October 21: NaNo Prep Challenge

The Coffin Apartments
They were called the coffin apartments for a reason. The mobility within the slums of central London was limited at best and utterly regimented at worst. Those who had a coffin apartment would end up dying in them. Space had become a massive issue that had cropped up shortly after construction of the London metropolis had begun. The massive skyscrapers were taking up enormous amounts of space and it had left little for those who didn't have the money to cough up and purchase an apartment along the skyline. For most, the coffin apartments in the slums were all that they could afford.
Zara was one of the souls who owned one. She had lucked out – she was on a corner unit and had two walls that overlooked the tired and grimy streets of the slums. Two say that the space in her apartment was constricted was the understatement of the century. She didn't have enough room for a mattress – she slept on bundled sheets with a single pillow up against one of two stretched hexagonal windows that reached from the floor to the ceiling in the apartment. The ceiling was only six feet high, which wasn't much of a problem for her as she was only five foot five, but on more than one occasion she had knocked her head against the lower parts of the ceiling. The rest of her things were kept in drawers that filed away into the walls. Her clothes were packed with little care for organization into the drawers. She had ripped one of the drawers out and stuffed a tiny fringe inside of the hole. It was hardly ever stocked. The tiny bathroom was placed in the corner at the head of her "bed", and it was hardly bigger than a bathroom stall. A tiny shower which worked about half the time, a sink that always ran cold water, and a toilet that took forever to flush. But it was all she had. She couldn't move from her current place, and she doubted that she ever would.
The only thing that brought her entertainment was the Glass OS that had been installed to both of her windows. The holographic technology was located in nearly every unit. Many nights, she would lay on her back on top of the blankets, her hands swiping through the various news articles, television shows, films, new technology in development, and of course, the articles about how dangerous the slums were. She could always count on at least one to show up every night.
The building that she lived in was about fifty floors high, and there were close to one thousand people living in it. There were eight units per floor, arranged in a square around the central elevator. Because of the way it was laid out, more often than not the sounds from others echoed through her room. The dull pounding of footsteps in the apartment above her made the ceiling quake, and the elevator occasionally shook the floor as it descended. She was only on the twenty-ninth floor, she could still hear the noise from the street below. However, the neighbours were generally aware of the situation. They weren't overly loud, as pettiness in the slums would only get a return much less pleasant. Hardly anyone cooked, as few had the space to do so, but when someone did, the smell of it filled the hall and seeped into the units and lingered for days afterward. Ventilation was almost non-existent. It made Zara's smoking habit incredibly annoying at times. She would often have to go down to the bottom to smoke, but she was one of the few. The building always smelled of smoke, but so did the rest of the slums. The only time the air cleared was during a rain shower.
It was dark outside, and Zara lay on her makeshift bed, her bare feet planted on the cold metal windowsill in front of her, having commanded the semi-transparent holographs out from the window so that they hovered over her. Lights from the outside advertisements flashed across her face every few seconds, but she didn't mind. She had become so acclimatized to her home that it didn't bother her anymore. She would draw the blackout shades across both windows when she got bored of scrolling and decided that sleep was the best course of action. She was perfectly content with scrolling through the news, silently judging, but also observing. Every so often, she would glance into the streets, which were mostly abandoned in the late hours. It never bothered her – the solitude. Her personality was cold and introverted, and she felt as though she thrived alone.
She drew the blankets around her as a bout of wind tested the building and chilled the air. While the apartment was not the nicest in the city by far, Zara had always found it charming. She had accepted that it was mostly likely going to be her home for the rest of her life. There were days when she wished to experience what life was like in another class and be able to have more than fifty square feet of space, but she was able to call her apartment "mine". The space that she occupied, she owned. Not many around her could say the same thing. As much as she didn't want to admit it, she had grown attached to the coffin apartments.