Scream and cower behind your aggressive neighbour
From Create Your Own Story
This is just too much - you've only been awake five minutes, the sun's not even up and already you're having one of the worst days of the past few months of your life. You also really need to pee. You can't deal with this right now. Your mind goes completely blank and instinct takes over.
Your ear-shattering, high-pitched scream shatters the quiet morning, probably waking the whole neighbourhood and sending dogs scampering everywhere. The three burly thugs your landlord brought along cover their ears and run for shelter.
You whirl around and flee back up the hall as fast as your legs will carry you, just as your neighbours emerge from their rooms, the husband ducking a series of blows from a cast-iron frying pan. You throw yourself behind the wife, cowering behind her legs like a small child.
"HELP MEEEE!" you wail piteously, abandoning what very little pride you may have had. As you sniffle and whine, your neighbour looks down at you with an expression of mild surprise, then to the landlord and his bodyguards, who are advancing up the hallway, cleaning their ears with their fingers. Her husband wisely takes the opportunity to retreat to the steps. You peek around your neighbour's dress to see four seething faces glaring down at you menacingly. You give a frightened squeak and bury your face back in your neighbour's skirts.
Your landlord comes to a stop in front of your formidable human shield.
"Move," he brusquely orders your neighbour, and makes to step past her.
Your neighbour takes a step to the right and blocks his path. She says something in Slavic you can't understand, but evidently it isn't what your landlord hoped to hear, as he leans into her face and launches into what you strongly suspect is an expletive-laced tirade. Your neighbour stands with a square jaw and an impassive expression, but even as you tremble, clutching to her skirts for dear life, you know from experience that a cauldron of rage is simmering inside the woman. The two exchange a few more phrases, your landlord screeching angrily, your neighbour terse, until your landlord reaches into his pocket and waves one of the "nuggets" in front of your neighbour's face.
Your neighbour just barks out a laugh and says something that can't have gone over very well at all, because your landlord shouts back something very unkind-sounding as blood vessels pop out of his forehead and he tries to force his way through to you again. Your neighbour growls; you know the savage beast has just been provoked. She raises her arms over her head and concusses him with the frying pan.
The thugs raise their clubs to strike, but your neighbour is quicker - with remarkable grace, she kicks the legs out from under one, sending him crashing heavily to the ground, bashes another in the temple with the frying pan, and for the coup de grace, one of her children appears from out of nowhere to bite the last one very hard in the balls. As she surveys the scene with satisfaction, you rise weakly to your feet.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you," you cry in heavily accented Slavic, pathetically grateful. Your neighbour nods and, in a very rare show of tenderness, draws you into a warm hug and kisses you on the forehead. You're so happy you don't even care that the kid is now groping your butt.
"You now go," she tells you in Istrian. "Them I keep." She gestures to the men groaning on the floor. "And he." She spits in the general direction of her husband, who lies draped over the steps, polishing off a bottle of whiskey.
You thank the woman profusely several more times before making your way back up to your room (her husband is too drunk to even bother looking up your skirt as you climb over his prone body). Within moments you hear your neighbours resume fighting and you know that all is once again well in the world.
Still, you have to get out of here and quickly. You quickly change into your armor and throw the rest of your belongings (minus your mattress, which you'll have to leave behind) into a sack. Finally, you reach under your mattress and pull up a certain floorboard. You pull out the gleaming silver circlet that is your only heirloom, passed down to your sister by your parents and from your sister to you.
You are the very last De Angelis of Fiume.
You carefully stow your precious family treasure beneath your other possessions, and with a heavy heart, slip nimbly out the window, climb down onto the street and disappear down an alleyway, leaving your home behind for good.
Homeless once again, you decide to head for:
