Tonight, I was skittish and restless and still cold, despite wrapping my hoodie tight around myself. It was cheap and thin, the fabric no match for the wind, which seemed to have picked up since I started walking. I took a right off Crown Street and headed past the towers on Belvoir, smoking my rollie and letting gravity pull me down the hill to Central Station. I crossed Prince Alfred Park and Cleveland Street as it arched over the railway lines, and turned into the back streets of Darlington, cutting through the uni and out onto King Street.

It was early enough that I still had to dodge the odd pedestrian as I walked, hope nobody pushed me out in front of a car or grabbed me and pulled me into an alley, but nobody did, and nobody would have noticed if they had. Shadows danced around street corners and doorways and telegraph poles, reminding me that this was a stupid, silly, terrible idea; a stupid, silly, terrible thing to do. But I did it anyway, waiting for my luck to run out. Ready.

I walked faster and faster until I was at my front door; navy blue and opening right on to King Street, almost invisible between a second-hand bookshop and a convenience store, with a small chrome plate displaying a street number, and an ancient intercom that was more for show than anything. The lock was sticky and only opened if you turned the key in the exact right way, and sometimes it took a few tries and that was when I felt it the most: the presence, eyes on me, creeping up behind me, waiting until that last moment, that last second before safety.

This time it gave first go, and I let myself in, falling back against the door as it shut, as I did every night, my heart pounding so hard I thought my ribs might break.

Alive, still.

Somehow.

It was called the cat-piss house because it smelled like cat piss. According to Marnie, my flatmate, it had been called that for years and years, the name passed down through its tenants along with a threadbare couch and a rusty breadmaker nobody was brave enough to use. Still, not long after I moved in, I hired a machine from the supermarket and cleaned and cleaned, and for weeks after all I could smell was perc and I was sure I was going to end up with brain tumours, but I hadn’t—so far—and when the headaches went away the cat piss came back. Marnie just shrugged and told me I’d get used to it.