The Red Butterfly by Lorrie Hartshorn

The Red Butterfly

Lorrie Hartshorn

There’s a man at the top of the stairs, and he smells like rotten meat. When he’s really angry, the whole house shivers. I keep my eyes on the ground and my hands on the door frame when I go from the kitchen to the lounge, and back again. I don’t want him to see me. I don’t want to know if he’s looking at me.

I think he blames me. The red butterfly appeared nine days ago, just after seven in the morning. I woke up early again, needing to use the loo for the third time since the night before, trying to get back to sleep and knowing I wouldn’t.

The heating wasn’t on but the bed was warm. Finally, though, I couldn’t wait, and that’s when I saw it. A red butterfly, rich and vital in colour, beautiful in its symmetry. The crawling in my belly moved down my thighs and buttocks, became a pain that doubled me over and made me retch. The cold air was a slap on the back of my legs where the nightshirt stuck and I reached for the phone under my pillow.

Back from the hospital, I went straight to the sofa and lay in the blankets that someone had placed there. The sofa under my face smelled fusty and the TV was too loud, so I switched it off. I waited for the high whistle of electricity to fade and, when it didn’t, yanked and wiggled the cord until the plug dropped down behind the cabinet.

The whistle continued. I threw the blankets off, glared at the TV. My belly felt bruised but I thought a hot cup of tea might help. The kitchen’s only across the way. I took one, maybe two steps, enough to reach the kitchen door before the cold feeling hit me, a dragging feeling near my bladder that sent spiders up and over my skin. In front of the window, at the top of the stairs, was a man.

He’s not an ordinary man. I knew straight away he was there about the butterfly. I could feel how angry he was without even going back out to the stairs; shivers of rage were rolling off him. I didn’t make tea. I stayed in the kitchen for a while, maybe a long while, trying to work out what to do.

I think it took me hours to move. When I finally stepped back through the door, I could tell he was still there but I didn’t know if he was looking at me. I noticed the smell, then, a sickly sweet, cloying smell that’s become more foul in the days since. Sometimes I smell that smell and hear the whistling and it becomes overpowering, and I retch.

I sleep on the sofa, now, when I sleep. I go to the kitchen when I have to and I can tell, now, just by the amount of light that shows round him from the window that he’s starting to come down the stairs. I dream about the red butterfly and, in my dreams, it stinks, filling my nose with its filth. I think about the shivering man and wonder what will happen when he reaches me.

-----

The Red Butterfly was featured in the first issue of Vagabonds. To read the full issue, take a look at our archives!

Bio: Lorrie Hartshorn is a writer, editor and translator living in Manchester, UK. By day, she edits books by independent authors and writes commercial copy about exciting things like micro-polymer processing. By night, she sleeps. Somewhere in between the two, she writes her own brand of short fiction and toys with the idea of a first novel