Dust from a butterfly's wings

A grey building of only thirty-four stories. Only. That is not much, isn’t it? Guess it depends on the attitude, or maybe point of view. The building is almost at the end of the huge avenue. Grand, pastoral, inviting. Early morning. Dawn perhaps. Or not? The colouring is to blurry. Sometimes it simse even as dusk. But it's not. It is early. Some would say to early and that there is plenty of time. Plenty of time for what? For anything and everything. But, time is irrelevant. The possibility of it's existence is minuscule.

Building is grey. Ordinary, almost dull. It is mostly in dark still. Few scattered lights are on. No people, walking in or out of it. Not a living soul. Or dead one, as a mater of the fact. Those windows don't even have any curtains. Nobody is moving inside. No sound. All is quiet maybe even erie. If you look, you can see everything. But, there is not much to see. Not to the naked eye, anyway. Not even with an open mind.

The tall man in a dusty black coat is aproching the buidling. He stopes in front of the entrance and slowly looks at the door. 

They open, he doesn't walk in. He just stands there. Waits…

He doesn't come closer. Nobody comes out. The man still waits…

More light turn on. Whole floors are lit.

He still waits…

Expressionless.

Nobody knew and nobody will ever find out either the tall man once, not that long ago, was thinking of stopping visits. His mind refused to cloak it’s body in the dusty black coat and to come to the building in the early morning. It seemed as dusk, not dawn, during those days. Thought still lingers somewhere deep within. Sometimes, they croll back into his mind…

 Then, all of the sudden, the whole building, all the windows are lit up. In a spectacle of light and colours, the man looks up the building and takes a deep breath.

Then he looks to the first row of windows. What the man sees are invisible pictures moving fast. So fast that no one else can see them. Not that is anybody else on the street but him. He is alone. He is always alone when he comes to the building. Or is it dusk? No-one can ever tell. 

It doesn't even matter. He is here, isn't he? That's what matters. Doesn't it? His mind is also full of questions. Clear, unclear, easy, complicated, a questions to which there is no answer to…

But he is here!

Lights in the first row are almost grey. Blurry. The man sees some shadows moving and assumes those are the shadows of people. It is as if looking at a damaged black and white movie. With no expression on the face, he looks to the second floor windows, where, one by one, lights lite up with rainbow colours and he sees people and animals, the dog, the small dog running around. All of the sudden, he smells something sweet and creamy. The man looks around but there is no store or café that could produce that sweet, familiar scent.

The moving pictures on the third row are clearer but still somehow foggy. They appear to be moving. Like old home made movies, full with broken sound and weird angles. But two adults are familiar. He knows them. He knows their smell. The sounds of their voices. The man can't understand the words that they are saying in those little movies, but he can clearly hear their voices. Soft, gentle, like Christmas bells… He can hear the dog. He somehow knows the name of the dog. The Dog. He can hear it's bark. And he can smell that sweet scent again, and he smells cinnamon…

The muscles on his face begin to soften, to lose their thight grip around his eyes and mouth. He is almost relax. He smiles faintly…

He doesn't know why but he does know that he can’t lower his guard and quickly shakes off any feeling that started to stir in him and he clenches his fists again and his face turns to stone. All the magic of scents, of colours is dispersed. He moves his stirn look to row number 4. And everything changes…

His body starts to crumble from inside out. Like he is being consumed by a black hole. He is sinking like he is been sucked into a vacuum. Until there is bare soul left. Hovering high in the air. Leveled with windows his soul look into to grey, black, white, pain, tears, incoprehension, fear, black mass levitating around a crying boy who looks around like he is searching for someone to hold his hand while the grey and black is falling down on him. 

The soul starts crying without eyes and without tears. 

And it cryes… 

Grey emptiness is flying through the windows while his soul retrives it's body with the sound of breaking bones.

He is again standing on the street in pain and convulsions. He doesn't want to see, but still looks up into little boy's grey sobriety.

But then it all changes. From grey to white. And he realises that white hurts even more. Now it's not his body and bones that are breaking, now it is his soul tearing it self into tousands of pieces… Every piece is flying up in the air into a different direction without help of any wind. Like they are trying to excape from him, far, far away, everywhere… Nothing can be done. He raises his hands to catch them, like catching butterflies. 

But, just like those elegant, gentle, lither then air insects, pieces of his soul elevate to skies, to clouds.

The only thing he can do is to look at them while they assend. Perhaps to Heaven or Galaxy or Universe or beyond, if beyond is out there. 

A squeaking sound draws his attention to level 6 second window. There is a picture of a little green bicycle with training weels. An old oak tree without leaves with a swing. And the wind. Gate. House. Road. Man leaving towards car…

Soulless, he watches as the windows light up one by one, as stories unreavel infront of him. An old patched school bag, a faint smile on smudged face of the woman, a feeling of acceptance, success, pride, akwardness, 'You are a big boy now', responabilities, tight skin, breathlessness, disdain, neglect, 'Leave me alone', windows are lighting up faster and faster and faster…

Pictures are folowing one another as fast as a butterfly's life. They are somehow familiar but he can't recall how, or from where, of why...

Then he starts to feel. The pain and agony of of a milion tiny specks of his soul returning into his body through his skin, eyes, hair… Sharp indefinitely long needles are pricking him and he screams, and screams as loud as he can. His hands starts to burn and the fire rise from his head and his hair. His brethe turns into a smoke. 

And pictures burn with him. And the building is in flames. Floors are melting, street is on fire like if the gates of Hell are wide open and inviting for all mankind. Exept there is no one on the parched street exept tall man in his black dusty coat. On fire!

Heat becomes unbearable but the fire is still burning…

Then the black hole sucks everything! Fire, smoke, smell.

And then silence. Fire is gone like it was never here. Air is fresh again. It smells like early morning or late evening. He can't tell. he can’t ever tell. He looks around and sees no one. Still alone. Looks up the buidling and... Black...

All windows are black. Not just ordinary black, colour of the night black, colour of velvet black, colour of deep water black, soft, inviting black… No, this is a different colour of black. This is black colour of emptiness. Black nothing. Vast nothing. Just nothing. 

So, the tall man is just standing there and watches nothing. Forever. Or for a second, because time is not there. It doesn't exist. Probably?

That question of time is the moment.

That is the moment that he remembers. It hits him like a Big Bang. Incomprehensible magnificent Bang. This must be how it feels like when someone realises God. Or when a newborn baby draws it's first breathe. Or when a butterfly dies. 

Black is when he chose to stop breathing. When he turned his back to God. If he ever even looked at God at all. Black is when the butterfly in his soul died. Black is when emptiness consumes him. 

Questions appeared on a tall mans face. If everything is black, if he is dead, how is it then that he is standing here in this burned street from Hell and looks in his life? In blackness of his life? 

Tall man a in dusty black coat stands there questioning everything. His whole life, every step he took, every picture he remembered, every decision he made od delayed and nonexisting Time starts moving. Like Perpetum mobile bigger then life time moves. And the light of the day and the Sun is followed by the darkness of the night and the cold ray of the Moon, and then dawn again, and light and Sun.. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock…

Last window glass starts shaking. Cracking until finally it explodes in a cloud of silicone dust. Particles disperse in the air and carried by the wind from inside of the building. A tiny little butterfly flaps it's wings inside and it's wings create the wind and that wind blows of dust from a man’s coat. 

The man looks to the windows and what he sees, he doesn't yet understand. But whatever is inside makes him smile. He takes of his coat and lets it drop on the ground. A little butterfly sprinkles him with coloured dust from it's wings. Invisible specs of colours fly everywhere around tall man.

There. He now counted them all. Exactly 1796 to the last. Not nearly enough. He must find more. There is plenty of time for searching. Especiallypecially now when time has resumed. After all, it is still early morning. The Sun is just rising up. 

He looks around him. Left. Right. Behind. He closes his eyes and tries to imagine what is above the last window, above the building. He shakes his head, as to detach himself of any crawling thought. Then he just turns around and starts walking. With a little butterfly on his back. He needs to live more. Build more floors. He has chose his new course.