Chapter 5: 5 | Butterflies on an edge

Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. 

Hope can drive a man insane. 

—Stephan King, Shawshank Redemption

 

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Lying supine on the ground before me was a human, her serene, ethereal visage bathed in the pale silvery moonlight.

I found the unconscious girl after following a butterfly that I had momentarily brought to life with my new levenslied. It took me some time to get used to…but when boiled down to the fundamentals, creating life is as simple as simply reversing the process of killing life. Humans have this unique saying of ‘breathing life into’ an inanimate object to illustrate a positive vicissitude, don’t they? I guess it is actually not too far off from the principle behind Life’s power. 

But of course, creating life alone isn’t enough. Therein lies the limitation of Life’s power. Unlike the inevitability of death, life is a very fickle thing. The slightest shift in the precarious balance that enables the concept of life to exist can easily put an end to it. 

Perhaps this is why living beings tend to congregate and interact together. Perhaps instinctively, they know how fragile their individual existences are. They think that they will be more protected in a society rather than facing their threats alone.  

The butterfly, once it became alive and fluttered its delicate gossamer wings, behaved in this predictable fashion too. It flew in erratic circles, desperately seeking out another one of its kind in the desolate, barren city, until it was too exhausted and weak to continue. I gave it a push with my levenslied; after struggling to crawl up for a bit, it finally fluttered its wings again and flew aimlessly before dropping back onto the ground. 

This is clearly pointless, I thought to myself. Yet, there was something…addictive, I suppose, about giving life to something rather than taking life away. As I brought the butterfly back to life again and again, I mused on a famous human quote that goes along the lines of ‘the fool didn’t know it was impossible, so he did it’. Can I be considered the fool that is being described here right now? I’d blame Life for forcing on me hope for this hopeless world in the first place, then. 

But well, I have to admit that a small part of me truly wishes to see through my first and last promise to her.

I was so deeply engrossed in my thoughts that I didn’t notice the disappearance of the butterfly until I realised I was all alone. I paused and turned around, but its body was nowhere to be found along the eerily still and quiet street. 

“Butterfly?” I called out before chiding myself almost immediately. How did I become so attached to it in such a short amount of time? And what an awfully human thing to do…

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I slowly retraced my footsteps, listening for any signs of life. It wasn’t long till I heard a faint fluttering noise coming from an abandoned two-storey building along the street.

There didn’t seem to be any danger lurking inside, so I boldly entered through the crumbling entrance and lit a flame in my hand to illuminate the pitch-black foyer. 

The light reflected off lines of yellow caution tape and thick metal chains running along both sides of the foyer. A rusty sign in the centre read: ACHTUNG — MILITÄRZONE EINTRITT VERBOTEN

I stared at the sign, mildly bemused, before swiftly slashing the makeshift barricade apart with my scythe. Sparks flew, and the chains fell to the floor with a deafening crash. The dust cleared to reveal a rickety staircase leading upstairs and a corridor branching off to the left and right. 

I didn’t have to choose which way to go, however—the butterfly was perched on the edge of the staircase railing, flapping its wings softly as if it was waiting for me to follow it. But before I could make a move, it fluttered up the stairwell and disappeared. 

Putting my scythe away, I carefully walked up the steps to the second floor. The staircase ended in a pair of heavy steel doors, which led into a small, low-ceilinged room with a single window facing the courtyard. It was furnished like a hospital ward, I noted, with various medical instruments and machinery strewn about on the plastic-tarp-covered floor. There were also two corpses wearing white doctor coats sitting across the room by the window, holding each other in some sort of frozen embrace. Whatever happened in this room in their final moments must have satisfied them, I thought upon seeing their peaceful expressions. 

Glancing around at the surreal room, my gaze fell upon a body bag laid out in the centre of the room. Its blue plastic camouflaged against the blue plastic tarp covering the floor, so I didn’t notice it immediately. 

“Is this what you wanted to show me, butterfly?” I wondered aloud, looking for the butterfly in the room. However, there was no sign of it anywhere. I stared at the open window for a moment before returning my gaze to the body bag. It was nondescript, and I was certain that inside would contain nothing more than another dead body. 

“…oh?” 

I inadvertently made a surprised sound as I came face to face with the girl. Judging by her youthful complexion, she must have been no older than twenty. Her reddish-brown hair framed her petite face, complementing her freckles below her closed eyes. She had a pointy nose and chin, with thin, droopy lips that were pressed together lightly.  

But none of that was what caught me by surprise. I had to step back, draw my scythe and press the tip of the blade ever so lightly against her naked chest just to make sure I wasn’t imagining things. 

My scythe quivered with the rhythmic thumps of a heart beating. A heart that should have been dead.

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