Butterfly Wings - Chapter 14 - Dark

clack clack

It was a soft, muffled sound, but it made Daffodil turn. A pair of tennis shoes tumbled over each other and knocked against the metal subway track, trailing laces like mouse tails. The rubbery soles were white and dusty, and a heel loop tagged the ends. Starling had been out to fetch them, and there they were.

But Starling wasn’t.

The tunnel was looming and empty, cut with streaking scratches in the dull gleam of the concrete, and the platform was smooth and still as a pane of glass, save a skittering of crumpled candy wrappers on the pavement, or a rattle of empty tin soda cans rolling in the drafts. Rippling coats of butterfly wings dripped up from the cracks, fluttering like coppery flakes of rust. They dripped water, letting a crystal drop plop onto the floor and echo about the walls, like stalactites in a slick limestone cave.

Her hands numb, she started to walk down the rail of subway track.

tap

tap

tap

Her footsteps echoed on the iron rails. She kept thinking she heard something thundering down the tracks, but when she listened closer there was nothing. Fragments of decayed memory floated in the cold, damp air like cobwebs, of a metal train rushing through like a bullet, like a silver bubble in a glass of coca-cola sucked up through a straw. They continued to drip, leaking liquid down the walls and onto the floor like rain, and pooling in puddles, that melted together into larger puddles, that leaked into each other and covered the floor with a coat of water. The shadows were getting thicker, thicker than honey. They clung like molasses.

Aaron placed a hand on her shoulder. “No. Look.”

She looked. Through the shadows, she could make out someone splayed on the floor.

Starling.

“The shadows are too thick.” he said. “We shouldn’t go any farther.” He pointed. “She’s perfectly still. She’s not breathing.

“She’s already gone.”

Daffodil’s shoulders fell. “You’re right.”

tap

tap

tap

They walked back to the subway platform. She gave Aaron his shoes back. Ciana was still sleeping. They sat on the edge, the edge that all the signs said not to sit on, not saying anything.

Starling must’ve forgotten to take the hot water bottle. She should’ve checked that she had it, she should’ve been more careful, she should’ve...well, it didn’t really matter, now.

She hardly even knew Starling.

Was it really that easy to die? Was it really that easy to let someone die? What kind of world was this?

She swung her legs, letting her heels knock against the concrete. Starling never had anyone to remember, or anyone to remember her. The butterfly wings had taken that away too. She’d found herself wherever, done a few things, said a few words, and then died. She’d died. She didn’t exist anymore. She’d never say another word. She’d never walk another step. No one would remember her. Hardly anyone even knew her name.

No.

No. She didn’t want it to be that way.

She stood up and walked across the dusty polished concrete.

tap

tap

tap

Her jacket was draped over the corner of the bench, sandwiched under the bulging tent of sheet. It was streamed with grooves of white cotton threads, and had small flower-shaped buttons. It’d what she’d been wearing, and it kept her at least a little warmer when she went out. She slipped her hand into the pocket and found the orange peels, the orange peels from the orange Starling had given her in exchange for a story.

Her heart felt heavy and sticky in her chest, and seemed to slide sluggishly down the sides of her ribs like it was made of tar. “Once upon a time there was an apple. It grew on the tree, hard and green. It ripened, then rotted on the branches because it was frozen there,” she whispered. She pulled out the peelings and clasped them in her cold fingers. Cool, waxy, pockmarked with yellow pores, slightly stiff and dried-out. One side white and flaked with white, crusted strings, the other smooth and orange like a sun rising from the hills.

Starling had helped her when she was faded and fed her. She’d been there when a boy had almost eaten them all alive. She’d given them company among the madness seething in the shadows and a safe place to sleep. For making her stand she’d bled and burned, and for trying to get Aaron back his shoes, she’d died.

The peels were curled, and the edges were broken off in chunks and pieces. They were cool in her hands.

The subway platform had columns, steel columns. They were cold and metal with sharp corners. They slats that went laterally between the rectangular canals of the supports for strength. It formed a niche, a ledge of sorts.

Daffodil pulled out a piece of cloth and spread it over, like a layer of pasty bread dough, smoothing the folds and softening the hard coldness. She turned and rooted around a corrugated cardboard box under the bench, full of old lamps and light bulbs, dull pencils, empty pill bottles. Random things that had been tossed aside. She found a pad of paper and tore out a sheet.

“What are you doing?” asked Aaron.

Daffodil didn’t answer, unaware that tears were beginning to slide down her cheeks.. She grabbed a pencil, and tried to draw her, but she wasn’t very good at drawing. Her hand shook.

“Let me.” Aaron took the pencil and tried to fix it. He did a little better. You could tell it was her by the hair, by the stiff, dark hair that hung from her head. Daffodil taped it to a pill bottle and set it down on the cloth, and filled it with stones, to keep the wind from tipping it over. Their hands shook but moved quickly, flicking with things, things that might help ease...something.

They both looked at it. The drawing of her fluttered on its tape. It was winged with a glossy pair of plastic cups, with more stones in them, one in each, and the pea-soup stems of plastic flowers, with petals of painted fabric, painted daisies color-stained wildflowers. An irregular circle of candles shelled with cases of glass stood in a ring. They were unlit so they wouldn’t melt. Sleek marbles glittered like nacreous pearls among Daffodil’s orange peels.

It didn’t really matter. It was likely that no one would see it. But it helped ease...something.

It was a memorial. A testament-not to the fact not that she’d died, her bones could tell of that- but a testament that she’d lived. Maybe it would be years before anyone found it. But it would be proof. Proof that she’d existed, and most importantly, a promise that she would not be forgotten.