Insecticide

Epilogue 

I was having my brain removed. A sheet covered my whole body, even my face. I suppose it’s unsettling for students to catch sight of the face because it would make the object on the table seem too human. I have heard, however, that it isn’t the face as much as it is the hands that give medical students pause. They reflect on all the discussions the hands punctuated, the pets they patted, and the babies they caressed and it makes them sad.  

I was only 29 when I ended up on that table. As a little girl, I hoped I’d make a fantastic old lady — not a typical old lady who was friendly, polite and owned a lot of cats; I was going to be the kind of old lady who met friends for lunch at upscale coffee shops in university towns. I was going to live in the city and have exciting conversations. Now, I was a deceased curiosity. 

Egg 

The breeze pulled away the salty sweat running down my back. My face was warm — not the uncomfortable warm of a busy kitchen, but the cozy warm of a sun-kissed morning; I suspected I was going to get a dastardly sunburn and, in the future, I would be able to follow my lined skin to exactly this moment, but for right now, it felt too good to care. I was 16 and I was on vacation.  

When I looked at my feet, the blue beneath shimmered, and when I focused my attention on the blueness, I could see dark patches beneath the blue. Was that a stingray? I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I sat with my feet dangling. Time didn’t seem to pass. It was just my feet and the blue and the stingray and the sun and the springy embrace of the swing-like harness. I smiled. 

Without warning, the harness jolted me upward then crashed me down, shaking me from my feet and the stingray. I looked toward the boat. 

I could see Toni below, her red hair drawn back as the wind played with it, making her look ridiculously dramatic. I started to feel a little queasy and I wondered why it was so cold all of a sudden. Why was the wind so loud? Did I just go up higher? The boat looked strangely smaller! I didn’t even want to look at my feet now and I could hear my heart in my head! I never hear my heart in my head! 

Larva 

I woke to stabbing back pain. I figured it was probably from the accident — some sort of bruising that the constant throbbing in my head had masked. I got up to find my medication. 

I squinted my way to the bathroom, flipped on the light, pulled up my shirt and contorted myself to look at my back in the medicine cabinet mirror. Instead of a bruise, I saw something so weird that I looked away and waited for my eyes to adjust to the light. 

When I looked again, I saw a black, nubby, moist protrusion, like the tip of a hellish budding tulip, sticking out of my shoulder. It looked like some sort of insect part. I held in a scream and closed my eyes, hoping it wouldn't be there, but when I re-opened them, it was not only there, it was moving! And worse, it was me who moved it.  

I screamed. 

My mother and sister crashed through the bathroom door. For some reason, I grabbed a robe from the hook next to the mirror and covered my gory back.  

"What happened?” asked Toni, her voice shaky with worry.  

Before I could reply, my mother pushed in.  

"Are you hurt?" she questioned.  

"Everything's fine. I-I-I thought I saw a spider," I stammered.  

"Oh my God! Is it gone?” panicked my sister, while my mother's face morphed from concerned to repulsed.  

"I probably imagined it," I improvised, and pushed through my mother and sister in a rush to my room. 

Closing the door behind me, I heard a voice in my head ask, “Why did you lie?" I had no answer, but I did know Toni felt bad taking me on a parasailing trip with a less than reputable company during iffy weather, and my mom felt guilty because she was at her company’s conference instead of with us. Their anguish gave me leeway.  

I turned on my room’s lights and ripped off the robe, discarding it onto my bed. I rushed to look into my closet's full-length mirror, slowly lifting my shirt while turning. I looked at the floor so I wouldn't see the thing all at once. I hoped that it wasn't there. That it was a result of head trauma. 

No luck. It sat there smugly like it was a part of me, like my hair or teeth or arms.

I turned away from the mirror and wept on my bed, "How am I going to hide this thing? What are people at school going to say?” 

Pupa 

I fell into bed, pulled the covers over my head and cried myself to sleep.  

My alarm sounded. I pulled back the covers and tried to swing my feet around to the floor but I felt a pinch in my back and fell backward. Leaning on my elbows, I looked over my shoulder and took in the full horror of a long wet wing tangled in the covers. I had forgotten all about the episode in the bathroom last night and felt my throat tighten in panic. I disentangled and held out the limp, damp monstrosity before me. “Oh my God, what am I going to do?” I dragged myself and the grossness to the mirror. A new worry formed in my mind, “Where was the other one?" I swooped around to look at the other side of my back and saw a “bud” starting just as the other had yesterday.

Am I turning into some hideous insect? I put last night’s robe back on and slithered back into bed. I wasn't going to attempt school.  

My mother believed me when I said I was sick. 

I tried pulling the new grossness off me; I even tried scissors but I screamed in pain when I yanked at the things and the sting was unbearable when the scissor blades touched the leafy flesh. Finally, in complete frustration, I screeched: 

“You aren’t part of me!” 

"Shame them like you do the unpopular girls; that’ll work,” said the sarcastic voice in my head. "You’re one of them now! You’re the biggest freak of all and there is nothing you can do about it.”  

By afternoon, my second wing had sprouted as long as the first. I couldn’t move them, so they hung there moist and disgusting as I thought about how to disguise them.  

Adult 

My adult memories of these early wing days appear as kaleidoscopic fragments in my mind. Feelings, more than events, form my history. I remember that when I finally made it to school, the friends that were once cheerful and kind seemed angry and cruel. I mourned my lost "popular girl” identity and became a girl with a shameful secret. A girl with dragonfly wings.  

Dragonfly wings. Not butterfly wings, not angel wings. Dragonfly wings. And they worked. Sort of. I could unfurl them behind my back and move them but I never tried to fly.

Until today, my death day.  

Years of packing away my secret had taken its toll on both me and my unusual appendages. I couldn’t remember when I last laughed and I often heard myself moan in discomfort like someone twice my age. I decided it was time to see if these wings could fly. 

The balcony was the only part of my apartment large enough to accommodate my long fluttering wings. I figured it would be safe enough if I only tried to hover. Real flying could come later. 

I daintily entered the balcony. Most of the neighbourhood slept and the orange glow of streetlights punctuated the still darkness.

A  moist breeze rattled the trees below. Closing my eyes, I concentrated on moving my unbound wings. The strange appendages grew behind me as their creases vanished in a gossamer expanse. I heard a quiet hum and the flittering blur began pulling me upward. I exhaled the breath I realized I was holding just as a gust of wind pushed hard against me. I opened my eyes with a start; I had fluttered away from the balcony to hover perilously far above the street below.  

As I put all efforts into moving back to safety, an ache shot through my back, the enchanting hum stopped and I crashed to the ground. 

“Help is on the way. You’re going to be okay,” said a man holding my hand. 

“How are my wings?” I rasped. 

“Wings?” the man asked. “What wings?" 

I closed my eyes as my questions dissolved into darkness.