Page 67 of Butterfly
It’s messy when I stab down, messier when I lift up and jam the blade down again.
And again.
Again into his chest, his throat, his face.
Again, and I have to admit, at least to myself, that it’s not just Iggy’s dad I’m trying to kill while I do it.
My demons are laid out in front of me, and I’m no more capable of dealing with them now than I was when I was a kid, because I’m making a mess. I’m being irrational.
But when my eyes flick up and I see another drawing on the floor, spattered in blood… one Iggy and I did together in class…
I realize that I’m willing to die in the arms of my past if I can keep him from living my present.
If he wakes up.
“Youneverdeserved him!” I snarl the words out and bring the knife down one more time, hard, to the center of his chest.
He lets out a death rattle that spatters blood across Donovan’s hoodie… and I only just manage to move before I feel a wave of dizzy exhaustion overtake me. I scramble away on hands and knees and then fall back to the ground, incapable of catching a breath.
I can’tbreathe.
My lips feel numb, my scalp is tingling… and the adrenaline pulsing through me isn’t enough to push away the panic that’s clawing up my throat with sharp talons that leave me helpless. My demons, still alive and breathing and not dead at all.
I can only curl myself into a ball, my arms around my knees, my eyes fixated on Iggy’s art splattered with blood.
Just like before, except my art was covered in thicker things.
And just like before, I lie beside a dead body while I wonder if I’m going to die here.
“Fuck… fuck… fu…” I can’t draw breath fast enough to get the curse out. I can’t close my eyes to try to escape what’s in front of me because it just flashes images of the night my mother died behind my lids in streaks of black and red.
Past and present. It’s all colliding together, and my fingers clenching my stomach, pressed against scars that suddenly feel split open, aren’t enough to hold me together. I’m shivering so hard it aches, my teeth chattering, my vision going out in gray and fuzz that makes me wonder if I’m dying after all.
I need to get out of here.
Ineedto go home.
No… not home…
I need…
Iwant…
“Fuck…” I whisper one more time, and force myself to unclench my arms. I’m not sure how long I stayed balled up like that—long enough that my muscles are aching and my arms feel weak. It’s hard to force myself to roll to my back so I can take a deep breath that feels like an anchor in my lungs, weighing me to the bloodstained concrete beneath me.
I need to focus.
I need to breathe.
I need to survive this moment, because there are more I desperately want to see… I want to see… to see…
I inhale.
I can see the ceiling. I can see a spider nestled in its web in the corner… and when I roll my neck and let my eyes drift to the side, I can see the keychain Donovan gave me still dangling from the key embedded in the asshole’s eye. He saved me, and he wasn’t even here to know he did it.
I exhale.
I can hear my shaking breath, proof that I’m still alive even though I feel like I’m dying in tiny, painful pieces. I can hear the quiet wind outside, telling me I need to hurry up and get the body beside me to its depths… and I can hear Donovan’s voice in my head telling me that I have to get out of here. Get back to him.
