Catherine La Mort Papillon [Part Four]

The butterfly found greater affinity for those in earlier times, perhaps on some level because she could get the know the real "them", like the flower girl getting to know the real "soldier" in a fantastic game recently being remade for profits by already rich multinationals. But she wouldn't have to meet them in person, because then there would be cultural barriers. The butterfly was torn between two cultures, always has been. For her, the original idea was go to Japan to get into the Manga industry. But she found drawing sequential art to much trouble at first, because drawing in a way was more like trying to emulate life in a photograph. And there was nothing lifelike in the flow of panels.

This was despite the fact that despite her having grown up reading manga, she found herself preferring to write prose. Art and Prose were like competing factions fighting for the control of various tropical regions, especially on the inter webs where various cultures could both clash and gel together in a kind of hate/love relationship. The butterfly hated how web comic communities fade out from existence seemingly overnight, and in the times they were around would be disparaging to prose. By contrast the writers would often suggest not drawing your own covers. At times she wanted to build her own website, especially when she was still part of the decentralized dark web. Diaspora of course, has its own way of things. Though at least she could learn some French.

Her own view own cultures in meat-space was similar, almost to a fault. For she found the French something to aspire to without that particular fatal flaw, why write dystopian novels when you have ones in the real world. But even then this was infinitely better than Brexit England. Infinitely better than the United States ou Canada. It was like Japan of the EU. Only paved with severed heads, still a mixture of sexual pleasure and remorse. Yet her room mate, despite being abusive in her own ways, always said how fantasy was different from actuality. The actuality of cutting off a pretty girl's head, and holding in your chest in a mixture of crying and ejaculation. The aspect of being male that was always a reminder of the gender she was born with, that was not the real her.

The butterfly wanted nothing else.

She wanted to be the real her. She wanted to be the real her with a culture she felt affinity with, and not the US where she always felt like an alien even among strangers. Landing in a UFO, greeting the world with peace while being stabbed to death with pitchforks, and being so human that cult leaders in splinter cults give you dietary advice et talked you into purchasing negative ion generators in order to clear your sinuses, among other traumas.

There were times she attempted suicide, now counting to about four attempts. She couldn't bring herself to tell her friend, the only girl she ever really loved more than love, that she had many problems of her own. She didn't want to tell her how much she loved her, as in that culture generally saying such disqualified you for any love matching. Although certainly there has been Americans that have managed to marry Italians. But that's the Italian's. Very different in France, even in regions that used to belong to the Italians, so she found out from one of her French correspondents helping her etudier en Francaise avec il gentleness.

To many people are way to kind for her, while she goes on a self-destructive path, admiring authors like Silvia Plath. She didn't want to tell her friend the truth.

It would be to soon.

Yet in the darkness of her heart, there was something that kept her going as her life was going slow toward a final stop.

A dream of a lost Mme.

A dream of a happy girl. A desire to watch and see how things unfold, even if that meant it was a kind of love she could never have. Her own friend's love.

It was an Ami's love.

The butterfly didn't like character studies, though part of it was her own innate greenness. As green as the cap she wore that reminded her of the Irish, before it somehow in her mind reminded her to much of the French.

But even if she went to Ireland searching for fairies and marigolds, there was a certain portion of French people that lived there. But for so long her main issue had been with French-Americans, not the country of France. One of the girls she had known in fifth grade always referred her as "not quite cute, but not quite ugly." It was a matter of frustration, the long windiness of saying ugly-cute in a long drawn drawn out fashion. She began to hate, specifically French girls, with a passion.

Even now the butterfly browses the inter webs, searching for ways to know whether a French girl likes her, as it was never something she could tell. She only knew how to know when a sarcastic girl liked her, and she knew lots of them. After all, everyone is sarcastic, at least most of the time. Especially at fancy diners under the moonlight. It effected her view of classic entertainment like Phantom Of The Opera, despite the author himself being known opponent of capital punishment. She began to want them all to be beheaded, and had a preoccupation for the topic. Especially for cute girls that visited Gothic fashion stores. And then she met a girl named Liver, and for a moment even so early questioned her fantasies for blood. And then she turned to the wrong television channel.

A woman placing her neck on the block.

That was all she wrote. The butterfly disliked the idea of rescued princesses. In her mind what good did that do for Levier who she couldn't save. And her imagining the Mexican girl's anguished face put in her a personal torment she could never leave. She didn't believe in happy endings.

It never really worked that way. At least she refused to believe that it would work out that way.

Perhaps that why she drank bleach.

To wash away the tears.

Even after all these years she still hates the girl from fifth grade, but it has become increasingly a distant memory. The butterfly is not sure whether she'll meet a nice French girl. She wasn't sure how to feel about French girls, truth be told. She didn't want to become a slave to anybody, fly by airplane and get sold. She remembered the mother of the boy infused with alien cells in one her favorite Cyberpunk games. His mother would say "I want you to find a nice girl, that will take care of you."

It was hard to explain how she didn't trust the British, it was different from how she didn't trust the French. She masturbated to Joan Of Arc, yet spat at Ann Boleyn. And yet every other girl she liked in history and fiction had a name similar to Ann. But Christmas Songs always carried manifold sadness: it reminded her of how Santa would always refer to her by her male name, and she never got feminine gifts of any sort. As well, as she got older, she thought of nothing but Ann Boleyn, whose song written by Henry VIII had its lyrics rewritten for some Christian song. She always liked witches, but for whatever reason never Ann.

The butterfly couldn't even mend her own wings.

She didn't think anyone else would have the energy to do so. And take the time to listen.

For broken wings...

Nothing but silence.

Her aunt got her some French videos, perhaps things might look up from here. Maybe not, and even if she knew French, there was still that woman that wanted to hold a referendum for the death penalty. The butterfly didn't want to have capital punishment anywhere.

She wanted to forgive herself.

And show her face to the world. Perhaps a new adventure, where she can be like the little fourteen year old going on an adventure to see the world, visiting ghost ships, and being followed by a young girl with a puffy sidekick that goes poof, poof, poof. She withdrew from her childhood favorite.

Her only joy in the world.

Her own escape. To be:

Just in time for dinner,

Under the glow of restaurant lights.

Slowly eating under candle lights,

The young adventure waves good by to father,

It wasn't worth saying goodbye to mom,

Nobody wants to avoid the world.