Evelyn Earth Part 13

A pang of pain flashed through my head. Grimacing I massaged my temples. It felt like I was an overstuffed hard-drive about to crash. Slowly I began the trek back to my building, to my concrete cell. With every step more information flowed into me. The first days of the beginning of the war—the fact that we were in the middle of a war, Maya and the little boy…crashing structures, life energy.

The pain in my head worsened. I tried to calm myself down, I had almost reached the front entrance, there were only a few more steps left and I would be inside. Somehow I knew that being in an enclosed space wouldn’t make me feel any better, but I pushed on.

I knew that Owen would be back from his raid soon and I needed him. A strong flash of realisation washed over me. Owen was like my cosmic buffer. He lessened the intensity of the Earth’s power allowing for a sense of normality. Being around him would be disastrous during a…a something? The thought trailed off. Everything was so confusing. Moments of clarity just led to fogginess.              

I climbed into my crawl space and eased myself through. Landing on the mattress below I steeled myself for what was to come. In Owen’s eyes I needed to look normal, I needed to look like nothing had happened. I pushed myself off the mattress and began to pace the room. More blinding flashes assaulted me.

Images of more billowing darkness, people swathed in shadow, monstrous man-made structures. I slumped to the floor. This just wouldn’t do, I would go crazy before I made sense of any of this. I had to centre my mind and focus in on one specific aspect of information.

I put my palms against my temples and pushed, physical actions had always helped me to control my mental state. If I had a headache I would massage my neck and pull out all the pressure through my shoulders. In this case I tried to physically condense the information that was flying around in my brain. My eyes were shut so tight that I could feel my jaw clench in response, but I pushed harder. I pictured all the data slowing down and settling on the bottom of glowing field. Bits and bits of knowledge slowly drifted down like snowflakes until there were only a few left. These last stragglers expanded until they filled the empty space.

My eyes snapped open. One clear thought penetrated through everything else. With the onset of the war the Earth targeted man’s most loved creations—his buildings, his factories and his power centres. All the structures that were left standing still posed a threat. Man could re-group, he could re-build and re-instate his destructive power. Even the simplest home provided him with technology he could revive. The dormant anger that lay curled up within me had the ability to destroy—I needed to put it to use.

“Hey!” Owen’s voice cut through my musings, “what you doing on the floor?” The weight of his body landing on the mattress made a low pitched thud.

“Just waiting for you to get back” I smiled. I crawled forward and grabbed his shirt pulling him into an intense kiss. All those snowflakes that were stirring on the bottom of the glowing field settled down. I had a clear mission statement and the intoxication of Owen’s lips prevented any stray thoughts from overwhelming it, and me.

“Missed me that bad huh” he grinned, “check it out, I found a whole stash of Gatorades and…wait for it…boxes of fortune cookies!” he pulled out the box from the back pack with an exaggerated flourish.

“Oh my god! I love these!” I squealed grabbing the box from him.

“That’s not even the best part. While I was out there the black hole, it just disappeared!”

“What just like that?” I tried to keep my facial features in check.

“Yeah just like that. One second I was walking through the rubble trying to avoid the fucking thing and the next it was gone”

“That’s great then, you don’t have to worry about me making mad dashes towards it anymore” I forced out a fake laugh, but he didn’t seem to notice. “You know what I was thinking” I paused, I had to word this correctly or else he’s become suspicious, “tonight we should camp out in front of the water, you know, build a little fire maybe take two of my wine glasses and pretend the red Gatorade is wine? It could be like a mini celebration ‘the end of the black hole’” I said the last part in an ominous voice.

“Hey, I should be the one thinking of romantic stuff we can do” he looked contrite, but only for a split second before pulling me into an awkward bear hug that ended up with us crushing one of the fortune cookie boxes, “Sounds like a great plan.”

 That night we laughed and kissed and held each other. Each time my eyes caught his I got the feeling that he was finally content. It were as if waves of emotion were radiating off of him and I was tuned at the right frequency to understand what they were. I wondered what he would see if he could feel my emotions. I bet he wouldn’t be so content.

After he dozed off I wriggled myself out from under his arm and crept away like the classic thief in the night. We had dragged piles of pillows and blankets from my apartment out here, close to his container hide away. It was a muggy night so we had just ended up using them as a make shift mattress. I looked back at him sprawled over the cushions and felt a pang of regret. I had only known him for a few days, but already I was deceiving him. What kind of a connection could you have with someone you’ve only known for a few days?

The voice startled me. In the time before the war a few days would have meant little and less, but now even small connections such as the one between me and Owen seemed larger than life. You mustn’t seek the logic in everything, some things just are.

They were weren’t they? Some things were just the way they were. The snowflakes began to rustle. I had awakened more questions than I had time to hear the answers to. I pushed my palms into my temples again and forced myself to calm down. I had one task.

I climbed up onto a stack of wooden crates and squinted into the night. Without the electricity from the city the world seemed darker. I could remember standing on my balcony at night and never seeing the sky go completely black. It was always tinged with a pink glow. Back then though I had simple eyes. Now I had eyes imbued with the Earth’s power. 

I looked deep within myself and found the broiling darkness. I only needed a pinch, just a tiny piece so that I could see through the night. I tapped into it and the sky opened up to me. My arms were flung out sideways and my chest heaved upwards. The air around me thickened and I knew that my tiny pinch hadn’t been tiny at all. Suddenly I could see the sea breeze I could smell the dry remnants of the sun baked into the ground below me. The wooden crates splintered under my weight until there…there it was!

The object of my attention loomed up before me as if I were looking at it through a magnifying glass. I could see every patch of peeling paint, every piece of broken glass. I focussed the dark energy onto its surface, but nothing happened. I reeled the power back in. It was stubborn, like a child being pulled away from the ice cream van. I was simply too far away. From this distance all I could do was observe.

I quietly made my way back to Owen and slipped back under his arm I had to bide my time, until I was alone and able to exercise the power.

The first thing I would do is destroy my building.