"What would you have done had you found a beautiful butterfly's corpse on your window pane?" he asked while his thin sharp forceps teased the large blue wings of the butterfly. It did not move. Probably it had stopped moving for a few hours now. And that was the reason why it was lying on his table.
"I would have let the ants have a feast", I replied trying to sound completely uninterested in the matter.
"It would have been such a waste to let those savages devour a beautiful and delicate creation of nature like this."
"It's the way of nature. That's what she wanted to happen anyway."
"Uh-huh. You think so?" he asked while he carefully separated the broken, half torn wings from the body of the butterfly and placed it on a white cardboard. He then turned towards me with a friendly grin on his face. He was in his usual attire, black suit on a silver white shirt, black pants with shiny black shoes, a black neck tie and a pair of white rubber gloves. His white bangs almost covered his right eye while he was wearing a magnifying glass on his left.
"Had nature wanted it to be that way then why would have she given you the power to interfere with it?" he was moving his hand holding the forceps like that of an orchestra coordinator. His grin had been replaced by a victorious smile. And I accepted my defeat in the debate with silence.
"Want to smoke?" he asked when I pulled out the lighter from my pocket.
"I will be doing it all by myself." I said and lighted a cigarette. The smoke rose in swirls.The place was stinking of formaldehyde and other chemicals. And adding to my miseries I was sitting on a freshly prepared coffin box which he, according to him, had specially arranged for me. I still couldn't believe that I had ended up being an acquaintance of a creepy person like him.
"Well ready to see some action?" he chuckled while slowly removing his gloves.
I braced myself for seeing something that defies every law of nature and science. It was not my first time seeing it but no matter how many times I saw it happen I still couldn't believe my eyes.
He took a long deep breathe and slowly placed his long fingers on the tattered wings. Then he traced the tears and damaged linings with his index finger as if carefully examining and searching for something inside them. All the damages started to vanish the moment his fingers passed over them just like they had never existed. By the time he was done, the wings were shiny and colourful again, just like they would have been had the butterfly been alive. He slowly pinned them on the board and signalled me with his hands to follow him.
"Couldn't you do it to the living?" I asked as we walked down the stairs.
"It won't be embalming if they were breathing." He replied with a musical tone."Yeah, that's right."
We stopped before an underground chamber which was filled with all sort of weird stuff including many more pair of wings, pressed flowers and leaves, stuffed corpses of birds and animals all looking as good as alive, except, they were not. It felt like a wildlife sanctuary of the corpses. The air felt musty and heavy. The only source of light were few candles burning at random places. The smoke from my cigarette was rising in weird patterns.
"Are we still in the realm of living?" I asked trying to act sarcastic.
"I would say 98%" he chuckled.
He placed the cardboard on the shelf taking care not to disturb the other ancestors sitting there and then dusted off his hands.
"Who could believe that the beautiful wings that could create storm in some part of the world and in countless hearts would one day be lying helplessly waiting to be swallowed by the ground?"
"That's the law of nature. We can't do anything about it." I said with a shrug. "But isn't it scary to be living with such scary corpses beneath your feet?" I said pointing at the stuffed birds and animals.
"They can't harm you when they are dead now can they?" He laughed.
"But you should be scared of ghosts at least."
"Ghosts? Spirits of the dead? Those are the last things an undertaker like me should be scared of." He kept on saying mockingly. His childish behaviour along with the creepy feeling of the place was getting on my nerves.
"By the way have you heard the stories that the souls of humans come out in form of butterflies?"
"Yeah. I have read the folk stories. But I like fireflies more."
"Fireflies you say? Have you heard about the river of life?" He looked into my eyes with a creepy smile on his face. Now I was starting to feel really uneasy. Our conversation kept on getting weirder.
"Never, what about it?" I replied trying to act as calm as possible but my voice betrayed me.
"Well they say", he continued with a storytellers' voice "that it is a river of light. But you can see it only in the darkest of the darkness for only then can your eyes read the smallest of the lights. And it feels like a swarm of thousands of fireflies flying together."
He was interrupted by a faint sound of a telephone ringing.
"Want to spend more time with my collection?"
"I'd love to pass" I replied.
YOU ARE READING
THE SEA OF TREES
ParanormalKanata is a rising artist in the city of mysteries, Tokyo. However his paintings are not some beautiful depictions of nature or happenings, neither are they images of fairy tales and dreamland. They are the mysterious paintings of the last remains...