Day 1,498

Behemoth was the first thing that came to mind, a great squatting giant that smothered the landscape with a labyrinth of leaky alleyways and matchbox rooms full of doors leading to everywhere and nowhere. They sold it to us as opportunity, as escape from abuse and refuge in anonymity.

We ate up their lies with the desperate hunger of a family who'd been fed on scraps of affection between long periods of tension and violent hysteria. Anything was better than where we came from so we accepted our place in Apartment 45.9C, a single room that was half kitchen, half general use with a balcony that overlooked the local post-industrial wasteland.

Next to us were a couple who worked in the butcher's shop on floor 3 and a man who we only saw when he came stumbling back from the bar at the far end of our floor. We may have been surrounded by the lingering odour of cheap beer and blood but we kept telling ourselves this was the better place.

We told ourselves this even as my younger sibling vanished for days at a time, coming back dishevelled and dazed until one day he didn't come back at all. The place was such a maze that by the time anybody found him he was practically skeletal but the needle still lodged in his cornea told us exactly what he'd been caught up in.

Mum went soon after that, mentally at first but one day she didn't come back either. She spent hours and hours each day lecturing me on how she couldn't stand to lose anyone else, her heart wouldn't be able to take it and so she left me before I could leave her. At least, that was her thinking.

I've been living here, penniless and alone for almost twelve years now. I don't think anyone pays rent in this place, there are so many empty rooms and seemingly endless hallways that nobody can be found unless they chose to be. It's a city full of ghosts and I'm just like them.