Walking in through the cloth curtain you used as the front door of your "apartment" in the walls, you sighed and took off your makeshift backpack and climbing equipment. It hadn't been the most fruitful of trips, but you had enough to get through the next few days anyway. What had been most annoying was the delicious smell of frying onions coming from apartment 503. Andrea was cooking burgers for her grandson, you thought, and it made your stomach rumble. The half a protein bar and beef jerky you'd managed to shove into your bulging backpack didn't really compare, but you took a bite anyway.
It had been four years since sickness claimed your parents, which at least meant you only had one mouth to feed. That didn't make the quality any better though. Realising you were incredibly thirsty, due to the salty jerky and your day of exercise, you headed over to the "tap" in the corner of the room - in actuality, the tiniest of holes you'd made in the nearby pipe that you could opened for a few drops of water at a time, then re-seal. Nothing anybody would miss, you'd been sure of that. It ran to the kitchen tap of the apartment next-door, and at this time of night, nobody was going to use it. You filled a cup (a toy, stolen from the Davison's kid a few years back) and gulped it down.
Relaxing after a long day, you took off your makeshift rags and drew the wash cloth you called a blanket in around you, drifting into your usual uneasy sleep as giants stomped around the high-rise apartment building. The volume of their steps, their televisions, the deep vibration of their voice... you were used to it by now, of course, but it didn't change the fact that you were surrounded on all sides by terrifying monsters, separated only by walls which seemed incredibly thin.
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