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.              

Evelyn Earth Part 12

It wasn’t a head first dive, but a rather graceful twist. My body turned mid-air until my back was facing the ground and my eyes were grazing the clouds. I spread my arms out and savoured the sensation of moving air currents slipping in between my fingers. My mind was a pure blank slate, suspended in a state of default just waiting to be filled with new impulses.

The first of these impulses came in the form of realisation, the realisation that I wasn’t falling. The second impulse was that the darkness wasn’t closing in on me. The third was a pleasant sensation. This sensation began deep in the back of my mind, quickly it picked up speed moving from one neuron to another, one atom to the next until my whole body vibrated with an acute pleasantness.

                I stayed suspended like that for what seemed like an eternity, but couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. Every tiny shift in the wind, every ray of sunlight was absorbed into my humming body. I felt an absolute connection with the world. The confusion that had gripped me for the past few days cleared like a bad storm.

Evelyn Earth Part 11

The next few days flew by. We returned to the shipping yard and met up with the rest of Owen’s group. The second time around they weren’t as intimidating. Marla seemed less threatening now that she was placated by Owen’s reassurances about my character. For all I knew though she could still be harbouring suspicions, but I didn’t let that show.

 Jack and Tod were nowhere to be seen the first night, but Tod wandered into the meeting place the next day asking questions about when the next raid would take place. It turns out that the car they used in the last townhouse raid was Jack’s and he had to take off on some ‘personal’ business so he needed the extra manpower to carry supplies.

                Owen wasn’t forthcoming with anything definite and I could see that Tod made him more than uncomfortable. Later that night he confided to me that he suspected Tod and Jack of being part of a larger scavenger group. We made our way back to Owen’s containers through a different route that night, even doubling back in some areas to make sure that we weren’t followed. I admired Owen’s preservation skills; they made mine look crude and barbaric. I was the one with the comfortable bed though, and we definitely felt its absence.       

Evelyn Earth Part 10

The sleeping part didn’t even turn out to be the most awkward thing about the night it was the getting ready for bed part that took the cake.

    After my swim in the less than clean water of the docks I was in need of a shower, but since water was a precious commodity I resigned to wiping myself down with baby wipes under the glow of a propped up LED torch. My hair was another issue. It looked great, salty beach hair really suited me. It fell down in stiff waves around my shoulders, but beauty did nothing for the smell. I doused it in leave in conditioner and was surprised at the pleasant change in odour.

As I pulled out some of my face moisturizer I paused. Was I really doing this? When did looking good for a guy I had just met become my top priority? I put the moisturizer back on the shelf and closed the vanity mirror. My reflection looked ghostly. The torch was angled too close to my face and gave it a gaunt quality that unsettled me. I leaned closer and suddenly as a quick flash I saw myself standing outside. The flutter of leaves, the shade of a tree, and then it was gone. My towel wrack stared plaintively back at me.

Evelyn Earth Part 9

I stopped. For a moment I thought the sound had come from the darkness, but then I heard it again.

“Evelyn!” it was more urgent this time, less loud. Confused I turned my head and looked down to my right, nothing. Spinning around in a circle I searched with my eyes, but couldn’t see anyone. I looked back into the liquid darkness and realised that the reverie that had engulfed me not two seconds ago was gone. The swirling mass looked sinister and somehow…mean.

“Evie” the sound came out in short breathes. I turned back around and there he was. He was standing on the top of the escalator with his hands on his hips with his chest heaving.

“Owen?” I choked out. A heavy pulsing had begun in the back of my head. All of a sudden the world seemed to shrink down to just us, me, Owen and the darkness.

 He stepped forward slowly and reached out his hand. As I grasped it I looked back into the shadows and saw a face. It swirled in and out of focus so much so that I couldn’t make out its exact features.

Evelyn Earth Part 8

“I don’t understand, what’s happening?” I whispered.

                “Does it hurt?”

                “No”

                “Are you sure?”

                “Yes I’m sure!” I raised my voice, “it feels like a hand should feel.” It was my right hand, the one I plunged into the darkness while Owen was trying to save me. I couldn’t tell him that, what would he think? He took my wrist in his big hands and massaged it lightly. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from it. The kneading felt nice, but it wasn’t doing anything for my arm.

                “I don’t think that’s helping” I wrenched my hand away from him and held it up against my chest.

                “I need to go outside.” Out in the sunlight I took three deep breathes and closed my eyes. Images of volcanoes and magma swam before me and I snapped them open shaking my head. I could feel Owen watching me, but I didn’t care. There was something inside me that wasn’t my own. Now that I focused on it, now that I had a foreign image of black veins in my body, I could feel the rest. A small voice in the back of my mind said something inaudibly. It was like my subconscious was trying to speak to me but the harder I focussed on it the softer it seemed to get. I shook my head more violently.      

Evelyn Earth Part 7

The tears stopped almost as quickly as they had started. I sat there blinking away the last traces of my remorse as Owen sat next to me with his head bowed. It was a solemn moment where both of us slipped into the past and faced the things we had tried to brush aside. My head felt clearer and I didn’t have a heaviness in my gut anymore.

                “Are you hungry?” he asked me after a few more moments of silence.

                “I could eat” I grinned at him. He led me back into the container and set up a small dinner. The sun was setting outside and the twinkle of the fairy lights was becoming our only source of light. Looking around at all the things that Owen had amassed I suddenly really wanted to go home. I wanted my pack and I wanted my gun.

                “I’m surprised that out of all of you Marla was the one who got to keep my gun” I said

                “What?” he sounded taken aback, “Oh yeah Marla used to be in the army or something overseas so she’s the only one out of us who knows how to use it.”

                “Did she get to keep my pack as well or do you divvy up the things you steal?” the sudden hostility in my voice surprised even me, but the more I thought about it the angrier I got. “I raided that townhouse before you even got there. I had to jump out of a fucking window to keep the stuff I took, but it seems you people don’t mind stealing from an unconscious girl.” He scowled at me and I glared right back.  

Evelyn Earth Part 6

He had sandy peppered coloured hair and almost translucent blue eyes, but there was a certain wariness in them that made me uneasy.

                “Yes” I replied even though I knew he didn’t need my affirmation. All of a sudden I felt like a wayward school girl being chastised in front of a principal.

                “You led our boys a merry chase” he said and I quickly glanced in the direction of yellow eyes.

                “I’ve been told I like to run around”

                “Hmm, it’s not every day that they come across young girls like yourself…” he trailed off. It was an odd thing to say and I found myself eyeing the man with even more wariness. Did they wish that more young girls would cross their path, for what purpose? I thought maybe yellow eyes noticed my shift in mood because he stepped out in front of the older man and offered me his hand.

                “My name is Owen” he said in a stronger more authoritative voice than the one I had heard earlier, “What Old Mal is trying to say is that it’s dangerous out there for girls. You’re lucky we found you before any of those mobs did. You’re safe here.” He smiled a full toothed grin.

                Looking at the other two women I couldn’t judge if they were included in the ‘safe’ category since they weren’t girls.

                “Do you keep all the girls locked away in shipping containers then?” I asked sarcastically. Neither Owen nor Old Mal took that very well, but before they could get in a retort one of the women stepped forward and pulled my gun out from one of her pants pockets. They were ugly beige slacks with deep draped pockets, but one thing they did do well was conceal a weapon.

               

Evelyn Earth Part 5

Just as I was about to step forward I felt a hand on my back. It grabbed a fist full of my shirt and yanked me backwards. I was disorientated as the ground swung up to meet me. We landed with a thud narrowly missing a jagged piece of concrete. As I lay there looking up at the mass of swirling darkness I knew that I should probably roll away from the man who was half under me and struggling to get up. I knew that I should probably make another run for it, but I couldn’t move. The enormity of the substance before me dwarfed everything else.

                “Are you insane” grumbled the man. His voice was right next to my ear, but all I could hear were echoes of the melody that had come from the darkness. I wanted to find out what it meant. I struggled onto my knees and tried to crawl forward, but strong hands encircled my waist and lifted me up off the ground. I was flung over a broad shoulder and for a moment the darkness was behind me, gone from my line of vision and I panicked. I needed to know what the voices meant. I began to struggle but the man tightened his hold around me and turned to walk away. As his back turned to the liquid fire my face was once again in front of it. With the last ounce of my strength I lunged forward and my fingertips grazed the roiling mass.

                All at once it felt like an electric shock and a silken caress. My eyes rolled into the back of my head as the tingling sensation ran up my arm and settled somewhere deep within my heart. It felt like a second heartbeat, an echo of my own. Buh boom buh buh buh boom. It dragged me inside myself and my eyelids slowly closed until the darkness was all around me.

Evelyn Earth Part 4

 Right now though I needed to put all those thoughts behind me, I needed to focus. I gathered up all the gear I would need; the camping back pack, the LED torch, the iron bar and the gun. Jumping up onto my kitchen island I flung the bag through the hole and carefully aimed for the edge of the wooden beam. It was an awkward jump, but I made it on the first go. Thinking about the first few times I had tried to do that without the mattress underneath made me laugh.

                Outside it was quiet. I could hear the distant lap of water against the concrete walls. The crevice I had barely squeezed through led me out onto the far left side of the building, right where I wanted to be. The townhouses were directly in front of me and I slowly made my way towards them. I wanted my footsteps to match the natural quiet of the area. It wouldn’t be right to run, to hear the slap of my feat disturb the eerie serenity. I knew that the sound of my movements would alert anyone in the area faster than anything else. I had walls on either side of me and prying eyes would have needed to be really close to catch a glimpse of my slight frame.