Jeremy Cooke, in a new apartment already affected

My name is Jeremy, the last few days have been stressful, to say the least. There I was good job a lovely fiancée planning our wedding in our 4-bedroom house out in the suburbs. Then the earthquake happened and all that was left of our house was rubble. Now me and Rachel are making our way to an Apartment we have been given while the insurance company takes their time paying out.

Rachel has not been taking this very well, we had everything we wanted, and a lovely wedding planned now we just have a few changes of clothes and this apartment and that's it. She has not been happy with how I've been dealing with the Insurance and feels we should have had the pay so that out could start rebuilding our lives. She isn't very happy with having to move to this apartment but has only agreed to live here as it's within walking distance of her workplace.

We walked into the apartment building for the first time, Rachel looked around frowning, "I hope our place is better than this lobby, it doesn't even have elevators". "It's not that bad, we should only be here a few months if that and we are on the first floor so, come on smile everything will be ok we will be back on track before you know it", I said to her.

She sighed and stopped to look at me "We were meant to get married next month, my dress is somewhere in the rubble of our dream home and now I'm here in this dump, who knows what type of people live here, they are most likely thugs".

"Don't think of that dear" I sighed this was the same argument we had ever since I picked this place "Give it a chance and we will get things back to normal as quickly as we can, we both are still alive and with our jobs".

As I finished talking, I heard someone coming down the stairs we both looked over and saw a couple coming down. A man walking in front sneered at us, he had short, shaved hair, wearing a black leather jacket, and had tattoos on both arms. The lady behind him made me double she was a skinny-looking lady with long blond hair, she was wearing a short black skirt and a pink top that barely covered her top, she looked at me shyly and smiled. They walked past them the man looked Rachel up and down and smirked causing Rachel to shiver.

As soon as they had left Rachel glared at me and quietly said "You see a thug and a whore and right where we are going to live, it's morning and she was wearing that".

"Well hopefully they live on a different floor to us come on let's go and see our place," I said trying to distract her and glad she had not seen me checking that lady out.

Sighing loudly, she started to follow me to the stairs. Just as we started climbing two ladies came out from the first floor and started coming down. The one lady looked like she could knock my head clean off, she was not someone I wanted to mess with. She had short black hair and was wearing a black leather skirt and top. She saw us coming up the stairs and glared at me, but I noticed she quickly looked Rachel up and down, I couldn't help but chuckle to myself about that. The lady beside her barely noticed me, but her eyes lingered on Rachel again. She had piercings on her nose, eyebrows, and lip, she had light purple hair down to her neck. She was wearing a white top with kiss me in purple writing, a purple skirt that seemed to barely go down to mid-thigh, and thigh-high purple socks, she was good-looking it's a shame she only has eyes for Rachel. They walked past us both saying hello to Rachel as they walked past.

"At least they didn't seem too bad, they have interesting fashion sense" Rachel whispered to me once they had passed looking confused. "For you maybe I feel like they don't want anything to do with me but seemed interested in you", I replied to her, she just gave me a confused look as we pushed passed the first-floor door.

We entered a small corridor with 6 apartments on it, "we are 105 so that middle one over there" I said to Rachel who only grunted acknowledgement to me, and we headed to the door. I noticed a girl sitting at the end of the corridor on her phone, she was very pale with black hair with what looked like light blue highlights maybe at the ends. From what I could see, she was wearing what looked like a rocker chick outfit. Then I did a double take she wasn't wearing any underwear and I could see right up her skirt I quickly looked away before I was caught staring.

As we got to our door, I heard a door open and close, and I turned to see who it was, a Latino-looking lady came out of apartment 103 she had long brown hair and a business dress. She smiled and said good morning to us as she passed. Rachel coughed and glared at me. "Sorry did you say something" I asked, "I asked if we were going to just stand here all day come on let's see what we have to work with already," she said sounding fed up.

I opened the apartment, and we went in, it was fully furnished as I had paid for, for a 1-bed apartment it wasn't bad I thought. I looked at Rachel to see her reaction to the place and was disappointed in what I saw, she was not impressed I could tell. "Is this it?" she asked, "it is for now but it's only temporary till we can get everything sorted then we can find a new dream house and move out of here" I replied hugging her, she let me hug her but did not return it and stood there stiffly. "Fine it will do for now, but I hope it's not for too long, I'm going to freshen up then I best get to work I only took half a day off" She pushed me off her and headed up the stairs to the bathroom.

Sighing to myself, I looked around the rest of the apartment, walked over to the TV remote, and picked it up. "Ahh shit what the fuck" I said quickly dropping the remote as it gave me a shock, my hand had gone numb and I was shaking it to get feeling back, "what the hell was that" I gingerly touched the remote but nothing this time. Confused I picked it up looked it over and saw nothing wrong with it I turned the TV on and sat to try and relax and take everything in that had happened the last few days.