Sonder

Wings of velvet. Soft as a feather.

Born to the ground, alive to the sky.

Light body, heavy heart.

Dead to its place of birth, 

and again the cycle will start. 

Hal’s wife had written the song when she saw a butterfly hatch from a cocoon, and now his wife and two kids wouldn’t stop singing it in the car. “Maybe we could pick a different song,” Hal suggested, yawning.

“No!” his seven year old daughter protested. “We wanna keep singin’.”

“What about the turtle song? You love the turtle song. ‘I had a little Turtle, His name was Tiny Tim. I put him in the bathtub, To see if he could swim--’”

“Boring,” his son screeched. 

Hal sighed and ran a hand through his graying hair. He cast an exasperated look at his wife who smiled warmly and gave him a kiss on the cheek. He nuzzled his chin against her shoulder affectionately. 

“Gross,” pestered the kids.

Hal shifted uncomfortably as his kids kept signing the morbid poem. 

“Why don’t you read your book, Tim?” Hal’s wife suggested, casting him an annoyed glance.

Tim crossed his arms. “It’s boring.”

Hal’s wife sighed and looked out the window. “Oh, look everyone. It’s a butterfly.”

Hal followed her gaze, slowing down the car. Sure enough, there was indeed a butterfly; a beautiful monarch, vibrant against the bright blue sky. But on one wing, there was a strange, large blue spot--likely a genetic mishap. The butterfly looked gentle in the breeze. Like a colorful leaf caught in the sway of the wind. Then, a cloud drifted over the sun and everything became dark again. Hal frowned.

He went to look back at the road, but instead only saw blaring headlights and heard the honking of a horn. “Oh shit--!”

The loud screech of metal made Hal’s family scream. They all lurched forwards in their seats. The windshield and all the windows shattered. Hal felt the airbag slam him in the chest like a boxing glove. He hollered, but the rest of his family was quiet. Next to his car was a semi truck with giant gashes in its side. The world spun in and out. The lights were too bright, the sound of metal still in his ears. He blacked out.

***

When Hal came to his senses, he was in an ambulance lying on a stretcher. Paramedics bustled around him with various tools that made him nervous. He tried to sit up, but was gently nudged back down. “My--my family.” Hal trembled, taking a breath to cough. “Are they okay?”

There was a pause still as death. “Please lay back and breathe, sir. You are going to be alright.”

Hal sat up, and this time no gloved hands would be guiding him back into a restful state. “Is my family okay? Tell me they’re okay…”

Another one of those foolish pauses. As if a delay could spare him of this.

Hal rubbed a hand over his face, brushing over his stubble. His knuckles drifted to that spot on his cheek where the sticky feel of his wife’s lipstick lingered. Abruptly, he flung himself off the stretcher and shakily wobbled around the room.

“Woah, woah, woah. Excuse me--”

Hal looked around frantically.

“Sir.”

Hal pushed right past the woman, but found that it was only him and the paramedics in the ambulance. 

“Sir! I’m going to need you to calm down. We did everything we could.”

Hal spun around and punched the woman. The other paramedics restrained him. The woman spat blood and shot an incredulous look at Hal. The other paramedics glared at Hal. He glared back, broke free, and opened the backdoor to the ambulance. When he leaped out of the ambulance, he hit the pavement like a belly flopper hits water: painfully. There was a terrible, cracking noise in his jaw. He couldn’t hear it, though, because his ears were ringing for the second time that day. He dragged himself to the side of the road and ran into the forest. The paramedics tried to chase him, but he was too quick. The forest was black and green and muddled in his vision. He could see his blood splattering on the dash and raining down. Taste the little bits of his son’s brain that had gotten in his mouth. He could feel his daughter’s spittle fly from her mouth and hit his forehead in a grayish, mucus-like blob. As his hearing returned, every snapping stick sounded like his wife’s bones breaking until her heart broke as well and she became a husk of a human. Just like the butterfly’s abandoned cocoon. The difference was, the butterfly had gone free in this world and Hal’s wife was dead.      

The butterfly.

The butterfly!

It was that stupid monarch’s fault. 

It had distracted him from the road, causing the car to crash, causing the death of his wife and two children. It was to blame. 

He would hunt it down--yes, that’s what he would do. 

He balled his hands into fists, cracked his neck, and clenched his jaw. His eyes narrowed as he scanned the forest. There was a rustling. He spun to face a bunny hopping into the shrubbery. There was a trickling. He looked down at the stream at his feet. There was a screech. He glanced up at the bird overhead. 

Then, he saw it. In a lone beam of golden sunlight streaming through the branches of a dead tree was a butterfly; a monarch. It had that same imperfection on its wing. Hal giggled with glee. He skipped after it with his fingers outstretched and groping. It fluttered along carelessly, swooping in a little dance around the flowers and leaves. Drool accumulated in Hals’ mouth and spilled out the sides down his shirt. He didn’t notice. 

All around him, the forest leaned away. The trees knew him because of all the wood furniture he kept in his house. The deer knew him because he had one of their heads mounted above his fireplace. Even the snails knew him because he had tried a taste of their distant cousins when he ordered escargot (only to spit them right back onto his plate, the snails might resentfully point out). But the butterflies...

The butterflies were not used to such discrimination. They had come to expect it of the others. But never of themselves. After all, what danger could a silky-winged insect--that spends its life eating leaves, hiding in a little pouch, then soaring in the breeze--pose to the world of men? ...Almighty men.

Hal bawled in agony from the absurdity of it all. He raked his nails down his face, and screamed. 

The forest shuddered. The trees creaked to the side. The deer stampeded away. The snails enveloped themselves within the leaves. But the butterfly…? The butterfly glowed brighter than ever, twirling and whirling--showing off its beautiful form for all the world to see because it was born in a circumstance where it needn’t be afraid. Too, it was born in a place where it needn’t know its blessing was such. Maybe a blessing, maybe a curse. Because in its presumably untouchable state, Hal still was able to swoop down with his beefy fingers and snag the butterfly right from the sky. It flapped helplessly. Hal’s eyes flashed red and his numb fingers tightened their grip right around that imperfection. Hal was going to rip off its wings. He was going to rip off its wings and leave it on the ground, rendering it a pathetic little worm once again. He was going to destroy everything it had worked and lived for, just as it had him. 

But then, from the treetops came a sound like the twinkling of a thousand bells: a swarm of butterflies. They swam through the air united to birth a mighty beast. Hal sneered as they went through their formations. It was only the children who were capable of recognising the butterflies as beautiful. If they weren’t here, he might as well despise them. More butterflies filtered in, appearing from behind leaves and around tree trunks and from Hal himself. He shivered and shook the creatures off of him. Together, the butterflies formed a massive cloud. And before Hal could blink, they were blocking out all the light in the forest and surrounding him in a whirling tornado. They spun around and around, squeezing tighter and tighter. Hal yelled at them to stop, but his voice was lost to the whirling of their wings. “Stop,” he cried.”

They wouldn’t listen.

“Stop!”

They brushed in his hair and around his limbs and into every orifice on his goddamn body. They were going to kill him! They were in his mouth and he couldn’t breath and--

And the butterflies stopped. They loosened their grip and backed up, settling into a still, watching wall. 

They were evil and they were tragic and horrible and awful and dastardly. 

They were magnificent.

Hal looked upon their soft, fragile bodies with respect. They were weapons. He had a hostage. They had aimed at his head, but they wouldn’t fire. They could have killed him, yet they didn’t. 

Beautiful.

He slowly opened his thumb and index finger. The butterfly with the imperfection flew free. 

Wings of velvet. Soft as a feather.

Born to the ground, alive to the sky.

Light body, heavy heart.

Dead to its place of birth, 

and again the cycle will start. 

Something within Hal clicked and he sunk to his knees sobbing. Was he not like a butterfly himself? Fragile in this universe. Doomed to carry around the pains brought about by his thoughts in a body too weak to handle them. Born a feeble worm to spend a lifetime ascending to the highest pinnacle of existence only to shrivel up, become weak, and die in a state similar to that in which he began. 

He had finally found it: his truth.

And now he was going to change the world.

Or, he would have had a bear not stepped out of the brush and devoured him whole. To himself, the bear thought: that’s what you get for killing my son when you crashed your car into my forest, asshole. Next time pay attention to the road. Some things can’t be forgiven.