Evelyn Earth Part 3

It was getting darker by the minute. I rummaged through the loot that had piled up around my front door and found a battery powered lantern. Twisting it open I placed it on the table and jumped up next to it. Looking around the kitchen I gave myself a moment to gather my thoughts and that’s when the panic began. What was wrong with me? I had set out with a friend of mine to gather some simple supplies and had returned with no friend and blood on my hands. I jumped off the table and began to pace. It made no sense to me. I had been so normal before I set out of the house, but had somehow turned into a savage. Why in the world would I, 23 year old Evelyn Khol, arts grad student and all round goody two shoes decide to bludgeon a police man!

My heart beat had begun to accelerate and I could feel my hands clenching without realising that I was the one clenching them. Snapping my head up I muttered “shit, Maya.” I quickly ran out into the hall way and up to her door. Turning the handle I was surprised to see that it was unlocked.

“Hello?” I called out as I stepped into her one bedroom flat. Taking a quick assessment of the place I realised she was gone. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why I had gotten so aggressive with Maya. Little meek Maya. It was almost impossible to even raise your voice at the poor girl let alone throw her out of a safe house. Running my hands through my hair I decided to check outside and see if I could catch her.

Evelyn Earth Part 2

“There’s no one there, let’s go” I say hurriedly. As we slip inside I see the Asian boys from the corner of my eye making their way through the parking lot. There’s not as many people in here as there were outside. Something makes me think that the entrance must be barred, not jammed up. I make a mental note of where the service exit is and we move further into the warehouse. Two men rush past us and we narrowly miss their huge frames.

                “Fuck!” yells Maya

                “Shh, shut up!” I grab her by the arm and pull her behind the bottled drinks aisle, “Are you crazy? Do you want to make two angry men angrier? ”

                “They almost knocked us over!” she retorts sulkily and that’s when I realise that the reality of the situation hasn’t hit her yet. She’s still thinking about the right and wrong things to do as if we were still living in the same world.

                “Get over it, shits changed” I growl, “No one’s going to give you a helping hand or say sorry to you if you get hurt while you’re in their way. Start stuffing that backpack. The only thing that’s going to help us now are tuna cans and fucking bottled water.

               

Evelyn Earth Part 1

The sun is rising. It casts everything in a warm light. I sit on the crumbled roof of my building and watch it illuminate the city. A fire is burning in the distance and the smell quickly envelopes its surroundings. It filters down to me and I cough lightly.

“Shit” I mutter. Turning on my heels I quickly scurry down the incline of the roof. Grabbing onto protruding pieces of cement I lower myself through a hole masked by debris. Dropping down into the 7^th floor I relax, just a little. I have to make another run today before the scavengers get closer and strip the area.

 I move down the flights of stairs until the number 4 flashes in front of me. Slowly edging my way around the door frame I appraise the hallway. I don’t even know why I keep doing this, it’s not like there’s anyone left in this building. Habit I guess. I squat down and ease my way through yet another hole; this one leads into the minute crawl space between levels. I hate it, but it’s the only way into my apartment. It’s probably the only reason why my home has been untouched—no looters, no scavengers, just me. Alone.

I crawl for only a few metres before my knees touch on the plank of wood covering an opening in my ceiling. Pushing it out of the way I grip the edge of the wooden beam and practically fall onto the mattress underneath. I suck at entries. Rubbing my face with the palms of my hands I let out a groan. It’s been two months since I’ve used a proper door. Two whole fucking months.

The Beginning of 'Evelyn Earth'

Im excited to announce that I'll be launching my story tomorrow! 
     I will be posting new installments every Friday. Some will be longer than others depending on how creative I feel during the week.
Today has been especially productive as I've written up the opening and decided on the name!
     I always feel super happy when I begin a new narrative and I'm hoping to keep the enthusiasm alive by regularly posting new chapters.

The narrative is called Evelyn Earth and is set in Melbourne, Australia.
     I've always wanted to write something set around the place I live. It's always been tempting to set the scene somewhere exotic or far away, but its nice to feel like the story is grounded--that it has it's own terrain and geography. 
As I've mentioned before it will be a post-apocalyptic narrative starring Evelyn Kohl--our protagonist. 
     Evelyn will be faced with the need to survive, at all costs. She will be flung into a world that has changed intrinsically, a world which isn't afraid to fight dirty against the depravity of humanity. 

Stay tuned!

Ongoing Fiction

So I was thinking about what I should do with this blog and it kind of just dawned on me that it would be the perfect excuse to write a full length story. I always seem to start these epic tales in my head, but when I get around to writing them down they seem old and dated. Usually these tales turn into short stories with hastily written endings, or worse still, no endings at all.

I just spent the better part of my day going through all my old material that’s stored on my ancient external hard drive. I found a few decent stories that I’ll post up as separate pages (you can see the links for them at the top), but mostly I found a reoccurring theme that I want use in a new narrative. Having this space to house it will (I hope) drive me to create a complete story. Having feedback on it as I go would be something different and exciting too :)

The Theme!

Post-apocalyptic fiction is definitely a favourite of mine and I can never get enough of the wild ideas people come up with when they ‘end the world.’ I can’t even tell you the amount of books I’ve read on this subject! I’ve also been watching The Walking Dead lately, which is frankly amazing. The survival aspect of it is what gets me and that’s what I want to incorporate into my story (the zombies not so much). I’ve always had this idea in my head about the Earth being a living thing with a consciousness. All the shit we’ve done to it, pollute it, mine it, scorch it and destroy it would eventually have some profound effect on the Earth that one day it just decides that it’s had enough. Enough of people.

So that’s a little taste of what I want to do with space so stay tuned!

Milana V.

Up and Running...or Walking?

So its the 2nd day of blogging and I think I've figured out the basics! I'm hopeless at modifying web pages, which is partly why I was procrastinating about getting this page up and running. Please forgive me if its still very stock standard! 

     My creativity lies in other places other than computer code, mostly it stems from the keyboard. From fantasies etched out in letters. An essential aspect of my creativity though is visual. Art for me is an essential part of life, without art everything would be so dull, so gray. 

     Sometimes when we're all too overrun and exhausted we neglect that small voice that whispers "pick up a paintbrush." Even if we do we end up staring at the page like "what the hell am I supposed to do with this?"

     I try to avoid this by surrounding myself with imagery. When people come into my home they are greeted with an assortment of paintings. Very tasteful, nothing too overwhelming. Its my bat cave that holds the bulk of images. Stepping into my room they let out a little gasp. Its just a tad over the top, but I wouldn't have it any other way. 

     Canvases hang from every available surface, some sweeping so low they almost touch the ground. My desk is smattered in magazine cut outs and small sketches while my bookshelves sparkle with arranged jewellery. Its a carefully arranged clutter that has gone through many phases of evolution. I believe it all stemmed from my teenage years. The times when I covered my ceiling in Vogue scraps and spent a fortune on Blu-tack.  

     Now splattered blue paintings of rabbits, a wolf and Kindling prints dominate my walls.     

I wanted to share a little bit of the inspiration from my personal home space with this bit of cyberspace so I  put up one of my sketches as the background. 

I would like to thank James Jean of www.jamesjean.com for the inspiration behind the piece. He is an aesthetic genius. 

My sketch is an amalgamation of two covers from the Fables series, which is hands down my favorite graphic novel series of all time. The girl's face I took directly from some preliminary sketches of 1001 Nights of Snowfall. The tiger was a bit trickier and came from the sketch of The Good Prince. I wasn't sure about how to incorporate the two, but they somehow morphed together and became the tiger girl.

What she seems to be missing though is a name!

I'd love to hear any suggestions? 

Hopefully she inspires at least one of you :)

All things Mysterious

Milana V. Mystery is a new creation, born out of the need for a fledgling writer to share her words. There are many things I'd love for this space to be.

I'd love for this to be my tiny corner of cyberspace, the corner in which my words will huddle hoping to be seen and remembered. 

I'd love for other minds to come into contact with mine. To get a glimpse of my inner mystery and form an opinion, an idea, an inspiration or just an acknowledgement. 

I'd love for this to be fun, even though sharing my thoughts with the unsuspecting public scares me, just a little bit. 

I hope you will find things to love about this space. 

Sincerely Yours (starting from now) Milana V.