The small little Volkswagen screeched as it came to its stop by the side of an overly thin street. The trunk was slightly ajar, yellow thread held it (and the things inside) together. She took one look at it, the whole abomination of the tragedy earlier today, the rusty car, the putter of the engine, and sighed. She couldn’t handle this right now and loosening her bandana, she headed for her apartment complex.

A small thing it was, the building in this alley, with the black metal mesh door. It’s infrastructure an absolute oddity compared to the rest of the medieval city. As if it had modernized, in the worst ways possible. The doors were loud and crooked, the windows were contained within prisons of metal twisted bars, it looked like a death trap. The iron maiden to this little medieval castle of a town.

She rung the bell. No answer. She looked up, she could hear the sound of petting and pleasure. She sighed. She walked around her apartment, stopping by her car to pick something up. Through the fire escape, she climbed up, to the side of her apartments wall and shimmied her window open with a little crowbar and a little force. She walked into the living room, the first thing to her right was the loud dripping of water. Water that came from melted snow. Melted snow, now seeping deep into the wood above and rotting it into a white and black dissolved mess. She put a bucket below. Making sure it was the bulls-eye center of the little droplets. She felt her eyes popping out, the sounds were louder. She cleared her throat and pointed towards the end of the apartment, towards the stairs.

"Claudia!" She screamed. "Claudia!"

here was shuffling above, shoes being dropped and put on, clothes being slipped on, doors opening and closing and the abrupt shush of a young woman.

"Claudia-"

"I'm coming." They spoke in German, she sounded angry. Stefania stood there, waiting for her sister, with a still and apathetic face. The only thing she knew how to make when she was angry.

Claudia came around the corner, passing the grandfather clock with its broken arm, the white veils on the tops of ledges, the little dolls and portraits of dead family across the room.

Claudia walked in, her shirt barely hanging by her shoulder. Behind her, a young tall, thin man, with lipstick on him (and lipstick of his own, combined, the two made a mismatch of green and black on their mouthpieces).

The young man had eyeliner, a piercing on his ear and a low hanging mouth that couldn't stop from grinning.

She wanted to punch him in the face.

“How was work, sister dearest?” She smiled. Her voice was amused, innocent.

Irresponsible, Stefanie thought.

“Who is this?”

“A friend. Who cares?” She had her hands behind her back. “How was your day? Did you have it rough?”

“Stop fooling around.”

I’m not,” Claudia said. “Something bad must have happened to have you worked up.”

“Yeah, I’m looking at it,” Stefanie said. "What'd I tell you about strangers?"

"Strangers?" Claudia asked. "This is Günther, you do remember Günther, right?"

"No, I don't. and I want him out."

"You don't get to decide who stays here, we both live here."

"I do when I pay all the bills and bring home all the food, and work two jobs, both of which I hate. Yes, I do get more say."

"Günther, step outside," Claudia said.

He looked at them both, still grinning, still holding onto that dumb glow of after sex. Still obnoxious and hurting Stefanie with his arrogant stupidity, and looking at Claudia, she wondered if it was venereal. Arrogant stupidity.

"Why'd you bring him in her?" Stefanie asked.

"Why not? He's my boyfriend."

"How long have you known him." It wasn’t a question. It was a statement, one that recalled the months leading up to this moment, the many men who wandered in Günther’s shoes, in that same bed and in this same house. What was he? The sixth, perhaps, in the last five months?

"Who cares? Does love have a time frame, an age, a place? Love is where love is and you either fall for it or you don't."

"No, you either choose to dupe yourself into it or you don't. You don't love this person. This Günther guy."

He came back in.

"Yes?"

"Fuck off," Stefanie said. He still grinned, still walked with casualness through the little rooms of the house.

"What's wrong with Günther?"

"It's what's wrong with you," She said, slipping in some English. "You have no job, no future, you go out for hours on end and when you come back you have a new boyfriend or girlfriend, or both at the same time. You tell me, what’s wrong?"

Stefanie looked instinctively, to the picture of their late grandmother behind Claudia, of which she had to look away from in shame. Though she didn’t believe in the afterlife, perhaps she believed that the memory of a person was enough to feel guilty over. Maybe it was the guilt over her death. No, she couldn’t think of that now. Claudia fidgeted in place.

"Nothing’s wrong with me," Claudia said quietly. "I am who I am. Are you just jealous? I know who I am, I live and have fun with it. What do you do? Nothing. Work for nothing, do nothing."

"Jealous?" She laughed. "Of what?"

"Of my happiness, of my love." She smiled. “Of getting laid, maybe?”

"Is that all you care about?" She asked. “Escapism? Are you not even ashamed for nonna?”

"Don’t say that," Claudia said.

“Say what? That you’re a disgrace?” Stefanie stepped forward. She dropped her things, the keys, the bandana, some changed down on the floor and pointed her finger down at Claudia. “I’ve spent so long sanctioning this bullshit.”

Her accent became a guessing game, she slipped into too many. Her face was red, Claudia walked away from the veiny hand with reserved anger.

“Shut up, Stef.” She said.

“No, no,” Stefanie screamed. “I’m done with you. Three years and nothing, n-o-t-h-i-n-g. Not a bill paid, not a responsibility taken. I’ve gotten no help from you!” Her nose was dry, her breaths were deep. She felt everything at once. The early day, the broken work. Pottery and weeks - months of effort, wasted on a fool who couldn’t keep his balance. Months - Years of struggling with her sister and the little frail ego of hers. All of it flooded. Guilt over her addictions, anger too, poured out of her. It left her dry. Her eyes could not cry, they could not blink either.

She raised her finger and pointed it towards the door.

“I’m sick of you, you hear me? You take Günther, you take your baggage, you take yourself far and away from me!”

He waltzed back in.

"Get the fuck out!" Stefanie said. He wore a grimace, but something in the corner of his lips kept their uplifted smile. Something vile.

Günther looked between the two sisters. He chose the ditsy, dainty one with the loose clothes and the exposed neckbones and the messy blonde hair. He put his hands on her shoulder, rubbed them and felt her hand grab his. This made Stefanie angry for some reason, even though she just finished kicking her out.

“So it’s like that?” Claudia asked.

“What other choice do you leave me? If you won’t work when I feed you, then maybe you’ll work when you starve.”

He whispered something into Claudia that seemed to ease her nerves. Her shoulders stooped. He walked away, his chains sounding like spurs as they walked past her. The door closed. The house shook. The small lamps and desks and sitting paperweights (wooden horses and Russian dolls) all rolled from the shockwave of the house. Everything shook but Stefanie and Claudia, who stared each other with planted feet.

"What’s this about?” Claudia asked.

“You,”

“What has you so pissed today?” It sounded like desperation.

“You,” She said. That was only half-truth.

“You’re leaving me,” Claudia said.

“I wish you could understand how much I love you," Stefanie said. " But I don’t think you ever will. It’s like we’re strangers living in the same house.”

She looked at Claudia’s veins, to the little holes in her arm where the hope was being sucked in through, or perhaps escaping into. She studied her thin arms and messy hair and bloodshot eyes, trying to convince herself not to kick her out, trying to find an excuse.

For Stefanie did not want to admit, that perhaps her sister was a junkie. One who would not survive, let alone thrive on the winter streets, surrounded by the jolly people.

She swallowed her throat.

"Do you think playing these games with these people are doing you any good, do you think you're getting what you want out of life?"

“I stopped wanting things a long time ago. I never could get them." She said. "What's the big deal of having dreams or goals anyways? What do those even mean? Doing something because it completes you, because it makes you happy? What if the end is the thing that makes you happiest?"

"What are you talking about you fucking idiot." Stefanie reached for Claudia. A final gesture. She was hoping, for a moment, that Claudia would take her arms. That they’d embrace, perhaps. And in doing so, perhaps she could be convinced to change her mind. Oh, she hoped for it.

But Claudia pushed back.

“I’m glad you’re doing this,” Claudia said. “I hate this place. I hate you.”

They stood opposite, Stefanie relieved in a way, as Claudia walked past her towards the door where Günther waited.

“You’re a tyrant, you know that?” Claudia said. “And this place will be your pyramid, your mausoleum. God, I couldn’t imagine living a boring life in the same place, day to day, forever.”

Claudia closed the door with a loud bang. The locks, the chains on the doors vibrated but eventually, the house settled to still silence as if no one was even there. The smell of her sister was beginning to wear off. It smelled like cigarettes, like overly-sweet cheap perfume too. Peaches? Peaches and cigarettes.

She waited in the stillness and silence of her house. For an hour, maybe, just sitting with her hands on her face, expecting the doors to open. They never did though. Stefanie walked over, sighing as she did so. She opened the door and looked out the front. She left a spare key underneath the little rose-wilted flower pot out the front (hopefully the drugs hadn’t rotted her memory).

Perhaps out of boredom or exhaustion, Stefanie cleaned her house, wearing that bandana. Perhaps out of coincidence, or fate annoying her, she struck something. As she brought a sweeper down the wood floor with the dust and blonde hair collecting into a ball, she struck something heavy. She raised her hand, away from it. Too late. The water soaked into her shoes. The bucket fell over onto the floor. A drip on her face. She felt the wetness up high now, the roof was leaking again. That’d be another two hundred euros. That’d be the wasteful drip-feed of her bank account again, feeding away into trouble after trouble. Feeding a junkie, she, unfortunately, loved.

She sat there under the drip of her rotten ceiling. It smelled sour for some reason. Unfiltered, acidic melted snow. She rubbed her face and tried convincing herself that these were not tears, rather just dirty water from a dirty roof.

She didn’t buy it. Not for a second.