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‘Thank you.’ I duck my head and keep walking.

The inner city is cut-throat to say the least, but it is immortal nature to be that way. We can’t begrudge them that. If you’re a mortal trying to make it here, you better hope they find you amusing enough to keep you around. Although lately, even that doesn’t seem to cut it.

I circle back to the front of the building and make the arduous climb back up the stairs. I get back inside and lean against the back of the door, eyeing the brochure that was delivered earlier, along with a notice of tax increase for inner-city dwelling mortals, and a love note from a wizard I used to… you know what, let’s not go there right now.

Refocusing my thoughts, I stare at the issue at hand. The notice for Destiny Lane stares back at me on 400 gossamer papers with lace-trimmed edges. If the name alone didn’t scream manipulation of the lower classes, their exorbitant missive-budget certainly does. Equal parts hero and villain, the gaudy flyer offers the answer to my monetary woes in the form of discounted housing in a ‘mortal-allocated’ suburbia on the fringes of society.

Look, to put it plainly – with the increased tax I can’t afford this place. The council of Keninburgh have made it abundantly clear they want a mortal-free city, and unless I come into a handsome sum of money (unlikely) or marry a man of prodigious pedigree (bordering delusion, but I do love a good alliteration) I’ll be as legal as the vagabond pixies currently blasting house music beneath me. I stamp three times, our – much disputed – code for the vagrants to ease off on the raving.

A pause.

The music lowers infinitesimally. Rolling my eyes, I concede myself to the mind-numbing thump of techno-extraordinaire DJ-Fae (I couldn’t make this shit up) and look back to the problem at hand.

In lieu of a coin toss, reverently pinched between my fingers is the chocolate-coated, sweet-centred confectionery that harbours all the answers to my indecision.

‘Grinkler, besides the three extra pounds I now carry on my hips, you’ve never done me any real wrong. Please,’ I lament, clutching it like a lifeline, ‘make the decision for me. I can’t bear it.’

My teeth bite through the chocolate. The chocolate melts a little on my tongue before I swallow the thing whole. A sudden bout of coughing grips me and a small chunk of choc lodges in my windpipe. I bash my fist against my chest a few times and watch my life flash before my eyes and see an alarming amount of trips to the bodega before finally⁠—

No bother, I quickly right myself. I know before looking at which it is. The citrusy zing floods my mouth and finishes with a light fizz before dissolving. How anti-climactic. I throw the other half down onto the table. The chocolate smears against the garish leaflet.

I look at the phone screen, the only notification is my screen-time analysis, which is apparently up sixty percent. I should really stop lurking on my old friends’ socials.

I take a breath. ‘Well then.’ My palms slap against my thighs as I rise to stand. This dreamboat ain’t gonna pack itself! ‘Destiny Lane, it is.’

I supremely underestimated how hideous the move would be. Of course, everything I do tends to naturally veer towards disaster. So, that should come as no great surprise.

After almost being crushed by a rampant loveseat tumbling down six flights of stairs, and then very nearly flattened by a semi-trailer as I went to investigate the questionable packing system the orcs had implemented to transport my belongings – you’d think I’d have taken the hint. Alas, I remain wildly optimistic. Looking back over my life, I’ve deduced this is a recurring theme and may be the root of a great deal of my issues.

Note to self: embark on more successful pursuits than optimism… like tax evasion and other morally ambiguous endeavours.

Isn’t it funny how sometimes a place feels even smaller with nothing in it. I look around the apartment and as if in mockery of its lack of occupation, the room seems to beckon to itself and no one, curling inwards and hugging the spare space. The wallpaper’s been thinning for a good long while now. I could never bring myself to rip it down. It was a remnant of the hope I once felt moving to the big city. Dilapidated as the apartment is, it has a killer view. And besides, it’s not all that bad. Sure, the acrid stench of asbestos is seeping in through the ceiling and a rather rowdy gaggle of pixies are currently squatting beneath the old oak floorboards. Alas, this place has a certain pizazz. A little je ne sais quoi. A touch of magic, if you will. And it’s mine, all mine. Well, it was mine.

The packing tape screeches as I pull it taught across the final box, and for the sixteenth time today the banshee down the hall screams back, mistaking the plastic film for the mating call of another.

I walk towards the open door. ‘Still me, Lucille!’ I holler down the short stretch of hall.

‘Damnit!’ The rotund monster stomps back into her apartment, frayed cape trailing behind her.

Collecting the final box, I meet removalist #1 – the whole damn day early, removalist, I might add – at the door. He’s a little on the smaller side for an orc, standing at about seven foot I’d guess – he barely has to crouch to fit in the hall. A stream of sunlight cuts through the open window and illuminates his bald head like a glowing green lantern.

The paper sticker on the shirt riding up his torso reads ‘Ernie’ in incredibly neat cursive.

‘Is that your script?’ I ask.

Ernie looks at me with indifference, his incisors protruding from his upper lip. ‘I studied cursive in college.’ His baritone drawls.

‘Huh.’ The wrinkles on his forehead dimple further when he frowns. He motions for me to pass him the final box. I do so quickly and add, ‘It’s incredibly neat. You should really do something with a talent like that.’

Ernie says, ‘I do,’ and switches the box into his left hand so he can pull out a small, folded piece of paper in his back right pocket and hands it to me. I try in vain to swallow my surprise when I unfold the lightweight perzine and see the erotic poetry scrawled across its pages. ‘You can find me on Instagram under Ernestly, Yours,’ he says before retreating towards the staircase.

Wonders never cease.

And just like that, I’ve palmed off the last of my belongings to be driven across state to the open-air penitentiary otherwise known as the whole city allocated just for mortals. How’d we get so lucky, huh?

It’s the least the state of Keninburgh could do. The peace between mortal and immortal has always been tentative at best, but recently they’ve been making quiet changes to further segregate us from society. I can’t tell if the new laws are a bid to cut down vamp food sources, or they just really hate seeing us age. Either way, it sucks.

An uneasy peace rests between us all since the last civil war. Still, it’s rather obvious who the law favours. And why would they have it any other way? Humans are all so temporary. We kicked up a bit of a fuss, petitioned, protested, but in the end the government got what it wanted. Hardly any of us can afford to live in the big cities anymore, we don’t have enough time to gain any sort of lasting wealth, unless it’s generational. Alas, I am an orphan. I didn’t even inherit a last name let alone money. But maybe that’s for the best. Maybe it’s meant to be this way. I’ve never been someone anyone misses, anyhow. Well, maybe I was once. But not anymore.