Butterfly

Mar

A butterfly sat on the end of my finger, sitting still as I admired its shining colors through the light as if it were a magnifying glass. I thought to myself, “too still”, as I watched the butterfly lose its balance and fall gracefully to the ground, meeting its fateful death. I was so distracted by its beautiful wings, I couldn’t even notice that it bit me. I completely forgot about the butterfly when I saw my partner, Otto, walking towards me. Our faces immediately lit up when we locked eyes and I greeted them with a hug. After that was just us walking around the school together and going our separate ways for classes.

It was a warm afternoon, it was finally the day I had anticipated. Despite the long wait, and the preparation towards this day, my heart was filled with a storm of anxiety that grew with each passing day until now. It felt unexpected, I couldn’t help but ponder and fill my mind with a meaningless void of negativity. It painted the image before me at this reflection at the window, with what seemed to be nothing but an outline of my body. But there was little time to waste staring blankly at my reflection, overanalyzing the details of my body, as class was about to end.

It was finally lunchtime and I got to see my girlfriend again. It’s always refreshing seeing her after sitting for 4 hours straight in a classroom, not getting a single bit of knowledge. Elsie, however, has always been the complete opposite of me, ever so eager to learn. I admired her quite a lot, she had always taught me a lot about things, especially in battling my anxiety. I was so lost in my thoughts that I didn’t even notice that I was at the cafeteria already. The first thing I did was look for her, and I saw her sitting at our usual table, but she wasn’t eating. I made my way over to her, noticing a faint blue shine beside the table, and asked:

“Aren’t you going to eat?” She seemed to be zoned out completely and flinched when she heard my voice, but smiled when she realized it was me.

“Nope, I’m just not hungry today, that’s all.” I nodded and sat in front of her, finally getting a chance to analyze the blue object beside her, whilst she rambled about her day. By the time I arrived and sat beside Elsie, it had lost its rich colors, and its eye-catching shine which caught my attention earlier. What was left behind of it was a dull, disintegrating corpse of a butterfly, with a faint smudge of blood upon its fingertips. As I took another glance across the table, the corpse had suddenly disappeared within seconds.

“Hey, why aren’t you paying attention, why have you been glancing over there this entire time?” She raised her voice, whining, as she got up from her chair and slammed her hands onto the table.

“Uh, I was just seeing things, probably because of my anxiety again,” I said nervously. I took a quick glance right at her, where our eyes locked as she opened her mouth to speak again: “Well if you’re zoning out again because of your worrying, let’s take a walk around the school then!”, she said, rather irritated, but knowing her, it was light-hearted. Shortly after, I took her offer and stood up from my seat, following behind her.

We both weren’t hungry either; I often skipped meals due to my anxiety killing off my appetite, so I spent most of my lunches outside with Elsie. Though, the entire time we walked, she seemed off. I just had a weird feeling in my stomach the entire time, it fed into this storm from this morning. She seemed fine, even though she had a few moments where she would zone out. However, there's just this feeling that I couldn't shake off for some reason. Maybe the weather was making me feel weird, or the growing storm in my head from this morning. Elsie has always hated the cold too, maybe this was why she was zoning out a lot – it was winter, after all. She and I walked home after school together, and seeing her act happy was making me feel like maybe there was nothing wrong after all, making ease for this storm. It was probably just all in my head, I honestly felt so stupid for thinking that something bad was possibly going to happen.

Later that night, I had a nightmare that involved butterflies. It sounds stupid, but I honestly don’t think I’ve ever been that scared of a nightmare before. I woke up in a cold sweat, and it felt like my entire body was drenched. The dream involved me seeing Elsie being attacked by a swarm of shiny blue butterflies, similar to the one I saw drop dead upon greeting her that morning. I watched her lose small bits of herself, deforming her body to their kind, before they ate her away slowly. After that, all that was left of her was just a pile of blood. Thinking about it made me feel sick out of my mind. The entire night, I tried to go back to sleep, but there was always this strong, strange cold feeling brewing deep in my stomach. Something bad was about to happen, and I was afraid to let myself think as to what it could be.

The next day I looked terrible. As I took a look in the mirror in front of me, I got lost analyzing my features closely. From incredibly messy hair with an exhausted face, to a weak posture which barely held my body up. I glanced at the clock, preparing to get ready rather early due to my lack of sleep, rushing to make my best efforts to cover up my barely presentable self. I quickly covered my face with make-up from my mother's room as a last resort, and made my way around the corner of the block to greet Elsie. As I greeted her, she seemed completely off for being a morning person as herself. “Elsie, Hey!” I said excitedly, with a painfully tired undertone to it. I walked up right beside her and glanced at her. She had kept her head tilted down, with what seemed to be a gloomy expression, covering her face with her long bangs.

She seemed to mutter out what I could make out of a “good morning”, but I was too busy trying not to break a sweat from the sudden rise of worry about her. I felt it crushing up my heart with a sudden weight, at the bottom of my chest. I nervously grabbed her hand, forcing a faint, awkward smile at her before glancing away. Throughout our entire walk to our school, which felt so dreadful, yet surprisingly fast at the same time, the twisting feeling in my stomach grew stronger. Upon reaching the gate, I let go of her hand, taking a quick glance at it. My eyes widened suddenly upon noticing the faint wound on her index finger; it was small, however noticeable enough. Before I could gain the courage to ask about it amidst my clouded mind, she quickly turned around and walked off while I stood baffled at the entrance of the school. I continued walking, left even more confused with the short, sudden events of this morning. I couldn’t help but catch myself thinking about the fading wound on Elsie’s finger all morning, pondering all the possibilities until noon, lunchtime.

As the morning classes ended, I rushed out of the classroom, with an enormous headache pulsating, left behind from all the anxious feelings and thinking. I hadn’t thought this hard about anything before, but it bothered me heavily. As soon as I entered the lunchroom, I glanced around, and I was unable to find Elsie. My heart was racing, and pounding out of my chest. I sat at our usual spot, anticipating Elsie’s arrival, which felt like an eternity. I kept tapping my fingers against the table anxiously, before suddenly stopping as my eyes widened again upon a recollection from yesterday: the butterfly. As I faintly recollected the appearance of it, and the faint smudge of blood upon its fingertips, it clicked to me, but as to its correlation to anything, that was hard to judge. I calmed myself down, reassuring myself that the events of today had been meaningless, though looking around, Elsie has still been nowhere to be seen. It worried me, but I figured to not worry as it wasn’t a regular occurrence. I had hoped that this would all change with the date we had planned for tonight at my house, as my parents had left for a couple of days for business purposes.

As the day ended, I still hadn’t seen Elsie. Though, I had no time to waste as I wanted to prepare my home for our special night and rushed straight home. Upon reaching the front yard of my home, a weird feeling went over me. Though everything seemed fine, I felt like I wasn’t alone. I froze and observed the surrounding area; everything was normal, maybe too normal. I slowly approached my front door, and clicked the doorknob, to my surprise it had opened slightly. I froze once more, unsure what to expect upon entering my home. Out of uncertainty, I moved the welcome mat to reveal the knife beneath it, in case of a dangerous situation. I picked it up, and placed it behind my back while thinking to myself: “I had definitely locked the house, no doubt.” I began sweating, as I continued opening the door and entered quietly, hyper aware of my surroundings. Fear instantly shot through my body upon entering the house. I nervously turned my head, keeping the corner of my eye open ahead of me as I flicked the light switch on for this floor, and then, I saw her.

I dropped my bag to the ground out of surprise, as the outline of Elsie sitting on the couch in front of me, her back to me, still, almost lifelessly. I didn’t know what to think of amidst this mess, what kind of sick surprise could this be? With the amount of fear within my body, I was unable to react further, physically or verbally. I waited for something to happen anxiously, which felt like forever.

I began breathing heavily, as I watched her finally get up from the couch in front of me and slowly walk to me with that same, covered face of hers from this morning. The lights of this home were dim and weak, so I couldn’t make out most of her face at the moment from the distance she was, but as she approached me, something was definitely wrong. She still hadn’t uttered a proper word this entire time. I analyzed her down and up, stopping at her face once she stopped approaching me. She continued looking down at the ground, until she realized I had been staring for a few moments now. She quickly looked up, and tackled me and began screaming, revealing her face.

I couldn’t make sense of her senseless screams, which sounded more like tone-deaf screeches, inhuman ones. I wrestled her arms as she threatened me, attempting to bite me and eat me away for upsetting her with today's events. I stared at her face, which horrified me among everything happening at the moment. Her face had become thin, and her eyes had turned to some tainted glass, similar to the eyes of a bug. She had lost her colors, and become dull and weak in appearance. As she continued to wrestle me for a vengeful act, my hands had given out as I attempted to keep the knife in my left hand throughout this. As my hand gave out, she swooned in to take a bite of my neck, where I took the opportunity to stab her through her neck.

The impact of the knife killed her immediately, turning her body weak and lifeless. I let out heavy breaths as I pushed her heavy corpse off my body and wiped the blood out of my view. I closed my eyes, and let myself rest flat on the ground, trying to process everything that had happened in a span of 10 minutes, and how I found myself here, in such a situation. Upon opening my eyes, I looked over and noticed a swarm of butterflies. The same swarm I had seen in the nightmare the night prior, with shiny blue butterflies eating away what was left of Elsie’s body. I couldn’t help but freeze up, and watch in fear as what was left of Elsie turned into a puddle of blood in my very own house.

I sat up, and felt a faint weight on my neck. I turned my head to the mirror beside the entrance to see a similar butterfly from the swarm earlier eating me away. I smacked it away in a panic, but I could already feel my mind slowly tearing as my view diluted into a similar perspective of a kaleidoscope. As I started losing my sight, I panicked, looking frantically around me to greet the very same butterflies who had eaten away my girlfriend’s corpse, hungry for blood, swarming at me. I felt myself lose myself, and any sanity left from this entire situation. I had little time to think about the situation, or to process any feelings about the loss of the love of my life, I only had time to make a decision on what to do for myself and my fate on this earth.

I closed my eyes, and took a deep breath before grabbing the same knife from earlier and without hesitation, pierced it through my very own heart. I felt my body hit the floor, and with the last moments of my consciousness, all I could make out from the view of my eyes were shiny, blue butterflies covering my view as they took a hold of my whole body, meeting me with the same fate as Elsie.