The Irreversible Metamorphosis of the Girl, the Boy and the Butterfly on the Wall

You wait.

You stare into darkness, blank space that exists between the upper and lower folds of soft, untouched skin. Somewhere between reality and the universe that dances behind your eyelids when they close. You wait for the planets, for the swirling haze of stars, to appear. You wait for your breathing to slow, for the rise and fall of your chest to be so slight; it is as if you are not really breathing at all. You wait for your mind to calm, to pause, to stop. Neurons never stop firing. You know that, but still, you wish for a truce.

You wait.

*

He picks up his toothbrush, stares at the bristles. He always wonders how many white points there are. He always wonders if he should try and count. He always tries. He is always late to work. The steamed streaked mirror, above the basin in the cramped bathroom so tiny he may as well brush his teeth and shave his face while taking a shower, shows a man he does not recognise, does not want to recognise. He pulls at the bags hanging under his swollen eyes. Moving closer to the mirror he inspects each red vein, streaked on the dewy white curved canvas, with fascination. He can’t remember if the veins are supposed to be so visible, he can’t remember a time when they weren’t. His suit engulfs him. The shoulder pads, rigid and square, replace disappearing shoulders. The caterpillar of punctured holes on his belt stretches further each day. Even his shoes feel huge; he’s a child, tramping around in his fathers work boots, seven sizes too big.

*

The world is darker than you expected. You had always imagined it would be the colour of sunshine: warm and golden. But somehow, as the years passed, the grey had slid over the sun and curled itself over your vision. Now all you see is grey. Tall buildings seep onto concrete footpaths that heeled shoes tap, tap, tap on. Some of the grey things are light; some of the grey things are dark. But all of them are grey. Everything is grey. You watch the rolling grey through your window.

*

He pulls the lid, from his extra hot —double shot—regular milk will be fine—no sugar thank you—mocha, off. As always, he sighs with disappointment. There’s never enough froth. He doesn’t understand. Everyone knows it’s the best bit, yet no one ever gives enough. He doesn’t understand how the barista can get the ratio of mocha to froth so wrong. He knows they have to complete a course. He knows they have between three and five hours of training. Yes, he knows everyone is different. The guy who sits at the desk opposite him doesn’t like the froth and always orders a latte because latte’s don’t have any froth at all. The lady who sits behind him always orders a cappuccino with extra froth and extra cocoa so he quite likes her. He’s not joking when he says it wrecks his day. The happiness of his day is measured by the amount of froth in his mocha and everyday turns out to be an unhappy day. Everyday. Maybe he should leave a suggestion in the suggestion box. Maybe he should just order a Babycino instead.

*

You look down at your upturned hands. The lines run in all directions, you’re looking at an intricate highway system. Some stretch the length of your palm; others wind like roundabouts, swirling in endless circles. Others cross over each other, impatient. Some simply stop mid journey, as if they got tired of going, going, going. You close your eyes, run your finger along the lines covering your left palm. You feel each tiny fissure dipping down, away from the skin. It is almost as if each line is going to widen, little by little, with each passing day. And one day, in the center of your palm, there will be a hole that you will not be able to close. You wonder why your hands have so many lines, when other hands have so few. You vaguely remember reading something years ago that said lined hands were caused by worried, stressed, tired minds. The concept certainly makes sense to you. You pick at the chipped polish that covers your bitten nails. The bottle said it was called ‘The Thrill of Brazil’ but you just see…red. The polish flakes away and falls to the ground; miniscule blood specks tarnish the off white carpet.

*

He stares at the screen. He feels his eyes begin to turn inwards but he can’t make himself blink. He wants to, but he can’t. The trance becomes an addiction he can’t escape, doesn’t want to escape. Everything is quiet in this world: his only company the fuzz of the screen. He wishes life was always like this, quiet and fuzzy. Someone coughs behind him and his fuzz is interrupted, gone. He blinks, blinks, blinks, trying to moisten his dry eyes. The caffeine from his morning mocha is beginning to wear off. He tries to yawn subtly, tries to keep his mouth closed, stop the muscles stretching open. He knows it must look ridiculous, he’s seen other people try to hold in and hide yawns. Their faces form shapes they shouldn’t, screwing and contorting into ugliness. He’s never seen an attractive held-in yawn. He can only imagine what he looks like. He really should just let it go, let the yawn out.

*

A small sliver of sun snakes into the lounge room. You’re surprised; it’s been a grey day. As you glance out the window you see that the clouds have parted slightly and it seems as if the sun is reaching for you. You watch as the invisible becomes visible, floating silently in the new light. You’re not sure if the floating particles, mixtures of dust and skin cells long dead, are beautiful or repulsive. You decide neither. They’re just…there. Floating, falling, with you. You slide down to the ground and stretch out. The sun melts into your skin, a tingle, barley there, skims down your spine. You close your eyes and see a performance of yellow, orange and red. You lie still; you could stay like this forever. Just…being. You feel content.

*

He tries to concentrate. He frowns, trying to focus on the numbers, the words. Sometimes he frowns just so the people around him think he’s concentrating. He’s discovered that the common thought in his workplace is that the more one frowns, the more work one must be doing. He frowns a lot on Fridays. He wishes he hadn’t chose accounting. He wishes he didn’t have to use Microsoft Excel everyday. The giant green X that he clicks on each morning depresses him, haunts him. He hates the tiny squares he has to type numbers into, he hates that they’re called ‘cells’. He despises how hard it is just to delete one ‘cell’. He often mistakes ‘rows’ and ‘columns’. He had lied on his resume. He had written that he had ‘Advanced knowledge of Microsoft Excel’; had thought to himself, how hard could it be: if only he’d known. He’s even dreamt about it, more than once. If he never saw another Excel template he’d be a happy…happier man. He watches as everyone around him taps away happily, fingertips running over keys with efficiency. No fewer than sixty words per minute allowed in this workplace. His fingers and hands begin to cramp and he stops to stretch them out. They have almost become claw-like, fingers bent at odd angles from typing constantly, day in, day out.

*

It’s the time of day when you should be hungry. The clock shows you it’s midday, the middle of the day, the time you should eat. You wish your appetite would come back. You wish the hands of hunger would wrap themselves around your stomach and squeeze. You wish you felt sick from hunger. But you don’t, your appetite, your love for food, has gone. You force yourself to open the fridge, the cold air fresh on your warm face. The shelves are almost bare; two apples, half a block of cheese and a jar of olives stare back at you. You pick up the olives, check the use by date: off. You put them back in the fridge. You close the door. Open the door. Nothing changes. You try once more, silently willing something edible to appear.

Nothing changes.

*

He is one of the last on the train. It is late and his reflection is the only thing he sees clearly as he tries desperately to make out anything in the darkness. Everything out there is a blur. He tries to look past himself, to see further, he tilts his head left, then right. No luck, his own eyes stare back into his own eyes. Someone behind him squashes an empty water bottle and he wonders if there has ever been a more irritating sound than the crushing of a plastic Mount Franklin. Shit, it’s irritating. That someone behind him is clearly not satisfied with just one crush and it takes three more excruciating plastic compressions until that someone is content. The train pulls into his station, but he remains seated. Mount Franklin walks past, just another tired guy in a grey pinstripe suit. He waits, gives his back the bird. He feels better.

*

The water is almost spilling over when you reach over to turn the tap off. Dipping one finger in you feel that the temperature is perfect; not too hot, not too cold, just right. Stepping into the bath, your weight causes the water to overflow; a waterfall spills down the fiberglass and spreads across the floor. You should be bothered, because later you’ll be hunched over mopping up, but for now, for once, you don’t mind. Your body feels weightless in the water; your arms float unconsciously to the surface, free. You lower yourself until everything from your nose downwards is submerged. You breathe bubbles from your mouth, watching them gurgle for a second on the surface before disappearing, leaving the water flat. The water is clear; you didn’t add any bottled bubbles. You can see your naked skin rippling beneath the surface. Your limbs look magnified, disjointed, foreign. You don’t recognise the floating body, detached from your floating mind. You lay in the bath; watch your mind wander from pointless thought to pointless thought. Soap, bath, water, swimmingbeach, fish, reefnemowaves, surfingfallingdrowningnotbreathingdeathblacktheend. You stay in the bath until the water is cool and your skin is wrinkled like the old woman you will one day become.

*

A young boy walks in front of him. Skinny jeans suspend from a skinnier waist, bones under flesh creeping close to the surface. The jeans hang low, too low; the boy spends

more time pulling them up than wearing them. He watches as the boy pulls out a cigarette from the pocket below his knee, stops, lights it, takes a drag, yanks up his pants, walks. He wants to ask, spare one mate, but he gave it up years ago, along with beer and pulling apart Oreos to smother them with peanut butter. He slows, watching the boy appear and disappear in the shadows thrown by the dim streetlights. Eventually, the boy is gone, and he is alone. His only company the frosted breath that escapes his mouth.

*

You wait.

The sun dipped below the horizon long ago and the tiny half-smile of the moon weaves behind the clouds of night. It’s a dark night, darker than usual. The stars have stayed hidden and the yellow light of the city in the distance is mellow and faded. The streetlights throw the graffiti covered walls into their private own art show, illuminating the words no one can really make out. The scribbles that appear daily on the concrete walls have always fascinated you. Some are just that, scribbles, but if you look closely you can find tiny sprays of perfection. You once found a tiny butterfly amongst the rushed sprays of colour. You couldn’t quite believe how perfect it was. You ran your fingers over the black outline and inspected the purple-blue-green wings for hours. You wanted to carve it out and take it home with you. You waited for it to come to life and fly away, but it never did.

*

He walks slowly past the three-story apartment building. The brown brick, which crumbles with old age, annoys him. It’s such an irritating colour, so…brown. He stops and looks up, searching. On the top floor, two windows from the left, a light is on. It isn’t a bright light; it doesn’t allow the looker, him, to see much. If he squints, concentrates, he can make out an armchair, a desk, a table. Shadows swim in all directions across the walls; they could be people, it could be a party, if it wasn’t for the lack of physical bodies.

*

You stand in the corner of the room, away from the window. You could hide behind the armchair, or walk into another room, but you know the lamp doesn’t give the room enough light to make you visible. You skim around the walls, until you are standing beside the window. The curtain next to you is heavy and you curl your fingers around it, hold on. You can only see half the world from where you stand, the other half lost from your angle. You lean forward. You look down.

*

He thinks he can see a body moving amongst the ghostly shadows of the room, but as always, he isn’t sure. The night is getting colder; there’ll be a frost in the morning he thinks. His eyes begin to water in the icy air. He lets the watery tears fall free.

*

You wait.

*

He waits.

By: Abbey Brandenburg