Excessica Anthology BOX SET Winter (77 page)

BUTTERFLY BOY

By Erin O’Riordan

I
sat perfectly still. Or, as perfectly still as a human being can while sitting
cross-legged on a flat wooden bench in Shiojiri Nawa. At that moment, the
butterfly landed on me.

The
way he flew should have been my first clue. Butterflies flit; they dip and
dive, they meander, they stroll. They never travel in straight lines. The
unexpected butterfly came at me much too directly, much too purposefully.

If
I hadn’t been so utterly lost in meditation at the moment, oblivious to the
garden around me, I would have remembered the zigzag bridge. Its crooked lines
were meant to throw off evil spirits who, according to Japanese legend, could
only move in straight lines. When a mortal wanted to elude them, she could
cross the zigzag bridge safely, while the spirit would be diverted into the
water.

There
was no
literal
water in Shiojiri Nawa. Ocean waves were represented by
carefully raked and shaped white pebbles. The bridge, like the pebbles, was
only a metaphor, a symbol. I wish I’d been reading the signs and symbols
instead of elevating my consciousness beyond them.

So
the butterfly came to me in its linear, non-butterfly-like way, and landed on
my wrist. Even in my meditation, I felt its six tiny legs alight. I looked
down, snapped back to reality, and noticed my a new, living corsage.

When
he folded his wings, I could see the undersides were a rather dull brown, like
dead leaves. This was his camouflage. When he opened his wings, he was a
dazzling blue color.

“What
kind of butterfly are you?” I asked aloud. I was accustomed to monarchs, the
usual assortment of yellow and white moths, and the occasional black butterfly.
I’d never in my life seen such a vivid blue on a living creature. It was like
the sky reflected in the ocean. I made up my mind to ask Janette.

As
quickly as he had appeared, the butterfly was gone.

Thus
distracted, I left off meditating for the morning and walked through the park,
onto the main thoroughfare, and to the public library. I found Janette behind
the reference desk, where she worked.

“What
do you know about butterflies?” I asked her.

“Nothing,”
she said, pushing a bracelet of chunky beads up her wrist. Except for her
tortoise-shell reading glasses, Janette didn’t look like a librarian. She
looked more like somebody’s sexy grandmother. “I mean, nothing much. I do have
a rather nice field guide…they call it a Fandex, because it fans out.”

As
quickly as I could follow her, she was out from behind the desk and zipping
down the aisle. Swiftly she found the oddly-shaped book, more like a series of
butterfly-shaped postcards held together with a single plastic fastener at the
bottom.

I
took the Fandex and leafed through it until I saw the picture of the butterfly
that had landed on my wrist in the park.

Underneath
a photo of the insect’s golden body and leaf-colored wings, the text read, “
Morpho
menelaus
: Blue Morpho.”

“Blue
Morpho?” I said. “Aren’t those supposed to be kind of rare? And tropical?”

“What
does the Fandex say?” Janette replied. I turned the page over and read the
butterfly’s vital statistics. Wingspan of five to six inches, first described
by Carl Linnaeus, yadda yadda yadda, range including Central and South America.

Huh.
Shiojiri Nawa in northern Indiana was a long way from the rain forests of
Central and South America.

“You
were a long way from home, buddy boy,” I remarked to the long-departed
butterfly.

Janette
laughed slightly. “Are you saying you saw a Blue Morpho?”

“I
did see one, at the Japanese garden,” I said. “It landed on my wrist while I
was meditating.”

“That’s
impossible,” Janette said. She took the Fandex out of my hands and reshelved
it. “Even in this weather, a Blue Morpho couldn’t possibly find the exact
species of flowers whose nectar it needs to survive.”

“Maybe
it was an escaped science project,” I said. “You know, like a hothouse
butterfly.”

She
nodded her head. “That’s possible.”

I
thanked her for her help and went home to make some plum tea. As I sipped my
tea, I nearly forgot about the beautiful butterfly. He came back to me in my
dreams.

I
thought I heard a slight noise at my window. Slight, yet still enough to wake
me from a sound sleep. I got out of bed and went to the window, glad the
weather was still warm despite the late hour. Just outside the glass it
hovered. The Blue Morpho.

"You
followed me home," I said to the butterfly. I opened the window, expecting
it would fly away. Instead, the butterfly waited. As soon as I had the window
secured and the curtain pushed firmly to the side, the butterfly flew in
through the open window. I watched it flutter over to my bed, then land on top
of my thin, pink sheets.

Cautiously,
I approached. The moonlight was low, but the butterfly's golden body was
plainly silhouetted against the pastel sheets. I saw its long antennae, its
black eyes, and even the long, curling tendril of its nectar-sucking mouth
parts.

"You
shouldn't be here," I told the butterfly. "You're not from around
here, and anyway, the Fandex said you fly during the daytime."

The
butterfly's body began to shake. The tiny quiver became a tremor, and soon my
whole bed was shaking. Before my startled eyes, the butterfly's body grew,
stretching and changing shape. A hand emerged, then an arm. Another arm, then a
leg, then another leg. Incredibly, the human figure emerging from what had been
the Blue Morpho wore black pants and black boots. The leaf-like wings became a
brilliant, bright-blue shirt; it looked as if the figure—clearly a
man—were dressed in a piece of the midday sky. He raised his head, and I
was staring at the handsome face of a young man whose eyes were so brown they
were almost black.

“I
knew you weren’t really a butterfly,” I said, mostly thinking out loud.

He
laughed. “Sometimes a butterfly, sometimes a bat, sometimes a wolf.” His accent
matched his looks: Southeast Asian. When he smiled, I caught a glimpse of very
large, very white canine teeth.

“Cute,”
I said. “This is a Halloween joke, right? A little sleight of hand with a fake
butterfly, some scary dentures, and I’m supposed to think there’s a vampire in
my room, right?”

The
smile disappeared from his face. “Joke? My name is Tsuyoshi, and I have lived
for more than five centuries. I came here from Shiojiri, your sister city, in
search of fresh blood.”

I
felt a new sensation: fear, a deeper fear than I’d ever known in my life. I
tried to flee, but it was impossible. My limbs were paralyzed. There was no
escape as Tsuyoshi moved closer, baring his fangs. I felt a chill and assumed
it was from the open window, but the night was hot. The cold was coming off
Tsuyoshi’s body
¾
the chill of the grave.
I couldn’t even scream as his fangs sunk deeply into my neck.

I
awoke with my heart racing and my chest heaving. “Nightmare,” I said out loud
to myself. I rolled over and tried to get back to sleep, telling myself I
wouldn’t have to return to the nightmare. If I had any more dreams that night,
I can’t remember them.

I
can clearly remember what happened the next weekend, on my next visit to
Shiojiri Nawa. I was meditating once again. As much as I tried to calm myself
and focus on the peaceful environs of the garden, every time I closed my eyes I
was flooded with violent images of cold-blooded beasts with bared fangs
dripping blood. I kept remembering the nightmare I’d had, but my memories were
more terrifying than the dream had been. Even as I sat in the lightly shaded
garden on a hot summer day, chills wracked my body.

My
unpleasant meditations were disrupted when something landed on my toes. I
looked down at my sandals and saw my toes were covered over with a bright red
flying disc. I looked around, but the thrower was nowhere to be seen.

I
heard him before I saw him; he came in through the back gate and up behind me.
I turned to see his approach. He wore long, red basketball shorts, a white
t-shirt soaked in sweat, and a red headband holding back his heavily gelled,
spiky black hair. Though he was dressed like a teen, he was at least my age,
twenty-four.

“Hey,
have you seen my flying disc?” he asked me. I picked it up and held it up for
him to see. “Thanks,” he said as I handed it back to him.

“I
didn’t think anyone else was in the garden today,” I said. “I wouldn’t want my
meditation to get in the way of your game of catch.”

He
snorted slightly, catching the note of sarcasm. “Actually, my friends and I are
playing in the park across the street. This one was a wild throw.”

“Wow,”
I said. The disc must have flown at least sixty yards. “Nice arm.” He did have
nice arms, with thick, toned biceps. The sleeves of his shirt showed them off
nicely; I couldn’t help but notice.

He
shook his head. “Nah, I didn’t throw it. It was my friend Rick. I’m Jake, by
the way.” He tucked the disc under his arm before offering me his hand.

“Lacey
Burke,” I said as we shook.

“I’ve
seen you around here before,” he said. “You like the Japanese garden, don’t
you?”

“It’s
my favorite place to meditate.”

“I
know what you mean. The park’s my favorite place to kick back and catch some fresh
air and sunshine, you know?”

“I’ve
never noticed you before,” I said honestly.

He
chuckled. “Well, since your focus is kinda scattered at the moment, and your
meditation’s kinda ruined, want to play with my friends and me? We’re going to
go get burgers in a while.”

A
cocked my head. “Are you asking me out, Jake?”

He
smiled. He had a nice smile. “I guess so, Lacey. Come on, I’ll introduce you to
my friends.”

I
followed him across the street and into the open field across the parking lot
from the city pool. Jake’s two friends arm-wrestled on a park bench while they
waited for him to return with the disc. One was another guy, and the other was
a woman.

“Who’s
your new friend?” the woman asked as she spotted Jake.

“I’m
Lacey,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”

She
introduced herself as Beth. The guy, I soon learned, was her boyfriend Rick. We
stood in a square and threw the flying disc around for a while, until it got
away from us and landed in the river, aided by a sudden draft. Despite Jake’s
valiant attempts to rescue it at the boat launch, the flying disc was gone.
Jake fell, face-first, into the water, but managed to stop himself before his
whole body went in. Only his upper half got a soaking. I thought Beth and Rick
were going to die laughing.

“I
need to go home and change before we go to the restaurant,” Jake told his
friends. “You two go ahead; I’ll meet you there. Lacey, do you want to meet us
there?”

“Sure,”
I said. I was pretty hungry when I thought about it.

Jake
told me he and his friends were going to the Starlight Café, two miles north.
He gave me his cell phone number, then walked off down the street. I took it he
lived nearby.

“We’ll
see you at the restaurant,” Beth said to me. I waved goodbye. As I turned to
begin my walk home, I heard her say to Rick, “Do you know if Tsuyoshi will be
joining us?”

I
stopped in my tracks. “Tsuyoshi?” I asked out loud.

“Yeah,”
Rick said. “He’s our other best friend; he’s usually here at the park with us.
Why, do you know him?”

“No,”
I said. “I’ve never met anyone named Tsuyoshi. It’s just that
¾
” What was I going to say next? That I’d had
a dream about a butterfly-vampire with the same name? They would have thought I
was crazy. “It’s just an unusual name, that’s all.”

“He’s
from Japan,” Rick said. “Shiojiri, actually. That was how we met…he loves to
hang out at the park named after his hometown, which happens to be where we
hang out.”

Even
though it was a hot day, I was chilled to the bone. “Are you all right?” Beth
asked as she watched me shiver.

“Yeah,”
I said, waving off her concern. “I was thinking about having a cold soda, full
of ice cubes, and I got a chill.”

“That
does sound good,” Beth said. “See you at the Starlight.”

As
I walked home, I told myself it was a bad idea to meet Jake and his friends at
the restaurant. I picked up my cell to call Jake and tell him I’d had a change
of plans, but I couldn’t go through with it. While half of my brain was
screaming I was walking into a trap, the other half of my brain told me I was
being ridiculous, that I couldn’t live my life according to wacky dreams I had
in the middle of the night. Besides, the more logical half of my brain argued,
Jake seemed like a nice guy, and I wanted to see where the Jake thing was
going.

I
changed into something cute, but not too flirty. When I found Jake’s table, he
was there sipping a tall glass of lemonade. Beth and Rick drank coffee out of
the café’s old-school white ceramic cups. Tsuyoshi, apparently, hadn’t showed
up. I sat down next to Beth, across from Jake, at the round table and ordered a
diet soda when the server came by.

“You
made it,” Jake said to me, leaning on his elbow and smiling. He had a nice
smile. I felt flutters in my stomach, but I wasn’t sure whether I was
developing a crush on Jake or worrying about Tsuyoshi. I reminded myself
nightmares weren’t real.

“I
wouldn’t have missed it,” I said. “I’m getting hungry, and a Starlight pizza
burger would really hit the spot.”

“That
sounds great,” he said, “but I have a special place in my heart for the green
olive and bleu cheese burger.”

“Me,
too,” Rick said.

“I
like the portabella sandwich with hummus and sprouts,” Beth said. When the
server re-appeared with my soda, Beth ordered first, getting her vegetarian
sandwich with a side salad. Next I ordered the pizza burger.