Evelyn Earth Part 37

The Earth shook, one thunderous boom after another sent seismic waves throughout the area. My eyes would focus on one falling building before losing sight only to regain the vision of crumbling walls. Sounds swam in and out of my consciousness, voices, screams and gentle whispers. I couldn’t feel the sun on my skin anymore. The darkness churned inside me, restless, but unable to break free.

                My throat felt dry. I tried to swallow, but my tonsils were so swollen that only a rasp of air made it through. I summoned up as much saliva as I could and gulped it down only to choke. A coughing fit took hold of me and I clutched at my neck in pain.

                I felt a hand on my back and instinctively shied away from it. Where was I? It was dark and the ground I was lying on was freezing. I barked out the last remnants of air left within my lungs and inhaled deeply through my nose. The hand returned to stroke my back and I shrugged it off before rolling over. I was expecting to see stars, or feel a breeze on my skin, but a decaying ceiling stared back at me sending wafts of mould to overwhelm my senses.

               

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.