The next morning Thomas enters the kitchen, groggy and tired. His shoulders slumped with fatigue, the dark half-moons under his eyes pressing like bruises against his pale skin. Jenna was already sitting at the kitchen table, her legs kicking as she hummed that same unfamiliar tune.
Taking a seat at the table across from Jenna, he poured himself a bowl of cereal. Thomas listened to her hum between her crunching bites of breakfast for a moment before he spoke through a mouthful of food. “Where did you learn the song?”
Jenna shrugged her shoulders. “Did you know that Monarch butterflies are poisonous?” she took another bite of her cereal before continuing. “If you eat them, they can make you pretty sick. But they won’t kill you.”
“Fine,” Thomas responded. “Don’t tell me.”
Part of Thomas wondered if Jenna used her knowledge of butterflies to deflect; as a way to… avoid speaking with others when she didn’t want too. This is what their mother believed, after taking her to a few therapists and doctors over the last few years. The word autism was thrown around for awhile, but because of the trauma and her age, they just weren’t sure.
Two years ago, when Jenna was around three, she'd been playing with her toys in the living room when their father had gotten home from work. Jenna was a huge daddies girl, so everyday when his truck would pull in, she’d get all excited and run out to meet him in the drive-way. Thomas had actually been sick, and stayed home from school that day. He was supposed to watch her for a few minutes while their mom did something- he couldn’t remember what- but he figured “whatever,” when his sister ran out the door, ignoring his protests. When neither Jenna nor their dad where inside ten minutes later, Thomas decided to peek out the window.
He couldn’t see much, just a patch of his sisters straw blonde hair and her white dress poking out from between the front of their dads truck and behind their mom’s car. Standing there. Unmoving. Looking down. So he did the only logical thing he could think of; he ran outside.
And he found his father, laying on the ground, his skin the color of a bruise, his eyes wide and bloodshot. Thomas could never forget the way they stared, and stared, and stared at the sky. As if watching something intently with a fixed gaze buried in the clouds above.
He remembers taking his sisters hand, as if to pull her inside and away, but he didn’t. Thomas just stood there, and stared at the staring eyes, transfixed. To this day, he has no idea how long they stood there. A minute? An hour? It all felt the same. It was like time had melted together, then froze completely. Eventually he was back in the house, and there were people everywhere, and his father was put in a bag and driven off.
His mother blamed herself. Crying on the phone to her mother, to his grandma, he heard her. She said things like “I worked him to death,” and “He said he was sick, I should have begged him to stay home,” and “heart attack,” and “I should have been there.” But she wasn’t. Jenna was. Then Thomas was.
And so Thomas blamed her a little bit too.
He blamed her for not being there. Not just in that moment, but in the two years since. Having picked up more hours at work- and eventually a full on second job- his mom was absent a lot, leaving the two with various sitters; friends, family, and sometimes a coworker or a neighbor. Only recently had she become less withdrawn, leaving her room more often when she was home and showing interest in them again. But to Thomas, it just wasn’t enough. He felt abandoned, and hurt that she basically left them behind when they were just as heart-broken and lost as she was.
And so Thomas became angry.
He was angry at his mom for leaving him to deal with it. He was angry with his dad for dying and leaving them alone. He was angry with Jenna for getting all the special treatment. He was mad at the world for taking his dad away, for leaving him behind to pick up pieces of a shattered heart that would never- could never- be whole again. But most of all, Thomas was simply mad at himself.
“Thomas?”
Jenna's soft voice broke Thomas from his rumination. With a sigh, he twirled his spoon in the soggy mess his cereal had become.
“Did you know that most Monarch Butterflies only live for two-to-six weeks?” she didn’t look at him while she spoke.
Thomas was silent for a moment. “I don’t care about stupid Monarch butterflies.”
School passed with all the urgency of a turtle crossing the road. Thomas felt each moment like an individual grain of sand, slowly falling in an hourglass. He felt distracted; something was bothering him, but he wasn’t sure what.
He tapped his pencil against his face. Tap tap, tap-tap. Then, with all the grace of an elephant riding a unicycle, it hit him. Tap tap, tap-tap. Goosebumps prickled at the back of his neck. The tune of Jenna's hum.
Where had she learned it? And why did it bother him so much?
It was just a stupid song. She probably learned it from a TV show on her tablet. But still….for some reason, it gave Thomas the creeps.
The bell rang, startling Thomas out of his thoughts. He dropped his pencil, and it rolled off his desk and across the linoleum floor, hitting a cabinet behind him with a gentle clang. Thomas huffed, stuffing his folder and notebook into his bag before standing. Turning on his heels, he walked the few steps to retrieve his fallen pencil and nearly gasped.
A butterfly perched on his pencil. It had the markings and size of a Monarch, but the color was wrong. To call it colorful would be an understatement; it’s wings were like rainbow stained glass, segmented out, yet almost shifting with color. In fact, just looking at it straight on made it seem sort of blurry and indistinct. As if it were there, yet not there at all.
But the strangest part, the part that had Thomas holding his breath, immobile in the back of his sixth grade science class, was the humming that seemed to drift through the air. It was distant; as if it were drifting in from the hallway, getting closer and closer. It felt like a prickling whisper on the nape of his neck, spreading down his back and over his shoulders in a symphony of goosebumps that covered his body in the sensation of fear.
“Thomas?”
“Huh?” Thomas replied, twisting around to face his science teacher, Mrs. Smith, a portly woman in her early sixties. He took an inconspicuous deep breath in an effort to slow his heart.
“Are you doing okay?” the scent of her powdery perfume was suffocating.
“Yeah, sorry,” he said, throwing a glance over his shoulder. The butterfly was gone. “Saw a spider,” he lied. “I wanted to know what kind it was, so I was trying to remember what it looked like. So I could look it up later.”
“Oh my,” Mrs. Smith exclaimed, bringing a hand to her chest. “A spider in my classroom simply won’t do. What did it look like?”
Thomas stuttered. “Um,” crap. “it, um, it ran off before I could get a good look at it,” he shifted his weight. “But I think it was brown.”
“Well I will be sure the school looks into an exterminator. Thank you, Thomas.”
With that she walked away, taking her smelly old lady perfume with her. Thomas turned back around, fingers already reaching for his pencil, but he paused.
His pencil was gone.
That night after dinner Thomas sat on the porch outside, playing his Switch. Jenna played nearby, sitting in a patch of flowers with her dolls. A blanket of fading light flooded the earth, washing the world in hues of golden red and gentle orange, and it felt to Thomas as if he were sitting in an ocean made entirely of dying light. Crickets chirped and cicada’s screamed around them, and in the distance, a few crows cawed their nightly songs.
A notification pops up on the Switch’s screen. Low Battery, 5% remaining. He saves his game, pressing the power button and setting the device down on the wooden steps beside him. He wants to put it on the dock to charge, but going inside would mean talking with the elderly neighbor left in charge of him and sister, and it was hard enough convincing her to let him have the Switch at all. “You darn kids and your electronics, she would say. Back in my day, all we had for toys was a stick and some string! And we were lucky enough if our parents even let us back in the house at night! Now go outside! Don’t come in ‘til it's too dark to see!” Thomas chuckled. Well, maybe she didn’t say exactly that, but it was close enough.
It was nearly dark now as Thomas stood, stretching. He glanced over to the patch of wildflowers that Jenna had been playing in to find it empty, save for the dolls. The swings and play-set were also eerily vacant. “Jenna,” Thomas called, cupping his hands around his mouth. “It’s time to go inside!” No answer. She's gotta be in the tree house.
“Jenna!” Thomas shouted again, as he approached the tree house’s ladder. “Come on! We gotta go inside before mom gets home.” Silence.
“Jenna?”
Crack.
“…Jenna?” Thomas repeated. The awful cracking noises continued. The sound made Thomas think of his elderly neighbor, and how her bones cracked and popped with nearly every movement. Thomas took a step back. “Jenna…Jenna can you come down here please?”
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The horrible sound grew louder and louder, morphing into a cacophony of crunching and grinding, filling up Thomas's ears, hammering into his head. It was too much, way too much. The bone-breaking filled his head, shoving everything else out until that’s all there was, until he felt his own skull cracking, breaking apart, flowering forth in an effort to create space where there was none left to take.
At first Thomas slammed his hands to his ears to drown it out. He quickly realized that it did nothing to stifle the sound. But he kept his hands there, because if he didn’t, if he let go, he was sure his head would give in to the pressure and break apart, shattering. He was sure his hands were the sole barrier between whole and split, together and apart, and if he let go, there would be nothing left to hold on to. Just as Thomas was sure he couldn’t hold it together, that the sound had already fractured his skull, the cracking abruptly stopped; leaving behind only a faint humming melody that faded out into the sound of Jenna's tiny voice.
“…Thomas?”
With an aching slowness, Thomas let his hands drop and opened his eyes. His head felt like a jackhammer, and his eyes stung with a prickling sensation that beckoned forth irritated tears. On the other side of the tree stood his little sister, her big eyes looking up at him. She was chewing on her fingernails, twisting her body side to side in a sort of little dance she's always done. Whatever Thomas had heard, she seemed unfazed. Had she not heard it?
Thomas sucked in a breath to speak, but stopped just before. His eyes trailed along behind Jenna, watching the colorful blur drift across the current of air. It came from behind the tree, fluttering slowly, and disappeared behind Jenna’s head. It didn’t re-emerge.
Thomas decided that, for once, he would like to go to bed early tonight.
Thomas woke with a start, his body shooting up before he even had time to open his eyes. He was in his room, in his bed, but something was off; something was different.
Pushing his blanket away, he pressed his feet against the cold floor. The pounding in his head drummed out a steady rhythm against his skull, in time with his quickened heartbeat. He felt hot and cold at the same time, a viscous mix of slush and lava flowing through his body.
He walked to his door and grasped the handle, the metal knob burning and freezing the flesh of his hand as he twisted it. The door creaked open, and sunlight poured into the room like water from a broken dam. He stepped through the door.
Thomas stood in the gravel of his drive-way. It was empty, void of vehicles, of noise, of life. Little rocks dug into the soles of his feet, each and every tiny stone leaving a painful sting as he made his way down the drive-way, each step reverberating in his ear like a second heartbeat. A dark rectangle stood at the end of the approach, and as Thomas drew closer, he realized that it was a door. His front door, to be exact.
Apprehension gripped at his spine as his fingers curled around the doorknob. Twisting it, he pulled the door inwards and was bathed in lavender light.
Thomas found himself standing in his driveway. He felt the gravel push into his feet as he walked down the car-trodden path. The door stood at the end, just like before, but this time the cawing of crows filled the air, and the sky was a light red-tinged purple. A few clouds hung as if suspended, but instead of a soft white, they were a sickly shade of blue.
He reached for the doorknob. When his fingers found it, a heavy thud sounded behind him. Thomas whirled around, and there, at his bare feet, was the body of a crow, broken and bloody. Then another crow fell. Then another. And another, and another, until it was raining dead birds. Their bodies smacked against the ground with a squelching wetness and the crunch of bones breaking.
Thomas ripped the door open and barreled through, his breath coming in little ragged gasps as he felt the pointed stones under his feet cut into his flesh. Again, he found himself in the drive-way. Cicadas screamed a shrill note, but the pitch and volume never fluctuated, never stopped. Above, the sky was the color of a bruise; purple, splotchy, and patterned with clouds the color of pale blue. In the distance, Thomas could hear the rumble of an engine, growing louder and more defined the closer he came to the door. When he reached it, the door was ajar.
As he stepped through, the rumble of the engine abruptly cutoff. Silence permeated the air like a heavy blanket, almost tangible in its weight. It was as if Thomas had stepped into a soundproof bubble.
A truck sat near the end of the driveway, the drivers side door wide open. He felt a deep sense of despair grip at his heart as he walked, unable to stop himself, unable to will his legs to stop, to slow down. His feet bled now as he walked, the sticky wetness clinging to the gravel. Blonde hair poked out from the side of the truck.
“…Jenna?” he called out. His voice shook.
Jenna didn't respond. Thomas approached her, even though he didn’t want too, even though he knew what waited for him. No, no, no, he thought. I can’t go through it again. Warm tears dripped down his face as he finally came to a stop next to Jenna. He took her hand, but it felt wrong. It was cold, too cold, and stiff. Her fingers cracked as they folded over his hand. Without looking down, down at what…who… he knew would be there, he glanced at Jenna.
Her face was ghostly white. So pale in fact, that Thomas could see each vein running under the surface of her skin. Slowly, oh so slowly, Jenna turned her head towards him, her bones creaking and groaning and popping as she did so. Finally, her big blue, clouded eyes met his, and she spoke:
“Did you know that Monarch butterflies like to eat the dead?”
Her voice sounded so wrong. It was as if it were grating against her throat as she spoke, as if she put great effort into forcing the words past her tongue. Thomas tried to free his hand from her death grip. He pulled, twisted, and yanked, but it was to no avail. Jenna didn’t budge an inch, her hand firmly tightened around his. Tears poured from his eyes in torrents, and he was vaguely aware of the pleading words that left his lips. Things like “please,” and “let go,” and “I’m sorry, please.” But Jenna didn’t let go. No, instead, Jenna smiled.
“You see, Thomas,” she started. The smile on her blueish lips never faded as she spoke. “They need the salt, the amino acids, the extra nitrogen. These things are important for them, so they can have babies.” she paused. “We have to feed them, Thomas. We have to feed her, so she can feed her babies.”
“I…I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Thomas sobbed. “Please, Jenna, please let me go.”
Jenna's smile faded into a frown. “Look at him, Thomas.”
Thomas shook his head. “No,” he whimpered.
“Look. At. Him.”
Her words came out as a growl, each word punctuated deeper then the last. A growl that was much, much to deep, to animalistic, to have come from a five year old girls mouth.
Thomas shook his head. “Please don’t make me,” he whispered.
“LOOK. AT. HIM. LOOK AT HIM LOOK AT HIM LOOK AT HIM LOOK AT HIM LOOK AT HIM LOOK AT HIM LOOK AT HIM!”
She shook her head side-to-side as she screamed these words, her blonde hair waving slowly through the air as if underwater. The words and the bone-cracking filled Thomas's head- no, they filled Thomas himself, bursting through him, becoming him. Unwilling, Thomas looked down.
There lay his father, a deep shade of purple and sickly blue that matched the sky. A flutter of prismatic butterflies covered most of his body, flapping their wings as the crawled slowly over him. Thomas grimaced, moving to swat the insects away, to remove them from his father, but Jenna's vice-like hand tightened painfully and Thomas cried out. And that’s when he noticed the eyes.
His father’s eyes that had been staring up into the clouds that day were now instead locked onto Thomas's.
A scream welled up from the pit of Thomas's stomach. He flinched back, falling onto his back as Jenna finally let go of his hand. He opened his mouth and sucked in a breath, but no sound emerged. At that same moment, Jenna stood over him. When she opened her mouth a scream, his scream, spilled from her mouth in an angry volley of sound. And then the butterflies bled from her mouth like an open wound.
They crammed themselves into Thomas's mouth, peeling away at Jenna's form bit by bit, layer by layer until there was nothing left but the echo of a scream.
Thomas awoke to the sound of his own screaming. Something hard and slighty sharp dug into the soles of his feet, and as he opened his eyes, he realized where he was.
He was in the driveway.
Standing in that spot. Looking down at the gravel where his father had died.
Had he been sleepwalking? Thomas had never sleepwalked before, at least, not that he’s aware of. He rubbed at his eyes, and was only mildly surprised when his hand came away wet.
Thomas had never had a nightmare like that. It felt so terrifyingly real, so horribly life-like, that he was almost convinced that he would look up and the sky would be purple again.
But when he summoned the courage to glance up, the night sky was the same as ever; dark, starry, the sliver of the moon barely visible amongst the sparse clouds.
Tears rolled down his cheeks as he carefully made his way back into the house, and Thomas was powerless to stop them. His mom’s car was still gone- which wasn’t too strange, sometimes she picked up nightshifts- but the neighbors car was also missing; and living nearly a mile away meant that she drove here, and meant that she would have stayed here until his mom came home. So, where was she?
He made it to the base of the stairs before he realized his feet were bleeding. Pausing, he thought about what he should do. Should he try to clean and bandage them himself? After a minute of deliberation, Thomas realized he didn’t care that much. He was too exhausted to care. He would clean them in the morning, he decided, then he would make pancakes, because that’s what his mom did for him when he had a bad night, and though he hasn’t had a bad night in a while, she’s rarely around enough anyway.
Climbing the stairs at a snails pace, wincing slightly as the cuts stung against the pressure, Thomas wondered what a dream like that could mean. Do butterflies really eat dead things? Would that be something Jenna would even know? She knows basically everything about butterflies. But they’re butterflies; there’s no way that’s true anyway. It was just a nightmare, he told himself, repeating the words his mom would tell him a few years ago. And that’s all it will ever be.
When he reached the top of the stairs, he paused. A sliver of rainbow light flickered against the wall just opposite of Jenna's bedroom. The colors moved as if dancing; swaying and whirling within the light. There was no discernable shapes to them, but they reminded Thomas of stained glass as the sun shone through. Keeping as quiet as a ten year old could possibly manage, Thomas crept down the hall to his sisters bedroom.
Like the night before, as soon as Thomas reached her bedroom door the colorful lights ceased. He pushed the door open, and it creaked out a slow reply.
Flashbacks of his nightmare bubbled up into his mind as he approached Jenna, who stood with her back to him. She face the open window, her shoulders slumped, humming that tune louder and much clearer than the previous night. He reached a trembling hand out, trying to stifle images of cloudy-eye, blue-lipped Jenna. Before he touched her, the humming abruptly stopped.
He froze, hand still outstretched, fingers shaking . “…Jenna?”
“Did you know that Monarch butterflies like to eat the dead?”
Jenna's words were like an icy finger on the back of Thomas's neck. Goosebumps rose along his flesh. “Where…where did you learn that?”
“The Butterfly Maiden taught me,” she said this matter-of-factly, her voice reflecting a strange joy and an even stranger longing. “I told you she was real, but you didn’t believe me. You believe me now though, right?”
“I-,” Thomas began. He paused. There’s no way this “Butterfly Maiden” was real, right? But then, how had Jenna said exactly the same thing she had said in his nightmare? Maybe she had said it to him already. Maybe he just forgot. But the butterfly’s…He had seen the butterfly's, and he couldn’t explain that. “I d-don’t know,” he stammered.
She was silent for a few moments. Thomas felt rooted to the floor; most of him wanted to leave Jenna's room, go to his own, and huddle beneath his blanket until his mom got home. The other part of him wanted to grab Jenna and shake her, tell her to stop, that the Butterfly Maiden wasn’t real.
“You should go to bed. Tomorrow’s the last day.”