Catherine La Mort Papillon [Part Five]

For the butterfly, she was just in time. To acknowledge the cloudiness of life. Just in time for diner. But she likes spicy food, and doesn't have red hair. She had long curly brown hair. It was a Grandia. To not let PTSD control you. Or listen to the drole of alien viruses eating your memories away.

She wanted to live her way. She could be her own computer hacker, her own misty eyed fourteen year old, and her own memories she can rely on herself.

Catherine was antsy for sacrilege.

With her long bleached hair, she had never seen a butterfly, except in photographs. However when she saw that particular butterfly such as this, she felt a mixture of disgust and sexual pleasure. The idea of someone being turned on by her decapitation made her want to vomit, from the death of a loved one in a car crash just a few weeks prior. And yet, there was something in the butterfly she wanted to poke its wings. A gamer of sorts, she had been raised on games all her life since her birth at the turn of the century. Through the century, she had known nothing but battle systems. But life was its own kind of dangerous game, she had known this since she had had to force herself to leave the Cult Of The Flying Angel.

With her new life taking increasingly bleaker and stranger angles, she found herself willing to experiment with getting to know someone from "the other Union" that itself had lost the rest to break up into smaller states since the end of the civil war.

Her country was a land of supernatural lore mixed with the contrast of city life et countryside along the coast. But she only came there occasionally, and spent most of her high school career caught up in lots of studies, along with a boyfriend in her own country she would always kiss. Yet she had the desire to leave this country, and move up North where her family had always joked were notorious for incest. Whether she could get a better life, she knew not. But she would do her best to make do with a country she had only barely been familiar with.

Like the blood butterfly, would have a period she would not to adjust to the new culture and lifestyle, even if part of their language was based on Latin even though the other was Germanic. She wore two Boston Clogs, not realizing these were the kink of the butterfly overseas. She would wear them taking off her rest shoes, her bare feet needing a break from the black high heels she would always wear to please somebody, even if that wasn't men. The men here were pushovers and subservient. She desired no subservience in herself and others, and wanted to lay on one side of the bed, and the other on the other side of the bed. One can only guess whether she found about her own country like the blood butterfly did about hers.

Total disgust.

What is true is that the blood butterfly felt no affinity for her homegrown life, and grew tired of her parents always insisting on packing her bags for her, indeed the only way to not show them she smoked tobacco was by buying Virgina Slims once she reached Smyrna. She was unsure her Adelaida would accept her smoking, or try to get her to quit. There are always unknowns in meeting friends, and sometimes silence for a little while is all you need to restore all the smiles in the world again. Adelaida wanted to be a butterfly with all her heart, even despite never knowing one. In dreams she would become a swarm of butterflies as numerous as locusts under the glow of the lunar light, and wanted to be a princess on the moon, just like her sailor friends in Japanese anime written in the 90s, recently being rebooted and trying to stay true to the source material. She wanted to hop into the photographs of the blood butterfly, she could meet someone she felt more interesting than her boring life. For there was nothing worse than after school night clubs, and despite being way to skinny would be made fun of for having a little bit of chub.

But for now she showers in the darkness, under the glow of flickering L.E.D. lights. A rub a dub dub. She groaned, she cackled, and she writhed in disgust.

She need someone to trust.

When Adelaida reached Smyrna, Tennessee she was unsure what to expect. The blood butterfly told her that her parents would be out of town. She offered cigarettes to Adelaida, while the blood butterfly smoked nothing but cigarillos under the shade on the moonlight night. "I would say what I wanted to, but I was burned by saying it before with my last room mate. I'm not even sure why I even found myself wanting to go with her to Seattle. Now I have these black clothes, and an upside down cross choker."

"Then don't say anything, let's just watch the stars." As polite as she was direct, indeed that watched nothing but the star on that night in October of 2017. Adelaida didn't like the idea of being in a city she did not recognize, even in her own country sometimes the panic attacks would be to much to handle. She dealt with her younger sibling listening to nothing but dubstep Handle, and use her pigtails for handle bars for a swing set. This was while her younger sibling relied on her not to fall, because Adelaida was so airy she could float to the top of the sky.

But she had not seen them for a while, and wanted to stay here while the blood butterfly went to support group in Chattanooga, that was known for hipsters while Nashville was the home of awful country music stars.

"Could I have a cigarillo?" asked Adelaida.

"Sure I'll break this next one in two." said the blood butterfly.

"No, give me a whole cigarillo."

Adelaida went into town, and found that like the blood butterfly said, Smyrna was becoming almost like a small city. This must of have inspired NashChat. She noticed a sign when she walked to the local smoke shop. It said South Park. She had seen South Park in her native language, and wondered if this was what influenced how the butterfly thought of the imagination intruding into the real world. And intrusion of the mind.

She was back before the butterfly got home.

She got her feel of people, for people were simply to much to handle. While she reclined in her Birkenstock sandals, and watched reruns of 1970s sitcoms and soap opera. Adelaida never understood the butterflies distaste for television.

She loved herself some TV.

She walked into the room the butterfly stayed in, and found it neatly made. She wondered if it was especially made for her. She wanted to rest in bed, and wait for her homesickness to melt away. She wanted to have those blood butterfly wings, and fly once more to the top of the sky.

The butterfly got home with Groceries.

She would have offered to cook for her, but she didn't want to wake up Adelaida. So she kissed her goodnight, gently closed the door, and then took a shower in the guest bathroom. After all it was never fun to be woken up.

No morning in a cup.

No taste of bitter coffee.

Adelaida remembered when she was almost eighteen, at seventeen she wrote a Halloween story for her friend. She was nervous about what she may think of it, after all writing was something she had never shown on the inter webs, though she wrote plenty of it on her own time in the hours she would be home from school. But for now she wanted to do her own thing, and got tired of translating things.

When she got up, she poked the butterfly in the air. Because she never want to a touch a butterfly's wings. "Let's learn us some French grade 1."

Basic French, for a basic butterfly.

The butterfly is so basic. As basic as Tuna casserole made by her mother when she still lived at home. As basic as a pair of Birkenstock sandals, as basic as an otherwise Jolie la femme.

Basic was the butterfly's life.

Her life, her story.

"Comment Ca Va?" said she, unsure of what to expect from the non Le Chat, but simply a regular chat on the net. The last time she had had a chat with previous boyfriend, it melted away like scattered bits of data.

"Bonjour!" said the other girl, most definitely not a man. This had only recently began to come to terms with her sexuality. Used to the concept of being a larger part of the Inter Webs rather than reality as we know it to be in meat space, it took many hours, days, and weeks of soul searching. It took all she had to say, "Salut! Yo, in English." The degree of pronunciation was still difficult, and her ability to read only gave her so much to work with when visiting her best friend, who was a pot head in British Columbia. She was dating a French girl that was visiting the larger British portion. But for whatever reason this girl was different.

There was a long moment of pause, but eventually they agreed to a relatively light level of encryption. It wasn't as if any dream-scanners were currently watching, and the only thing they had to worry about was their families. "SIOXEOTUUSWIRAIHSSLRAYEEDE" the French girl said. She had just been introduced to block ciphering, and briefly before had only just become familiar with Caesar Ciphers. She came from a land where it always rotated six ways down a multitude of intersections, and her friend had wanted to visit Strasbourg for research for her next book.

"ILYDBFDOWAIYUIMTODLAOUALD" her friend said. And it was true, you never know who you might be talking to on the net. In most cases however most people were normal, for the most part, based on how you would define normal. In her case, most of her desire came from female victim fantasies, having her own head severed by unseen guillotine blades, men hidden in shadows. Secret agents that come to take her away, and would just as likely shoot her in the back of the head if it made enough money. It was a fantasy that always caused embarrassment, and so only among few friends she knew were her exact age, she was very careful who she spoke with them about. She had gone through enough with her mother, about the shame of liking such things. Though for her mother she was the time to never be satisfied about anything. It didn't matter whether it was grooming, cooking, or anything else.

And yet for her, the desire for love was faint. Subtle, and now almost imperceptible. Though there was some larger desire she still had left to protect. She did not want her friend to know she cried.

That she hated the ideas of sex.

The nature of her own flesh.

Her friend had a few experiences with encrypted dating before, and breaking a block cipher was not exactly the most difficult thing you could do. Yet she had become disillusioned by the culture of diaspora, mostly being ran by programmers. Although that core desire for privacy never waned. And now that dance of all dances, the dance of a love that will never be. It was like funeral tap dance to deranged mothers, and funeral march at the tune of a confused bagpipe and piano playing Fur Elise. She always wanted a girl named Elise, though actually being named such mattered not. And over timed this fantasy became something she forgot.

She focused on her digital sexuality.

She focused exclusively on herself.

Yet now she can only thing of false promises and flower fields in digital after lives, walking through electronic meadows on the net. The skies would darken and shadow, she would explore the duality of centuries at ease of which most people could only travel through capsules.

It was the only desire she still had.

The waning century game.