Ethan is seen approaching a house with an unopened beer in hand, he walks up the steps, before knocking on the front door. He waits a few seconds, but no response, the journalist growls before knocking on the door a bit harder. Ethan waits a bit longer, but once again...he still didn't get an answer. He puts his hands on his face before sliding them down. Ethan groans, then turns his attention to the neighboring house. He goes down the stairs and goes up to the neighbor's door, before knocking.

  A brunette woman opened the door, she was wearing a black night gown. She leans on her door frame, and glares at the alcoholic. 

 "Do you need something?" She asks him, clearly annoyed by Ethan, who's scratching his head.

 "Yeah, I was wondering if you know where's the guy who lives next door?" Ethan points at his brother's house. The woman looks where he's pointing, before raising an eyebrow at the man.

 "How do you know him?"

 "I'm his brother."

  The woman looks at him, as if she was analyzing him. She steps closer to him before immediately taking a step back and covering her nose.

 "Yep, you're him. Bags under eyes, unkempt black hair, short beard, large coat. Hell, you even reek of beer, you're definitely him. Wait here." The woman states before she walks back inside. Ethan lifted his shirt up to his face and took a whiff, and then immediately reeled back and let out a small cough. The woman comes back with a key, and hands it to him.

 "Here, he told me if you ever showed up to let you borrow the spare key," she states. Ethan looks down at the key and nods.

 "So, uh, how do you know him?"

 The woman smiles and starts to slowly close the door.

 "We're… co-workers," she closes the door, clearly leaving him confused, as he doesn't move for a few seconds. He then shakes out of it as he looks down at the key in his palm. He walks back to the house and unlocks the front door.

  Once he walks in he finds the house to be untouched.

 "Billy! Are you here?" Ethan calls out… no response. He looks into the next room, which is the living room. The room seemed to be relatively empty. As he looks through the living room for any clue where his brother may be, he finds nothing. Only a half empty cup of water on the coffee table in the living room. Multiple newspapers piled up by the doorway. He places the bottle of beer by the glass of water before continuing searching.

  The journalist continues to walk through the house, and eventually finds his room. It was relatively simplistic, just a bed and a desk were inside. The bed was also left untouched, as if no one touched it for a good month.

  He looked through the desk drawers to find practically nothing… that was until the last drawer, he noticed it felt a lot heavier, despite being empty. He puts his hand in and feels the bottom of the drawer shift, he takes the drawer out completely, before flipping it over. A wooden plank falls out of the drawer, revealing a book. 

 "What the hell?" Ethan whispered, as he picked up the book. The cover was overall blank, he opens the book and skims through. Near the end however, a key was carved into the last pages, which were glued together. He takes the key out and examines it. He places the key in his pocket before putting the book back in the false bottom, and then the drawer back in its place. Ethan walks out of the room, past the dining room and searches the kitchen.

  All the cabinets were empty, with nothing but flour, pancake batter, half a loaf of bread, and some granola bars. Ethan jumps back as suddenly a mouse jumps out of the cabinet and runs into a small hole in the wall.

 "Jesus…" Ethan closes the cabinets, before he notices a metal door near the end of the kitchen. He walks up to the metal door and tries to open it, however the doorknob doesn't budge. "It's locked? Wait a minute…" Ethan pulls out the key from his jacket and inserts the key. He unlocks the door, and opens the door wide, revealing a wooden staircase, he walks down the steps slowly, before placing his hand on the light switch. Ethan flips the switch, with slight delay, all of the lights in the room flash on, lighting up the whole basement. 

  The basement was covered wall by wall with diagrams, illustrations, news articles and documents. The room had large computers on one side of the room, the other side a large fish tank that almost takes up half the wall. While across from the stairs, there was a desk and papers scattered across the surface. But two things stood out… one was a folder that was in a large plastic bag, and second was a tape recorder. Ethan sits down at the desk and checks if there's a tape inside. He finds a tape ready to play, so curiosity got the best of him, he pressed play. 

 "Hey, Ethan, I'm sorry I can't tell you this in person but, I need you to know, we don't have much time." The recording said. Ethan could sense the seriousness of the situation just by the urgency of his brother's voice.

 "Something bad is coming… I-I don't know when, or where, but it's coming. Some kind of t-thing! After studying the recent sinking of ships and submarines, we discovered something. They were attacked, not by missile, bombs, but a living thing!" Ethan raises an eyebrow, is he serious right now? Ethan believes Billy is either lying or just crazy. He knows Billy can't lie, it's almost against his very moral code. So he's probably just crazy, he thought.

 "Listen I know you think I'm crazy but please trust me! This thing is real and tore apart those ships like they were paper. Listen just please..." the tape stops. Ethan impatiently smacks the recorder a few times to get it back started to no avail. He groans before opening the recorder to check the tape.

 "What the hell…" Ethan sees the tape had run out. His gaze wanders as silence fills the room, his eyes land on the folder beside him. He grabs the bag and opens it, before pulling out the seemingly empty folder. Ethan opens the folder revealing a single paper. The paper itself only had one thing written on it. 

 "Its name is Gojira... or as we call it… Godzilla." Ethan reads outloud. "What the fuck is this?" He then drops the folder, and stands up. Of course he couldn't believe it, this must be some kind of bad joke. There's no way monsters exist. Ethan scoffs and starts to head back upstairs. He walks through the living room and picks up the beer bottle before leaving the house. 

  As he walks through the front door, he cracks open his beer, and takes a sip. From the corner of his eye he sees the neighbor leaving her house and going into a black car with tinted windows. Before she enters the car, she waves at the alcoholic before shutting the door behind her. Ethan stares as the car drives away, up until it is out of his vision. Ethan takes another sip of his drink before walking away.

-----

  An hour later, Ethan is seen walking into a large building. As he walks in, some people ranging from their early 30's to 60's are seen standing around at the front lobby. Ethan walks past them and goes towards a pair of double doors. Through the doors was a large gymnasium, filled with makeshift beds, chairs, small tables and many, many people. Some of them had relatively worn clothes, some old, some new. They were all kinds of people, old, young, black, white. Everyone here is stuck together.

  Ethan walks up to his bed, which is just a mattress held up by an old metal bed frame. He takes his coat off and folds it making it his pillow. Before he gets ready to sleep and forget about the day, he looks at his basket beside his bed, where he has his clothes, and finds a certain one missing.

  Ethan turns to the neighboring bed.

 "Gabriel, where's my  shirt?" Ethan asks the chubby old man lying in bed. The man groans as he sits up and stretches his arms and back.

 "Which one?" The old man asked him. 

 "Which one do you think? The nice one." Ethan says as he searches around the bed for it.

 "Why do you need it? You never try to look nice… Oh, it's a woman isn't it?" The old man says with a smirk.

 "Don't be stupid old man," He stops searching and looks at Gabriel. "No one would be stupid enough to date me." he continues searching."My dick of a brother invited me to his party. I have to go since he and his family are leaving the state permanently."

 "The rich one? Man, why can't he just give us a house if he's so rich! That pinche Payaso claims he's helping us, but he ain't doing anything!" Gabriel then yells out to husband and wife behind them. "Oi! You know that James Fleck guy!"

  The forty year old couple look at the old man. The husband scoffs at the mention of the name. 

 "That man, he spits nothing but lies, I swear if I were to ever see I would-" the man was cut off by his wife hitting his shoulder.

 "Hush now, that's his brother standing there!" The woman yells at him. Ethan waves it off.

 "It's fine, if he really cared about his family he wouldn't lie about funding this place. Most of the money in the fundraisers go to his pocket anyway." Ethan says before looking back at Gabriel. "So where is it?"

  Gabriel scratches his grey beard. "I think Mrs. Daiz let her son use it for school," he says. Ethan stops and raises an eyebrow.

 "What, why does he need it?" 

 "The kid had to take pictures today. And they didn't have anything nice for him to wear. No one would give them anything." Gabriel explains. "Either they didn't own any, or didn't want to share."

 "So you gave him my shirt?" Ethan's eyes narrowed on the old man, who simply chuckles.

 "If you were here, you would've given them the shirt yourself, you have a soft spot for kids." Gabriel states. Ethan rolls his eyes and gets back on his bed. "You never told me what happened though, why did she leave?"

  Ethan frowns as he looks at the ceiling. He then sighs, before speaking.

 "She wanted kids… and it scared me. I can't be a dad, because like everything else, I'll screw it up." Ethan says the old man gives him a sorrowful look.

 "I see. I'm sorry for bringing it up… come on, when is that party?"

 "In two days." Ethan replies.

  Gabriel smiles, he turns himself around and moves his covers off his legs. He grabbed a wheelchair that was behind his bed and moved it in front of him. "Now, help an old man get on his chair, and let's join Mr. Miller and his friends in a game of poker?"

  Ethan rolls his eyes and helps the old man onto his chair, and begins to roll him.

 "Alright old man, just know I won't go easy on you old geezers."

 "Well, you ain't no spring chicken either." 

  The two chuckle as they go to join a group of people playing poker.