What does the place you call home look like? People you love around the dinner table that only sits four, a new-build upstate, maybe an isolated 60s mansion tucked away in Southern California. Is it filled with laughter, conversation, and perhaps, a teenager with enough perception to be angry with the world? I could drive myself mad thinking of home and what it would mean.

There was always a thin line between the reality I lived and the one I thought I had. Anything before the age of 10 only ever came to me in quick flashes, blurry memories blending into one. My mother and I, in a beautiful garden of white flowers that glowed under her touch.

Or was that just another park here in the city?

A grandmother, a glimpse of a strange place basked in marvellously bright light, filtered through carefully designed stained windows. Every time I came close to recalling the memories I had of home, my mind pulled back, and I would be left wondering whether these memories were ever real. If that place was just a church I had visited as a child with my mother clutching onto my tiny hand. It's not fun to think you're going crazy at 16 years old. It's even less fun to be 25 years old and still think your missing mother could still be out there somewhere. All because your head is a mess and your heart could never let go.

Maybe family's not all that it's cracked up to be after all, and home could mean little old me in this massive apartment, drinking cheap beer whilst flipping through channels.

It was a day like any other in New York. I clocked in for work, patiently waited for lunch break, clocked out, and took the train home. There was nothing out of the ordinary. The same weirdos hanging out around the station, same woman arguing in front of the bodega on the corner. The same memories replayed in my head. Times when I was half the height I was now, and my eyes looked upon her with wonder as she stood waiting for her change, golden hair soaking in the sun. The weather had been downcast since morning, with the city seeing very little of the supposed springtime. Not much changed when I walked through the doors to the lobby.

"Afternoon, Ms Avery." The same doorman for the past five years. I had nodded at him, asked him how his day was, and lugged my work bag and takeout dinner with me into the elevator heading to my floor.

Just like that, the day was over. And now, there was nothing on TV, and the news was depressing. I sighed and knocked my head back on the couch. To think that I will have to do this all again tomorrow. Just as I am about to drift off to sleep, my phone rings. I rummage around, hands flailing ungracefully.

"Who is this?" I rasped, eyes still squeezed shut.

"Wow. Avery Howards, falling asleep at... what time is it? 10! And is that the news I hear in the background?"

I sat up and turned the volume down. "What did you need, Jake?"

"I was about to ask if you wanted to come out to Nick's, but I see I caught you at the end of a long day."

"No, no. If you guys are all there, I mean," I looked at the time and looked down at myself. In truth, I don't think I had it in me to go to a bar. Not when I'm already dressed in coffee stained pyjamas.

"Nah, it's just us."

In the background, I could hear loud laughter and chatter. Live music ringing in my ears, even through the phone.

"Is that Avery?" Mira. A very drunk sounding Mira.

"Tell her to come out!"

I could hear Jake shoving her off him and glasses clinking around.

"Clara, the woman's half asleep," he yelled back over the noise.

"Tell them I said hi," I chuckled.

"She says hi!"

"Hiii," they said in chorus.

"Anyways, I'll let you go now," Jake said into the phone, "We'll see you tomorrow at work anyways."

"Yes. God forbid you show up late to the studio again, Jake. We're running behind already. Cole is going to have my head."

"Jeez, alright. How hard has Cole been working ya?"

"Not enough for you to worry about me."

"I'll always worry about you, you know that."

There was a pause. The sounds of people drinking on a Thursday night were muffled by Jake's breathing. I turned my head to look at the framed pictures on the TV console. I knew Jake since we were running away with our pockets full of sauce packets from the diner, faces red from the cold winter nights in our foster home. The closest thing I could call family is this 20-something guitarist getting drunk on a Thursday night.

"We're not kids anymore, Jake. I'll be fine."

I heard him hesitate for a while. "I know. Talk to ya later, Aves."

I threw the phone down on the coffee table and picked up my beer, taking a swig from it before glancing again at the TV. Cost of living crisis, kids getting shot at, healthcare systems failing. All this going on and I show up to work tomorrow working out the private plane schedule of some nepo-baby pop star.  How insignificant. How disgustingly mundane. I looked around the apartment and squinted my eyes at the harsh lighting. I had made my mind up about changing the lights, but never got around to it. This place was way too big for its own good.

When I turned 18, I was handed the keys to this apartment. A place on the Upper West Side, dropped onto my lap like a gift sent from above. I had been living with the Bennetts, a middle aged, mild-mannered couple with poor cooking skills and even poorer taste in wallpaper. A lawyer with a fancy suit and eyeglasses too big for his face came by after my first birthday with the Bennetts, and I received him in the makeshift dining room, only slightly out of sight from the other children. He came to gave me a letter from my mother, the money that was left to me, and this place.

"Why didn't you come sooner?" I had asked him. He pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose and looked at me with pity.

"You must have had a very difficult time the past eight years. But the instructions were very clear. In the case of her death, you were to receive all these only when you came of age."

"Did she tell you why?"

"She said you had to be ready when the time came, but not before you were eighteen."

I could still remember that lawyer's face to this day in excruciatingly great detail. The way he looked at me with those eyes. I hated that he pitied me. My mother never died. She only disappeared. That much I knew. I knew it when I was 10 and alone for the first time in my life. I knew it when I was 16 getting dragged out of my third home. I knew it when the suit came and left after handing me a crumpled fifty dollar bill. My mother, by some God given miracle, couldn't be dead. She left me with a promise. That she would come back. Because I did not belong here, and one day, I would be in a place that had always been waiting for me. I never understood what she meant, but I believed her. I guess I'm still waiting.

The light of the TV lit up the otherwise darkened room. Flashing images of central park, alternating between the anchor and witnesses. What has the government gone ahead and done now? I sighed and picked up the leftover takeaway, heading for the kitchen. Might as well turn in now. Long day at work waiting tomorrow. I turned the volume up on the TV. The silence felt unbearable to work in. I wondered if there was ever going to be any good news one of these days.

"Earlier tonight at eight pm, there was an unprecedented terror attack on Central Park, with damages spreading across the entire area. We're live now with Ben Stiles on the scene. Ben, over to you."

"Thanks Julia. Tonight, New Yorkers have been subjected to what is being called a terror attack. There is an unknown number of casualties and people that remain unaccounted for. But witnesses and survivors said that they've found themselves in the middle of what can only be described as a horrible phenomenon. I'm here now with local business owner, Mr. Mauricio, who witnessed the attack from behind his storefront."

"Well, I dunno what to tell ya. Terror attack and whatnot, there's no explaining bolts of lightning hitting a whole bunch of nothing and benches in a damn park. This blonde lady split the ground for God's sake! Right there, outside my shop and Patricia, Patricia swore she saw glowing eyes—"

"Alright. Thank you Mr. Mauricio—"

"No. I'm telling you—"

"That's it from me, Ben Stiles, reporting from the scene. Julia. Back to you."

"Err, thank you, Ben. And Mr. Mauricio, for his version of accounts. Reports of a blonde woman being central to the attacks have been flowing in all night. The woman has now been identified by the authorities as Sesilione Howards."