The cold night air was a wonderful feeling against her skin, it felt more refressing now that she wasn’t slumming it in a tree.

there was some quality to the night air in the big city she couldn’t quite explain. It wasn’t purer, even without enhanced senses she could smell the pollutants that clogged the air in the big city, it just felt more like home. the light from the streetlamps blanketed the road and its surroundings in a warm yellow light that gave the impression of warmth and comfort, which she enjoyed despite her affinity for the darkness. She was given a wide birth, even if she was a woman, she would be equally surprised and impressed if even the drunkest of humans decided to harass her. Through her wanderings she had learned that alcohol was a common drink among humans, something that she never had acess to in her assigned food, she swore not to touch the stuff when she saw how it degraded them. Humans, despite their claims of superiority, were still ruled in part by primal instincts, they were always scared or awed by size, a habit harkening back to the days where the biggest man with the biggest stick was the leader of the tribe, and she towered above these people. She didn’t hate them for their fear of her, if they were afraid of her now, she smiled to think of their reactions to what she truly looked like. Almost every person she had taken notice of her, from brief glances to stares to even directly altering their path to avoid her, but she ignored them and kept on moving.

after her quick journey she had arrived at the apartment complex, it was a bleak building, the grey, brutalist architecture torn straight out of photos of the Soviet Union.

she walked through the sliding glass doors, the receptionist, a plain young man practically falling asleep on his desk didn’t notice her, or maybe he was too lazy to offer a greeting. It didn’t matter.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Victoria did not try to start a conversation. She rode the elevator upward, the rickety grate that covered the door a far cry from the high tech pressurised, reinforced doors from the complex she had spent most of her life in. The elevator eventually shuddered to a stop; it took the doors a solid ten seconds before screeching open to reveal the long hallway.

It was lit by flickering luminescent bulbs wired to the ceiling, her boots click-clacked against the uncarpeted concrete floor as she passed plain wooden door after plain wooden door until she got to her door. It was unmarked apart from the number 43 carved into the wood. It was not special. It opened with a creak, the inside was dark, no lightbulbs were left on and even though she could see in the dark if she chose to Victoria slid her hand over the light switch and turned it on with the practiced ease of someone who had entered the same place several times. It was quaint, a 4-room apartment with a small tv in the living area and personal computer tucked away in her room, the main room contained 2 chairs and a couch of varying degrees of disrepair, they had been here for some time, far before she had begun living here.

Victoria strode past everything and slumped down onto her bed, face first into the mattress despite how uncomfortable the position was. The springs of the mattress screeched in protest of her weight as if remaining undefeated despite her years of residence. Sometimes she wondered what it would be like. To be human, to be normal. Her life would probably be easier, she wouldn’t have to be shipped off to whatever part of this country was infested by meter long cockroaches or a giant reptile or anything like that. Maybe so, she reasoned, however she couldn’t deny that she was having fun in the life she had now. The thoughts kept clouding her mind, a maelstrom of negativity and confusion, so to counteract this she grabbed her old yet functional laptop and searched the web for some low quality podcasts. She turned the volume down low to the point where she could barely hear it and lay there, on her bed, occasionally readjusting to a more comfortable position until finally her thoughts slowed, and she fell into a restless sleep.