage bin," she said as she showed us in.

I looked around the place, noticing that it was a studio apartment, albeit rather large for one. The living room was spacious enough to fit three bedrooms, while the kitchen spanned the length of it. Even though Jennifer was right to say that her house wasn't exactly unique in any way, it seemed as if it was more than enough room for her to live in comfortably.

"You live here alone?" I asked as I continued to inspect the cosy living space.

"Yeah," Jennifer answered. "My dad got into trouble with the law on multiple occasions, so my mum went to seek affection from another guy. It was obvious that they cared for each other more than they cared for me, so I decided that it would've been best for me to move out and find my own apartment. So, here I am, while the two of them are enjoying their high life in New York."

"Oh..." I stuttered, unsure on how to respond to her. "I-I'm sorry about that. That sucks."

"Nah, it's fine," she waved her hand in the air, dismissing her past life. "It's been a few years now, and I think I've gotten over it for the most part. Anyway, how are your parents?"

At that moment, the thought of my shaken childhood struck me. I wasn't exactly abused my parents, but it was still something I tried to put behind me because it wasn't pleasant at all. They never hit me, and never would have done so because they were absent for the most part. Even though my mum didn't have any fault in it, I still blamed her for many years.

Until now.

And as for my dad, it wasn't any better. He might have had a good reason to neglect me because he had his own things to worry about, but I found that there was no excuse for him to do so. He was his own world perpetually. He would sometimes bother to interact with others, like the neighbours or other distant relatives. But never with those closest to him.

Never with me.

"Um, are you okay?" Jennifer asked as she began waving her hand before my face rapidly. Thus, I snapped out of my unpleasant train of thoughts, returning to reality.

"Yeah, I'm fine," I said. "Well, my mum died in a car accident about twenty years ago, so she wasn't around for the later part of my childhood. My dad, well, he used to be all lively and loving, happy with me and my mum. But after the accident, he turned cold and distant, and practically neglected me. When I was a teen, he eventually passed away from a heart attack after finding out that—"

"What?" Jennifer asked, waiting for me to go on.

However, it was a highly sensitive topic that I felt reluctant to share on. It wasn't like the loneliness I experienced in my non-existed childhood. It wasn't something much more severe—something because of myself that I had to experience.

Guilt.

"He found out that I had been arrested for assault."

At that moment, everyone turned to face me. No one dared to mutter a word. Veronica looked away as quickly as she had glanced at me, while Enrique looked down at his shoes, but Jennifer remained speechless as she faced me directly and stared through my soul. I had expected some backlash to come from the girls already.

Having a felony on my record wasn't a good thing already. However, I wanted to be as honest as possible, since I was already hiding the fact that I knew about the attack beforehand from them already. I knew that might not react well to this confession of my past, but then again, I didn't want to fake my story.

Instead of what I had anticipated, though, Jennifer provided me with some affirmations. "Larry, whatever you did had happened more than a decade ago. And no matter how recent or far back ago it happened, it doesn't matter. You saved my life just now. And I can't thank you more than ever for that."

Stunned for a moment, I stuttered like a fool. I had no words to describe how comforted I was by her encouraging reassurance. Then again, she didn't know the kind of physical and emotional pain I had caused to the one I attacked. It didn't matter that I had a reason for doing so, because if no one had called the cops, I would have gone on the steal the victim's money. That was the main reason I had attacked him after all, other than the fact that I had picked someone similar to myself.

Someone weak.

It was the obese but rich kid in the neighbourhood that I had picked on. At the time that I had decided to plot the attack, my father had already become a long-term drunkard. It had been a few days after he was diagnosed with heart tissue damage, but he had no money to seek treatment with.

As desperate as I was, I could only think about one thing in my mind: the rich neighbourhood kid. He was always having the high life, sharing his lavish lifestyle with everyone on social media. To me, I found him so obnoxious and nonchalant, seeing how he ignored all of the criticism against his weight and continued to flaunt his wealth. It wasn't the part about him being indifferent about his obesity that provoked me, though. However, what really triggered me was that he got to leech off his parents' earnings for his own comfort.

On the other hand, I was left with no mother and a drunk and practically absent father. I was neglected my whole childhood and had to get my own money from working part-time jobs. There was no one to care for me and no one for me to care for, because I didn't have anyone. No money. No family. No life.

So, after my father's diagnosis, I decided that I had enough with the unfairness of life. I watched as the rich teenager walk down the same street he did every day, as he proceeded to his parents' luxury car. Instead of his usual reckless drive from home, however, he was stopped by someone—me.

I beat the hell out of him, demanding for just enough money to pay for my father's medical treatment. Nothing less, but nothing more either. To me, that was the most moral thing to do. To be Robin Hood and steal from the rich to help the poor. That was what I thought to be as just and fair.

But I was wrong.

Before I could get any money from him, I watched as my now long-lost neighbourhood "sister", Zoey Taylor, cover her mouth, appalled, her eyes stretching open painfully. She was clearly shocked to see what I was doing, as I had never committed such a crime before. After freezing at her spot for a long time, she finally decided to head in and tell her parents.

Remembering the terror on her face, I stopped hitting my victim. I couldn't bear to let her witness such a terrible thing I was doing. Only at that moment did I realise that what I had been doing was so wrong. I eventually turned myself into the police officers when the y arrived without putting up a fight.

I was eventually sent to juvie for a couple of months, but before I went, my dad died. In juvie, I spent my days feeling all awful and guilty about my father's death. I knew that he was never really there for me in the past, but there was no excuse for me to mourn his death and accept that he died because of me.

After I finished my sentence, attempting to turn a new leaf over, I visited Zoe's family to try and talk to them. To my horror, they had already moved out. The new family living there informed me that the previous homeowner had already shifted about more than a month prior to my release.

Because of everything that had happened, I berated myself over them. The death of my parents. The trauma of the kid I assaulted. The shock that I had caused to Zoe and her family. And now, they were all gone.

Because of me.

"Well, thank you for your acceptance," I thanked Jennifer. "But if you ever feel uncomfortable with me around, please don't hang around no more."

"I don't think that will ever happen," she told me, grinning slightly.

"Okay, everyone. Let's focus a little now," Enrique caught our attention as he attempted to get us back in order. "If we're not going to leave the city, then this will be our little haven of ours, as Jen prefers to call it. We'll have to block up the door for safety and cover the windows to conceal from those aliens that we are in here."

"Alright, then," I agreed. "Let's get to work!" I instructed, clapping my hands together twice as everyone began scurrying around to get their tasks started.

I lugged some heavy cabinets and furniture one by one towards the main door, blocking most of the height of it. I started stacking the shorter sets of furniture in front of the taller ones. After taking a couple of minutes to settle this, I was done. All that could be seen was the peephole and the rest of the door above it, which I had arranged to be that way intentionally to allow us to check outside through the peephole in the case of an emergency.

Meanwhile, the two ladies worked on covering the windows. Veronica filled a pail with water from the tap, while Jennifer brought a stack of newspapers over from a cabinet that I hadn't used to block the doors. Veronica then used a window cleaner that Jennifer had provided her with, dunking it into the pail of water and rolling it down the window.

However, instead of rolling it back and forth as one would do usually to clean their window, she only scrubbed it down once, This was to ensure that the water wouldn't dry out in the process. After wetting one window, Jennifer brought sone sheets of newspapers and stuck them onto the window using the water that acted as a glue.

Going around the rest of the house, they did the same with the windows in the other rooms. It took more time for them to do so than i did to block out the front door, mainly because they had to move around and repeat the same steps of sticking the newspaper onto all of the windows, which seemed tedious. Nonetheless, they still completed their job well at the end of it.

Finally, Enrique was in the kitchen checking for supplies. He pulled open the refrigerator and ran his finger across the labels on the drinks and packed food inside. He then recorded everything down in a notepad in his phone. Additionally, he looked through the kitchen cabinets for canned food and instant ramen, and some extra bottles of water and drinks around. He added it onto his list of resources in his phone, calculating to see how long everything would last us.

Based on what Jennifer had informed us prior to Enrique's careful recording of the items, I thought that we would have more than enough food. What was a concern, though, was the lack of clean water. Because of the invasion, I had no idea whether to trust the tap water. There was telling whether the aliens could have contaminated the water sources, as workers had probably abandoned the water purification plants or similar facilities to save their lives instead.

With the power still up on the other hand, we could still boil water. Then again, I wasn't sure if doing that would cleanse the water properly. It could kill bacteria, but not remove toxic chemicals that the aliens could have caused to go in it—accidentally or intentionally. Thus, I tried to play it self and told Enrique to calculate how long we would be able to last on canned and bottled drinks.

At the end of it all, he finally came out with a few figures: a measly day with regular meals and water intake, but two if we rationed and saved a little more water. It wasn't looking too good for us, as there was no wah that the attack would end in just a day. We were eventually going to have to source for water somewhere else. The question was where to do so.

"We can focus on that tomorrow morning," I suggested. "I think we're all exhausted by now, so let's just have one person to keep on the lookout just in case, while the rest sleep."

"That will really help me to get over this hangover," Jennifer praised my decision, yawning as she hugged the pillow on her couch.

"Too bad I'm voting for you to be the first one to take the night shift to lookout for those alien beings," Veronica snorted.

"You have my vote too," Enrique clicked his tongue, pointing finger guns at Jennifer sarcastically in a joking manner.

Desperate to get some shut-eye, Jennifer turned to me, begging me not to torture her the way they were by preventing her from getting the rest she wanted. However, I didn't really have much of an impact on the decision, seeing how the other two had already voted her. Thus, I apologised in advance, before stating my stand. "Well, I guess I have no choice but to go with the flow," I admitted, shrugging and scratching my head.

"You all suck," Jennifer groaned as she got up from her comfortable lying position to a stiff sitting one.

Meanwhile, the rest of us were already preparing to get some sleep. Enrique snatched the sofa from Jennifer, who wasn't going to sleep for a while anyway. On the other hand, Veronica and I grabbed some blankets that Jennifer had provided us with beforehand, before lying on the soft, furry carpet and wrapping ourselves in the blankets.

"If nothing goes wrong, I'm going to wake you in a few hours to take over from me, Ricky boy," Jennifer snarled, targeting Enrique.

"Why me?" Enrique cried.

That was the last word to be said, as everyone quickly knocked out.