Evelyn Earth Part 40

Manoel cleared the way into the building, which turned out to be shoe store. No wonder it had been left intact, who wanted to loot shoes? Thankfully there was a line of leather ottomans against the back wall and we settled down on them.

                “Ah this feels like heaven” Owen sighed as he stretched out on his back, “I’ve missed cushioned surfaces.” I smiled faintly.

                “Do you remember all the trouble we went through getting my mattress down to your container?” I asked.

                “Mm seems like a life time ago.”

                “Everything happened so quickly” I whispered, “It all went by so fast. I don’t think I got a chance to process it all before it was gone.” Owen sat up and I felt his eyes on me. The torches were propped up in a shoe rack and spluttered with every passing minute.

                “I’m sorry about how I reacted to you that day” he said barely audibly, “you were right, I had known all along that something was happening, something big. I just didn’t want to believe it. You have to understand Evie, the world had ended I had lost my family, I was so far from home and I couldn’t go back and then there you were. You were a shining light in my life and I didn’t want to believe that you were a part of the darkness. I still don’t.”

                “I..” I stuttered, “I know.”

                “When I saw you, you looked like you had been dipped in tar, you were completely black and you looked…”

                “Evil?” I finished his sentence.

                “Yeah. Some of the things you say now still make me cringe. I don’t have the same understanding of this, this darkness as you do. To me it looks bad it acts bad so therefore it must be bad.”

                “But it’s not!” I cried.

                “Look I know you don’t think so” he moved in closer to me until his right leg was behind my back and his left leg was still on the ground. He put his hands around my waist and I leaned into him with a sigh of resignation. We were at a stalemate and I knew that there was nothing I could do about it. Owen thought killing people and destroying everything they had created was bad. He couldn’t see the bigger picture, just how every other human being who had contributed to the Earth’s destruction hadn’t seen the impact they were having on Her.

                “When this is all over, you’ll see it from my point of view” I said softly. My head was leaning against his chest and I could feel his breath on my cheek.

                “I’m afraid there’ll be nothing left to see.”

                “You’re wrong” I said. Tears welled up in my eyes and I tried to blink them away, but my lashes just pushed them down my face. Wet streams slid down my cheeks and silently dropped down off the precipice of my chin. I couldn’t remember the last time I had cried.

                Owens arms tightened around me and he pressed his lips to my temple.

                “It’s a scary world out there.”

                “And I’m the monster.”    

In the morning I woke up alone. There was a note on the floor in front of me and I stretched out my hand to grab it without getting off the ottoman.

“We’ve gone to find some food. Don’t worry. Be back before you know it. Xx Owen.”

I dropped the note back on the floor and struggled to sit up. My head was throbbing and my wounds, which now had a hard layer of dried blood covering them were excruciating. I took a look around. We were in a pretty high-end shoe store. I picked up one pair of heels after another.

                “Roberto Cavalli, Brian Atwood, Dolce and Gabbana” I whistled. I would have been over the moon if I had of stumbled into this unguarded shop four months ago. I looked down at my dirty bare feet and decided that I needed to get myself cleaned up. The singlet dress I was wearing was basically a tattered rag and the last time I had worn shoes was when me and Owen were still back at the shipping container camp. That place didn’t even exist anymore.

                I walked into the back room and began to rummage around for cleaning products. I found a bottle of Windex and paper towels and set about cleaning up my feet. At first I thought that my soles must have been caked in dirt, so much so that they had turned black, but it turned out that even with vigorous scrubbing the bottoms of my feet stayed black.

                “Huh” I mumbled t myself. I wasn’t even concentrating any power onto my feet, but they were definitely emanating a layer of darkness. No wonder I never felt any pain whilst walking.

                Once my feet were done I scrubbed at my arms and legs. I smelled like a freshly cleaned window though and my nose itched from the chemicals. I pictured Mystique from the X-men movies and how she could send ripples of change over her skin and wished that I could do the same thing. The more I thought about it though the more I wanted to try it.

                I stood in front of a mirror and concentrated on my skin. I summoned up a thin string of ebony energy and imagined running it over my body, from my toes up to my head. A slither of darkness shimmered just below my skin. I pulled it out slowly and then released the power. A black halo effect covered my whole body and I let it run up and down the length of me until my dress shrivelled up.

                “Shit” I cursed. I quickly re-absorbed the darkness and checked myself over. The chemical smell was gone. Just as I had wanted it to the darkness had swallowed it up, but it had swallowed my clothes too and now I was standing before the mirror stark naked.

                I dashed back into the store room and looked over the stock. Some of the boxes were covered in a beige sheet and I grabbed that and wrapped it around myself. Feeling a little less exposed I relaxed. It was time to pick out some shoes.

                I walked around the whole shop and settled on a pair of black wedge boots by Zamagni. I had never heard of the brand and I didn’t really care, I was looking for practicality. They were pure leather and I felt slightly better in putting them on my feet than something manufactured in a lab. I read the label—calf skin, hand-made. They fit perfectly.

                I couldn’t walk around in a sheet all day though I needed to find some clothes. I pushed open the door and stepped out onto the street. It was unrecognisable and I had no idea where I was. I peered down to my left; nothing, to my right; more shops.

                I walked past John Cavill and Sarti before I came across Kenzo. I had never had a big enough pay check to be able to afford anything by this designer brand and now I definitely knew where I was—Little Collins Street. I hesitated before walking in. This was the old me, the new me didn’t need designer clothes, but like I said before I couldn’t go around fulfilling my destiny in a beige sheet.

                I spent longer than I intended picking out something practical. I kept gravitating towards the more whimsical and colourful pieces. In the end I chose a pair of khaki coloured shorts and a cream silk shirt with a black leaf-like pattern. Thankfully there were bras in stock and I slipped on a creamy floral number. For underwear though I was out of luck.

I pulled on the shorts and moved around a bit. They didn’t feel bad at all. Before I put on the shirt though I grabbed a white cotton scarf and tied it around my torso and over my shoulder to keep my wound from being irritated by the material, and to keep blood stains off the shirt.

                I inspected myself in the mirror. Coupled with the boots I looked like a mix between someone going hunting in the jungle and a girl at a beer garden. The most important thing though was that I felt comfortable.

                “Evelyn!” Owen’s voice echoed from outside. I stepped out onto the street.

                “Over here!” I called out. He and Manoel were standing in front of the shoe shop and they looked worried. I jogged up to them and did a little twirl. “What do you think?”

                “I think you shouldn’t ever do that again, we thought you had run off on us” he frowned.

                “Don’t ruin my moment” I punched him in the shoulder, “do I look nice or what?”

                Manoel said something in Portuguese and gave me two thumbs up.

                “See he likes it” I teased.

                “Come one there’s food inside.” He was trying to keep the smile off his face, but I knew he was on the verge of laughing.

                “Alright Mister Grumpy let’s go eat” I pushed open the shop door and made my way inside. As we ate we tried to communicate with Manoel, he wanted to tell us something, but every time we tried to guess what it was he started laughing at how wrong we were. It turned into a game of charades where Owen and I were yelling out things that Manoel probably couldn’t understand while he was jumping around trying to act out whatever it was that he wanted to tell us.

                In the end we figured out that he had promised his friends that he would return to Albert Park five days after the time they parted. It was the fourth day already.

                “So what I’ve got out of the kid so far is that his family and friends are at a lake and that there’s something happening with the sun?” Owen said after we had all settled down and stopped laughing. I nodded in agreement. This was probably the time when I should tell Owen everything that happened since the last time we saw each other.

                “I don’t even know where to begin” I started, once I was finished he was sitting up against the wall wide-eyed.

                “So now there are not only Earth soldiers, but Sun soldiers?”

                “It sounds so cliché when you say it” I grimaced, “but yeah that’s basically it. Except unlike us the Sun messengers only seem to have one goal and that’s stopping the Earth from fulfilling Her vengeance.”

                “So essentially they want to protect man kind?”

                “They’re going about it pretty strangely though” I countered.

                “Mm they’re herding people like cattle and transporting them to god knows where, just to get them away from you” he looked up at me intently.

                “Don’t look at me like that, it’s not my fault! I haven’t done anything.”

                “Not yet” he said quietly.