I knew that going back to my apartment with the thug who had just robbed me and the guy who could break my neck with a snap of his fingers was asking for trouble, but if I had any chance of finding Ender, I needed to grab a couple of things before I headed out. 

When people thought of New York, they imagined 5th Avenue, the kid from Home Alone, and a bustling playland full of sprawling studio lofts. But for people like me, who were neck deep in student debt and surviving on ramen, the closest I'd gotten to luxury was seeing a roach drag the broken strap of a Louis Vuitton purse down the hallway outside my apartment. 

My living space was a hole in the wall, far removed from anything even vaguely elegant or aristocratic, but it was my safe place to lay out all my art and fall asleep to police sirens and gunshots all night, and I knew I had gotten lucky. A lot of college students would have died to own a space that wasn't the size of a closet. 

Aside from the body-shaped stain on my ceiling from when the lady in the apartment above me died and soaked into the floor after two weeks, there was hardly any violence because all my neighbors were old and mostly Italian. Occasionally, I'd hear Pavarotti and smell garlic bread at all odd hours of the night, but it was more comforting than anything.

"I'm going to grab a couple of things from my apartment, but I need you guys to stay in the car," I tell Felix and Bones after I park outside my brick-and-mortar apartment building and turn to look at them. "Can I trust you not to kill someone or each other while I'm gone?"

It felt like I was a middle-aged mom talking to a bunch of toddlers, but I didn't trust either of them not to ram my car into a brick wall while I ran upstairs real quick.

Felix and Bones traded a look across the seats, which was weird as hell to me considering the fact that Bones didn't even have eyes, skin, or anything. "I have to use the bathroom," Felix tells me finally and he starts to unbuckle his seatbelt, "Do you mind if I go inside with you, Hector?"

"Are you kidding me?" I ask him, totally miffed at this point, "Why didn't you just go at the goddamn gas station when we stopped ten minutes ago?"

"I didn't have to pee ten minutes ago." 

I blow out air through my teeth and unlock my door, grumbling the whole time as I get out, followed by Felix, who cheerfully slams his door before joining me at my side. The only one who does stay in the car is Bones, who slowly rolls down his window to stare out at us with his terrifyingly skeletal face and hollow eye sockets. "I don't really give a fuck about you or your apartment," he says, teeth clacking together, "I'm just here because I want to see how this disaster plays out."

I roll my eyes and grab my keys to make sure Bone-Boy didn't steal my car and drive off with it while we were gone, and Felix and I start for my apartment.

"So, I have questions!" The Death Bringer chirps as we enter the old building, with spiderwebs in the corners, and flickering yellow lights above our heads as I search for my room number. "Why are you so determined to find Ender? Are you guys dating? Is he your boyfriend?"

"We had one date, but the world was ending, and it didn't go as well as I thought it was going to go." I reply, wondering why I was telling him this in the first place. "Anyway, it doesn't matter. I'm not really looking for a boyfriend in the long run, and I'm not really interested in love right now."

"Okay, so why is that? Are you scared he might reject you or something?" Felix asks me when I stop outside my apartment building—conveniently numbered 666, one of the sixes being a nine that had flipped upside down and I never got around to fixing. 

"I'm ace, dude," I reply, and I unlock my door, "And it's kind of hard to figure out your emotions when the world's going to fucking hell every 30-something days. Even if I wanted to date Ender, how would we even begin to have a relationship when I have to kill him every month?"

Felix follows me into my apartment, or rather, he dashes past me as soon as I flick on the light switch, illuminating the cluttered space and scratched-up wood floors. My couches were second-hand and made of peeling pleather, the cushions mostly sunken in. The walls were all one unified tan color, with some brick poking out of the chipped paint. It was a small space, with a tiny kitchen and a shower, but I had filled it with my art, my easel, and a bunch of canvases on the floor, all in various states of being done.

"Wow, Hector!" Felix gushes, and he picks up a canvas with a half-finished painting of a black-looking blob and an unidentified creature with a large, bulbous nose. "Did you paint this? It's incredible! It's supposed to be a dog, right?"

"Yeah, that's mine," I reply, and I go over and take the painting from him, "I painted this in art school, but it's not a dog. It's supposed to be an artistic vision of my sexuality painted on canvas."

Felix ogles the canvas and takes it back from me, flipping it around a few times. "I don't get it," he finally admits, "Are you supposed to be the blob or are you the weird-looking dog?"

"It's art!" I reply snappishly, "I just painted what I was feeling at the time."

Felix eyes me skeptically. "Does that mean you were feeling like a dog barking at a suspicious blob?"

"It means that I don't know!" I snatch the canvas back from him and storm away. "Drinks are in the fridge, grab whatever you want. I'm going to pack some stuff and make a couple of phone calls before we head out again."

"Is that a turtle?" I hear him call as I head for my bedroom at the end of the hall. "Oh my God! Hector! You have a pet turtle? I love turtles!" 

"Hands off the turtle!" I shout back at him, "If he dies, I'm coming after your ass!"