Poverty is often more suffocating than that thirty-meter-tall Kong.
If facing prehistoric beasts on Skull Island was a physiological survival challenge, then facing bare-naked bills in Queens was a slow, mental torture.
By evening, the setting sun had once again dyed Forest Hills in orange-red.
Viewed from the floor-to-ceiling windows of Stark Tower in Manhattan, accompanied by expensive whiskey and air conditioning, this scene might be a romantic afterglow.
But for Alice, who lived in the attic on the sixth floor of an old apartment building, it only meant that her room was about to complete its final transformation from sweltering to hellish.
The yellowing desk fan in the corner emitted a rattling, dying groan, and the air it blew was hot too.
Alice sat at her desk, sweat sliding down her golden temples and dripping onto the cover of the "Advanced Physics" book that Peter Parker had lent her.
Just then, a loud bang came from downstairs.
"Bang!"
The old security door was slammed shut with such force that the wooden floor under Alice's feet jolted violently, and even the Water glass on the table wobbled.
Immediately after, a string of profanities with a thick Queens accent followed, accompanied by the muffled thud of something being kicked hard and hitting the corridor wall.
"Fuck, damn it, just everyone go to hell!"
Aunt Sarah had returned.
In the past, she always returned with a weary silence, but this time the commotion sounded wrong—a desperate rage mixed with hysteria.
Alice closed her textbook, stood up, and walked barefoot down the creaking wooden stairs.
The living room lights were off; it was as dark as a cave.
Sarah was slumped in that old, peeling sofa, her posture twisted and decadent, like a ragdoll whose spine had been pulled out by a naughty child.
One of her feet was bare, while the other still wore a heavily worn high heel; the heel was broken in half, dangling crookedly.
"What's wrong, Aunt Sarah?" Alice asked softly, pouring a glass of warm Water and handing it to the woman who looked on the verge of a breakdown.
Sarah didn't take the Water, just stared fixedly at a crack in the floor, her chest heaving violently.
"The car broke down."
After a long while, she squeezed these words out from the depths of her throat, her voice hoarse and dry.
"That damned Corolla, just less than two blocks from the hospital, just when I thought I could finally get off work, finally escape those patients covered in shit and piss and their wailing, it broke down."
Sarah's voice began to tremble, carrying a neurotic twitch.
"The engine first let out a plume of black smoke, then shook like an old man in the late stages of Parkinson's, and finally made a loud bang and died in the middle of the road. Those damn taxi drivers behind me were honking like crazy, rolling down their windows to curse at me, calling me a blocking bitch."
Alice was silent for a moment, then asked softly, "Did you call a tow truck?"
This sentence was like a fuse lighting a powder keg.
Sarah suddenly raised her head, her sunken eye sockets filled with bloodshot veins. There was no anger in her eyes, only a heart-stopping fear.
"A tow truck? Yes, a tow truck came, and those Vampires dragged that pile of scrap metal to the repair shop. That black-hearted mechanic, covered in grease, looking at me like I was a fat sheep, told me the transmission is totaled, the engine needs a major overhaul, and the starting price is 800 U.S. dollars."
She suddenly laughed, a shrill and sharp sound that echoed in the dim room, making one's scalp tingle.
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