Split Mind

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room. It was winter, but the butterflies didn’t seem to realize it yet. They moved aimlessly in corkscrew patterns behind the glass. She watched them as, one by one, they shivered under winter’s onslaught and dropped lifeless to the ground.

They should have known better. They should have known to flee south before winter disintegrated them. If she had wings and the liberty to use them, she’d be miles distant from here. She’d be stretched out below fragrant fruiting trees, drowsing in the aftermath of sunny days.

But there was no light to revive her, no sun or warmth to comfort. There was nothing but the window, a thin line between what lay outside and the other.

The skies hung heavy with potential storms. The trees were naked against the muddy daylight, and branches reached out to snare passerby. Outside, one’s face was slashed by the knives of wind until lines melted across one’s skin like scars. It created old age, hardened the skin into furrowed ridges as bloody as thorns.

Entropy broke reality into smaller and smaller bits. The pieces drifted down like snowflakes, a constant precipitation of might-have-beens. The bits didn’t last long, but she could pick them up and look at them in ephemeral glimpses - like sticking out her tongue and having the ice of winter melt on it in a brief, cold kiss. She opened her mouth to taste another life -

The girl wore her face. Her teeth were too white, her eyes bruised with a cosmetic hand. “Good morning,” she said to someone walking by, someone who saw nothing in the space she occupied. The words she spoke were empty, but behind each phrase was the sound of a coin dropping into the bank, the soothing clink of money piling up against the snarls. “Good morning,” she repeated to the next person and the next. She was background to the daily people who passed, a dog-eared corner on the page of their harried lives, until…

…the girl became the winter mirror. Her eyes were hollow, her cheeks lined with the cuts and slashes of the wind. The girl was a crone, dressed in white and pressed down into the smallest version of herself. Her arms hugged her thin sides as she crouched on the floor. The window was covered in bars. She whispered to herself, but one could not hear what she was saying unless one squatted down next to her and pressed an ear against her lips to feel the soft caress of breath.

“Good morning,” she said. Over and over again.

The vision faded into the window, and the butterflies died, superimposed over her image - the reflected features, the fathomless eyes that saw through the glass mirror of her prison. The other girl's life haunted her. All the other might-have-been lives that carried her face. She blinked, and the crone blinked back at her through the window

Despite the cold, she leaned against the door, exhausted with thinking in corkscrews. The door to her prison leaned back against her like a reluctant lover, pressing against her body, and she turned her face to it in relief. But even it rejected her - unexpectedly, it sprung away from her caress.

The prison gate - open. Winter beckoned like the blade of a knife.

Escape, it said.

Pulling a mask over her face, she sucked the molecules of warm air deep into her diver’s lungs, holding them tightly as the precious clock started ticking down. She took the first step through the door.

Outside, she stretched her legs, tapping down the frozen street in a grotesque dancer's pantomime. The gate was no longer guarded by the ugly and vicious Cerberus, who had lain his head down to sleep.

Until she heard a sound behind her back. The hunter, dressed in a white lab-coat, nipping at her heels.

Before, they put a butterfly in a jar. Now, they would stab it with a pin for display.

She ran.

The wind slashed her cheeks open so that blood ran from her face like tears. She would scream, but the shards would slip between her lips like knives, so she panted through wide, bleeding nostrils, a red trail of breadcrumbs left behind.

There were people, but they were frozen motionless on the walks, a row of antiquated statues. Their outlines were fluid with the shifting cold, resembling nothing so much as stationary cocoons, gently pulsing with a lack of motion. Someday, perhaps, a butterfly might emerge from these giant forms and fly to freedom. But not today. And not to help her.

She could feel the white coat man dogging her. Occasionally, there was a tug at her - fleeting claws grasping - but she twirled out of his deceptive embrace.

Buildings flashed by, odd assortments of glass and twisted metal, until she ran out of streets. There was only the mountain ahead, the trees leering. The hunter bayed, now that he'd tasted blood. She turned back briefly to look - the city disappeared as she ran past, only grasslands behind her, a wide open field containing nothing but brown stalks left over from an earlier season. As she watched, the grasses bowed down in a wave as something terrible forged a new path through the center of them.

She turned away and lifted her legs to their fullest as she picked up an extra burst of speed.

A short scream escaped her as she saw movement ahead of her, but when she realized what it was, her throat unclenched. The hunter was farther behind - these pursuers would not harm her. They were the insects, blue from the cold and attracted to the warmth of her passage.

She didn’t realize so many of them had survived this long. Sheets of butterflies appeared in a cold, mocking dance. They hovered over her like storm clouds, shifting and swirling in an ageless pirouette. Now they separated, forming an arrow pointing up towards the mountain.

The butterflies had some understanding, some intelligence she'd never grasped. With no other options, she began to climb.

The insects kept pace, although she was slower now with the ascent. The calls of the hunter grew louder behind her as he threw himself at the mountain. The pursuit was tireless, unstopping, and she wondered what would throw him off, what would trip him up and make him abandon the chase. What feeble effort on her part - if she turned and snarled, would she suddenly shoot up twenty feet into a giantess and step on him like he was a troublesome pest?

Her mouth filled with salt, opened with breath. The ice air cut her throat and she swallowed down gobs of blood and saliva, nourishing herself in the Ouroborosian tradition.

Several of her flying guides dropped to the ground as the air grew colder. Her thighs were slowly turning to stone, but there was no stopping or he would catch her, and she would never have this chance again, never.

She didn’t realize the betrayal until the summit appeared. It was a flat slash of rock with only one path leading to it, the way she'd just climbed, and no exit. She crept to the far edge and looked down into a pit of night.

Time stopped. Sound stopped. There was just the blink of her heart, falling down into that void in front of her, the endless realization of failure.

The wheel turned, and suddenly she realized that time had regained its foothold. The flying creatures surrounded her, the soft patter of their wings becoming a thunder of sound. She wondered at their mocking insistence. She knew they were trying to tell her something, but she could not understand. Her mouth was open and she tried to speak, but it was like asking the wind for a reply.

One by one, they fluttered around her. Their movements became urgent as the hunter bayed with triumph. Any moment, the bloodthirsty man would be upon her and it would be over. She knew he wouldn't lock her up again - wouldn't just torture her - she knew her punishment would be much greater this time. A final punishment for her defiance.

The insects collected in a group, as if conferring. In consensus, they formed a line spiraling over the edge of the cliff.

She peered over the precipice. Were they deserting her?

The creatures began to glow like firecrackers, throwing off sparks of indigo luminescence as they drifted in idle curlicues towards the bottom. There was no more darkness in that pit. With the butterflies’ passage, it became filled with light.

The cries behind her were frantic with success. She turned from the light to see darkness flowing towards her, filled with the savage glow of hungry eyes.

The answer was simple, and she understood it now. They showed her how to remember.

There was an exit here. There was a choice, and a way to freedom.

Her legs carries her the few necessary steps towards the darkness pursuing her before she turned her back on it. The claws of the hunter tried to hook into her, but she was already gone - following the butterflies down, down, down into a shaft of light…

She was light as air, and her arms flat and transparent as glass. She heard a scream above and turned her neck. Her vision was fracturing. Two men were falling above her, then five, then twenty. The men were heavier than she had become, and she idly flapped her thin arms - Wings, she thought. They were wings.

The man reached bottom and broke. No longer a man. No longer a hunter. And no longer a threat.

She blinked her faceted eyes and flapped her iridescent wings… then a newborn purple butterfly drifted gently down among the blues to feast on the corpse below.