The Butterfly
By Robert L. Arend
Copyright 2013 Robert L. Arend
The Butterfly
a short story by
Robert L. Arend
This cellar has always made my flesh crawl, now so much more than ever. I shall surely perish from the cold, the damp and malnutrition. Or will death be served by that hideous creature which, at this very moment, causes the entire house to quake, decades of detritus to rain on me, and wary rats to abandon their hungry vigil by my dying self? More than hunger, the rats must be equally driven by their collective desire to avenge the murder of their own. Yes, I killed a few to stall my own starvation, the raw and warm meat tasty; so violent was my need of food. Each casualty made the survivors more cautious. They now huddle far from my quivering grasp. I quench my thirst with water from an earlier rainstorm that had streamed through gaps in the foundation where mortar had crumbled, extending my life a few minutes more; yet surely the impatient rodents will soon find courage, charge and, no longer hindered, tear the flesh from my bones.
O, Death, what keeps you? Did you stop to have a drink with your comrades? Three maddening weeks have I awaited you in this dark and spider-infested cellar. Take my soul and have done with it!
Death comes for me in the year 1888. I had hoped to live long enough to witness the birth of the new century.
Have only ten months gone by since I received Mother’s message? Mother had urged my speedy flight home. At long last, Father had returned to her, she claimed.
I hastened from New York to Connecticut immediately—though I had witnessed Father’s cruel death eleven summers before.
Mother’s love for me had been smothered by the weight of blame she had placed on me for Father’s demise. Indeed, I suppose my innocent insistence that father fulfill his promise to take me hunting may truly be why he lives not this day.
Always had Father been more wild than tame. He suffered when confined to indoors for too long. As part of their marriage vows, however, Mother had insisted Father relinquish his uncivilized life in the wilds of Connecticut in favor of domestication within the walls of her house. The morning of Father’s decision to keep his promise to me was at the very moment he had reached the limit of his patience with Mother’s domineering; then did Father return to the wilderness forever.
I can still hear Mother’s protests fading while Father and I made distance from home.
Of the week of hunting planned, Father and I shared a bond of but two days before the wild brought our rare union to a brutal conclusion.
Mad was the morning of the third day. Wretched was I, who awoke in eager anticipation of an innocent dawn, sprinkled with sweet songs of unseen birds, when crimson rain fell and streamed down my face and body. Shrieks of agony forced me to stare up at the gruesome battle in the sky.
High over the treetops, Father struggled to free himself from the claws of a giant predator hawk. Before my senses could grasp the peril of that moment, yet another monolithic fowl sped past the startled hawk and vanished into the clouds with Father’s head.
***
“You did it! You killed him!” Mother had accused me. “You murdered my husband!”
“I didn’t, Mother,” I had pleaded. “It was the hawks! The hawks did it!”
Mother’s eyes flared. “You did it. I wanted my husband safe from the wild, but you forced him back into it. Now he is dead and you are responsible. I should kill you with all the hate I feel now.”
By my neck, Mother lifted me off my knees. She threw me against the wall in spite of my pleas for mercy. Yet, when she raised her hand to slap me, my terrified eyes met hers and she wilted, dropped to her knees and wept.
“I can’t hurt you, Robin,” Mother had confessed. “You look so much like your father. Just leave, go, I never want to look at you again.”
“Mother!” I was stunned.
“I said get out, Robin,” Mother shouted. “Don’t ever come back to this house again.”
So it was, at the age of only eleven, I did pack my possessions and depart from my mother. The part of me that was of my father aided my survival. I fathered my own children, but never remained long with their mothers. The early spring in Central Park, a new love, I was content until Mother’s message of Father’s return drew me back home.
***
Change is a paradox whenever new turns old and gives way to what was before. Time obliterates the artifices and restores everything to the wild. I was reunited with a village mysteriously evacuated. Abandoned and rotting houses seemed to warn me to stay away. The forest had not only persevered, but had expanded outward and upward, tops silhouetted against the twilight blue of the Connecticut sky.
When I pounded the oak door, pieces of Mother’s house fell and the smallest particles attacked my eyes. While I struggled with the pain and loss of vision, I heard a voice—a whisper—cold but familiar.
“Robin, I’m so glad you came. Now both my men have returned to me.”
Was Mother such a product of Nature that she, also, possessed immortality? I had pondered her mystery then, for Mother appeared to have aged not a single day in the eleven years since I had been forced to flee home.
“You look so much like your father used to,” Mother said when she ushered me inside. “Won’t you greet your father, Robin?”
I peered into the bleakness of the parlor. Interior matched exterior in signs of serious neglect, yet Mother’s rocking chair near the webbed-blanketed fireplace remained as I remembered. Father, however, refused to present himself.
“Robin,” Mother said, her tone of speech urgent, ”I asked you to greet your father.”
“After I’ve seen him, Mother, I will,” I replied carefully. “Where is he?”
Mother giggled and pointed. “He’s right here.”
Then did I see the insect perched upon Mother’s left shoulder. While I stared, truly dumfounded, the butterfly flapped its bright orange and black wings as though in greeting.
“Why, what’s the matter, Robin?” Mother asked, “Are you ill?”
“It’s a b-b-butterfly,” I stuttered.
“O, now I understand what troubles you.” Mother clapped her hands gleefully. “How silly of me. I have grown so accustomed to your father’s reincarnated state, I hadn’t considered your—“
“Reincarnated?” I hastily whispered.
“Yes,” Mother said. She nudged my shoulder. “Come sit and I will explain everything.”
Mother took to her rocker while I nervously kneeled before her on the dusty floor. She gently raised the butterfly with her index finger and lovingly gazed upon it while she recited her incredible tale.
“After you left—“
At your request, I thought.
“Never again did I venture from within this house, except to tend to the small garden I preserved for my sustenance. The world outside had robbed me of my deepest love, and I could not bear to look at, smell it, breath in it no more. Years God witnessed my prayers for my husband’s return until my knees swelled and bled.”
Mother paused, drew the butterfly to her lips and whispered some secret before continuing her story.
“It was but a month ago,” she recollected. “I wakened to discover your father resting on the side of our bed reserved to him throughout our marriage. To be sure, I was uncertain of his identity at first, but the butterfly’s urgency, crawling up my arm and neck to nibble on my earlobe—precisely as your father so entertained me years before—well, then, what more proof could he provide of his spirit restored to me?”
O, Mother, how I do grieve for you. Damned shall be the most wicked of sons who brought madness to your soul. So savagely shall I be punished for my crime when the creature above penetrates the fragile floorboa
rds and descends to devour me.
“Now you will excuse us, Robin,” Mother said, winking. “Your father and I wish to nap.”
Mother and insect departed up the stairs, leaving me to struggle for my own sanity. How could I rescue Mother from her delusions? Should I violate Mother’s sanctuary, explain to her as to a child the differences between husbands and imposture butterflies. “Butterflies are but winged annoyances,” I would lecture her, before I should fling the devilish insect out the window.
I had mastered the staircase. Boldly, I approached the closed door to Mother’s bedchamber. I heard her laugh, then cry out not in pain but joyously.
A twist of the brass knob and a push presented a vision most foul to my eyes. Upon her mattress, Mother’s nakedness was spread before me. Eyes shut tightly, she spewed moans of pleasure while that vulgar butterfly did disappear into the forbidden depths of her womanhood.
Nausea overwhelmed me so that I was forced to vacate Mother’s bedchamber for an open window in my own. Emptied, I fell unto my bed and dreamed myself back in New York City. Above the rooftops I soared. In Central Park, I courted. Indeed, I would have departed Connecticut at morning’s first light had not Mother surprised me when I made to leave with news of new life in her womb.
O, Mother, you did need me, then. Yet, though I did not flee, I stayed distant from you and your butterfly companion as I would have from those unclean.
***
Months passed like fog prodded by more fog. Mother’s maternity did, indeed, become quite obvious. I still feel my fear and debilitating adhorance over the outrageous implications of Mother’s ripe womb.
A fortnight ago opportunity dissolved my trance.
Evil butterfly, what protection had you with your mistress in her water closet and you alone on the arm of her rocking chair? You deserved your fate. Had only Mother not come upon me while I clawed your wretched wings and body to shreds; rather I had let you live than to have restored Mother’s hatred of me.
She lashed my face with blade-like fingernails. Blood had streamed into my eyes, and I had to push Mother to escape her shrieking and to break her hold around my neck. I fled the house and hid in the garden.
I wondered how long before Mother ceased her crying. Hours passed and, when it seemed she would shed no more tears, a fresh episode of wailing she struck up. Not until the full moon was mid-sky did silence have brief reign.
Better for me had I not remained in the garden, but had immediately fled back to New York. I would have been spared more horrors. My life would have been assured.
Mother’s sudden screams—of such unnatural pitch and volume—caused the house, the trees of the forest and moon above to tremble. From above, through the window of her bedchamber, terror had replaced her mournful cries.
O, Mother, what more could I have done? I hastened back into the house and up the staircase to your bedchamber. You were naked, your legs spread and feet braced against the rails. Your fingers gripped so fiercely the edges of your mattress that their nails penetrated the fabric and brought out the stuffing. Such skin-stretching pain and horror expressed in your eyes and gaping mouth, yet how could I have rescued you from what you had so tenaciously embraced?
From that black-forested cavity no moral son should ever gaze upon, a many hook-legged creature did squirm to escape. Such an enormous caterpillar it was, Mother’s flesh could expand no more, but burst. The eruption of blood drenched her, her bed and the hellish monster she gave birth to. Death became Mother’s savior.
Freed, the newly born turned back and began feasting.
Enraged, I searched the chamber for means to stop further violation of the woman. I found an umbrella in a corner and used it to beat the creature. The grotesque thing roared and, with speed not reasonable for its bulk, clamped its powerful jaws to the stem of my weapon and wrenched the umbrella from my grasp. Then did the beast ignore Mother in favor of me.
***
Bold is the rat that bites into my leg. Is this what my life was lived for, to perish in a fetid dark basement and be devoured by vermin?
Odd, debris no longer rains down on me. All is still above. Do I dare hope the monster has escaped the house or be dead? Maybe it is not too late for me!
Never have I known such weakness, yet never have I felt such an intense desire to live. Standing is difficult. My knees want to buckle and send me crashing onto the multitude of frantic rats.
Light outlines the cellar door at the top of the steps. A steep and uncertain climb it will be. I cannot hope to predict what awaits me beyond the door, but my fate is certain should I not get away from the mounting desperation of the rats.
Good Lord! I am stumbling! My hands can find no support. The rats cheer the one of their own that dares jump onto my back and sink its teeth into my shoulder. I have fallen upon the steps. My body stretches over six steps, yet six more lead to the landing. The ghastly breath of the rat near makes me swoon.
Filthy rodent! Like an infant you gurgle as I twist your neck until your blood warms my claws. Back to your comrades with you. Fear of me restored, your comrades abandon desire of my flesh for your own.
Surprising how slippery wood mold can be, yet I gradually conquer the steps. Four more…now three…two. My hand finds the sticky surface of the doorknob. Into the parlor I fall.
Mother, do you still lie in eternal rest upon your bed, awaiting proper burial? Despair not, Mother. I am coming for you.
Again, I struggle with steps. The center of the staircase had been crushed when, a fortnight before, the angry creature had pursued me. The margins remain firm, however. I will persevere.
Mother’s bedchamber door refuses to yield. A dirty-white substance saturates the lock and prevents the knob from turning.
Miserable door! See if the force of my body won’t end your resistance!
The door’s frame cracks on my third try. The door creaks open, but Mother is gone from her bed.
My instincts beg caution while I step into the bedchamber. Something is amiss. I sense death, yet life as well.
O, dear, dear Mother, a bedspread dyed with your dried blood is all that remains of you. The monster you so suffered to give birth to did surely devour you.
What be that which is suspended from the ceiling? Dirty white, it appears to be a giant cocoon. Sticky, fibrous to my touch, something fidgets within, trying to get out. Is it the creature? Yes, it must be so!
Mother, I have failed you, but you no longer need me. Little time remains. I must flee this house before I, too, fill the belly of the creature.
Must move! Must run from the bedchamber of horrors, down the dilapidated staircase to glorious safety.
Marvelous is the pale-blue sky. Enchanting are the fluffy flock of clouds. Radiant is the sun. The wild is my strength as it was my father’s.
Up from the ground comes a familiar, hunger-stirring aroma. The soil sprays through the air when my sharp claws rake the earth to uncover, yes, the squirming worms. They try to tunnel back under, but I pluck them out to cure my hunger.
The earth quakes ominously. I hear glass shatter behind. I look back to see the very roof of the house rise into the firmament atop a gigantic orange and black pair of butterfly wings! While the roof plummets to its final destruction, the sun is eclipsed by the giant butterfly.
I must flee this new terror. I must take shelter among the trees of the forest where the butterfly cannot pursue me!
Mid-escape, I freeze in the shadows cast by two predator hawks. They soar into and dive out of the clouds before circling their prey. The butterfly tries to fly away, yet, though small compared to their victim, the hawks attack and tear at its wings. They claw open its body. In its final moments, the butterfly sounds much as did Father so long ago, chirping for help.
Too gruesome the battle in the sky, I look away. To New York City I hasten. Mating season has arrived. On a high branch of my favorite chestnut tree in Central Park, I will reoccupy my nest. There I will invite an available female, await
the laying and hatching of eggs, hunt worms, insects and other foodstuff to feed my family and teach my offspring to fly.
I permit the gentle wind currents to carry me along. Up here, I embrace all the bliss of being alive. Away I quicken from the freaks of monstrous caterpillars morphed into gigantic butterflies.
So queer it is, a butterfly that chirps.
Chirp! Chirp!