Butterfly Wings - Chapter 2 - Blackout

Ferris leaned back in his chair. He was still holding the photograph. But he couldn’t see it, it was too dark. 

He slowly stood up. His footsteps splashing a bit, he pulled the beaded cord clinking in the lampshade. It didn’t turn on. There was something like butterfly wings growing on the lampshade.

The crooked, crumbling wheels in his mind turned like abstract gears. He needed...he...that photograph...he climbed a mountain and ate a chocolate bar...he had been so happy...

He rolled open his desk drawer. There was a milky way in it. He ate it, chocolate, caramel and all, candy layers crackling against his teeth.

* * *

So, a power outage, Daffodil thought. It didn’t really matter, the room was already dark. A meaningless sigh rustled through her vocal cords, and some dead petals fluttered onto the floor. They were dry and rotted, and floated in the water that licked the bottom of her shoes, like lazy sunfish under a pier. Were those her hands? They were so pale…

She looked around the table. A phone screen glowed like a jellyfish in a dark aquarium. Her fingers wrapped around it. The white screen of a social media feed shone back at her. Was this hers?

Yes, the person there looked like her...she had the pale hands. The glossy hair, rich and brown like mahogany looked like how it felt now on her scalp, gleaming as it whispered down her cheeks. The figure, that, then, was her, was smiling so wide it looked as if her face would crack in two, and the captions were bursting with an alien sunshine.

She felt hot tears sliding down her face. Her face seemed shaped for tears, and they ran around her nose like rainwater through dry riverbeds. Her clothes smelt of brine, of the salts of loneliness. The pain in her chest felt like a tender scar, and she could almost feel thoughts dripping from it like blood. Thoughts of a past self that she couldn't hear.

How could an empty shell hurt so much?

Why was she crying?

She clutched the phone tighter. In a world where reality was rotting at their feet, memories were valuable.

* * *

Starling wandered over to the microwave and brushed her fingers over the bubbly window screen. The air was damp and she was cold. She pulled open the microwave door with a pop. Maybe she could...make some tea...she liked tea, right? She didn’t know.

Right, the power was out...she knew that...at least for now. She shut it. How, then, would she keep warm?

Leaning against the stove, she ran her fingers through her hair and hit something that felt like cardstock, or stiff satin. A flake of something that looked like a butterfly wing fluttered to the floor like a leaf in autumn, and floated in the inch of water.

What was growing in her…?

Her hair. It felt stringy kind of. What did she look like? She must look like something. Where was a mirror…? She tried to look at herself in a brassy cookpot. But there was nothing there, only black through a curtain of silver. Why?

IT’S BEST THAT YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE.

What? What was that? How did words not have a noise…?

Her blood ran cold. There it was, that spot of darkness she knew was going to be there. It’d always been there. It was like a spot of blindness, a suffocating supernova, a gooey pit of black tar. A blot of ink unfurling like a dark blossom. She looked, desperately hoping there was something more, something kind to it, but there wasn’t. It was just shadows. Shadows that shouldn’t have been there, because there was light there. But there wasn’t now. It was so cold.

Her teeth chattering, she looked away. Would she die…?

No. She didn’t want to. Not today.

She opened a few kitchen drawers before finding some gum. She tore a piece out of the wrapper and started chewing, and grabbed a stick of chapstick. It was cool and smooth like a peeled crayon. She rummaged around for a flashlight and, prying the plastic open, let two batteries like pieces of caramel fall into her hands. The gum wrapper was silver and shone dully like a candlestick. Finally, a crisp, glossy magazine.

Not today.

Snip, Snip. One, Two, Three. Wrap the magazine, smear the chapstick. Positive. Negative.

Spark.

Not today.

* * *

Water licking at her heels, Daffodil opened the fridge. It was jarringly dark, and an unreplenished coldness billowed out. It was empty, save for a few styrofoam containers and two brown avocados that knocked their pits against the plastic sides of the drawers. Whoever she was seemed sad. She took out one of the containers and cracked it open. An untouched layer of meat oozed from between a peachy bun, garnished with a fistful of greasy-looking fries. She’d have to eat it cold.

She set it on the table. Her vision blurred, and fireworks popped in her brain. She clutched her forehead as she stumbled. How long had it been?

She tried to move the shaking lid away, but she...couldn’t…

Her hand just went through it…

* * *

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

The fire rippled like water, glowing gold like molten glass, as the magazine pages hissed and curled. Sparks were sprayed over the varnished floorboards like burning sprinkles. It was warm, and reflected scarlet on her palms as she warmed them. The waxy chapstick smelled of cherries as it burned. She remembered what it was like for her head to be clear, but nothing else but bits and pieces. Her memories were decaying.

So.

Plague. Pandemic. The world was ending.

In her heart, she felt that her world had ended long before.

Maybe it was time to finally start living. Time to yell back at the void.

Time to make the world’s madness shake when she approached.

Rising to her feet, she tiptoed in the water over to her cabinets. They were full of crisp macaroni boxes. That’d do. She dug through her closet, and filled a duffel bag with them. Yellowish, translucent crescent moons of pasta stared at her through the plastic window under the label, rattling inside like maracas as she slung it over her shoulder. The bag was stuffed full, like a black caterpillar with lots of leaves inside.

Time to go.

* * *

It was like swimming, being like this. Or floating. The dreamy way you sunk through your fridge, the surreal feeling of looking inside the wall. It was full of cobwebs and chunks of plaster. Everything was thin, like water, and you rippled a bit as you drifted through it.

It was also terrifying.

Fear. Fear that crawled over her like centipedes and bloomed in the pit of her stomach as reality crumbled around her, like a sand castle seeping with water, loosening the sugary grains and breaking the delicate tension as it collapsed, pieces of it sliding, sliding down. She couldn’t feel. She couldn’t touch. She could hardly breathe. She was so hungry. She could feel the table. But her hands clipped right through.

Diluted, Faded. She felt thinned, as bits and pieces of herself drifted away and rotted, and void filled the empty spots and mixed in.

Hands trembling, she reached into the takeout box, and could almost feel the food, like smoke. And yet...they moved a bit...she inched one out of the box and onto the table, as if with fingers made of water, and ate it off the tabletop with her tongue and tears in her eyes. She could almost feel it starting to fill some of the empty spots with the matter she’d lost. 

Piece by piece, she ate more. It was easier as she went along. With each bite she filled up the evaporated bits, built back her bones, stacked material to make herself fingers. She almost wept with joy as the tabletop became solid again, and the numbness tingled out of her limbs.

She couldn’t remember if this was how things worked. If your body faded as you starved. She couldn’t remember much of anything.

* * *

Juliette’s fingers moved stiffly as they plucked reedy strands of her dark blonde hair, as if they were plucking violin strings. She twisted them in and out in a dizzying kaleidoscope, a braided rope that spiraled off between her fingers. Over, under. Over, under.

With a snap of a hair tie from her wrist, finally the braid was done, and she could see without the hair in her face…

She tapped her hand on the mouse, and the screen lit up back to full brightness. Four frizzled braids spilled over her shoulders, shifting around as she moved her head, and more stiff swaths of hair drifted in the specks of sunbeam. Pancake stacks of books and layers of torn notebook pages stamped with holes fanned out in front of her. They were pasted with candy-colored squares of post-it note, striped with squiggles of handwriting that didn’t seem to sit still on the paper...Her vision was a little fuzzy. Her head throbbed. The research page seemed wobble and split into two. What was she doing…?

Right. She was going to braid her hair...to keep the hair out of her face so she could see…

Her fingers fluttered back to her scalp...but then she paused.

The screen was so bright...it hurt her eyes…

She still had an awful headache...it throbbed...

Right! She was going to take some aspirin...for her headache...she’d already gotten them, the pills were sitting on her desk, round like split moons and chalky white, next to a glass of water. She gulped them down, but they didn’t seem to help.

They didn’t taste very good. No medicine does.

Clicking her laptop shut, the ache ebbed a little in the calming darkness of the room. Some shadows may have seemed unnaturally dark if she’d looked a little closer, but she didn’t look. That’s the trouble, isn’t it?

What was she...

Her gaze was suddenly drawn to a shaft of light beaming through the window. It poured over a can of ravioli.

* * *

Flan pulled a hoodie over his head. He couldn’t tell what it smelled like, really. But it was soft. So where his socks, as the pushed like moss against the tongues of his shoes as he kicked his feet into them. There was still blood from the raw meat around his mouth.

“Mom?”

“Yes, honey?”

“Can I get Dairy Queen?”

“No, we have food at home.”

“We are home.”

“Are we…?”

“I’m not sure…”

He sunk against the wall. The inch-deep water soaked into his jeans, but he couldn’t feel it. He could still taste the flavor of the raw meat. He’d eaten all of it and left the chopped carrots in the pot. He pulled on his hoodie strings and thought of the chicken tenders at Dairy Queen, crispy and golden. They would be good. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt warm, or anything at all. He was cold, and the air in his lungs was damp. He looked dimly at the clusters of butterfly wings growing up the walls. They were dripping water.

“Please? Can I go to Dairy Queen?”

“I don’t know. Just bring me something to eat.”

“I will.”