Fright Night! #Wattys2016

Dead Butterflies

"Why did you kill them?"

Both my parents and my younger sister asked me the same question the first time I decided to show them my collection, back when I was twelve. I wasn't expecting such a negative reaction. My mom and dad were squicked out, and my sister seemed sad.

"It's just a hobby"- I answered, closing the plastic envelope I was using for my collection back then. It had forty-five dissected butterflies and twenty-two different moths, and the number would keep growing.

I started my collection when I saw a dying moth on the glass of my window, her brown and grey wings trying to fly away with no success. She wasn't a colorful moth, but she was still beautiful, and I thought it was a waste to leave her there for the other bugs to eat. I ended her suffering and kept her body on the nearest glass vase, and so my research begun.

I learnt how to dissect them, how to frame them in glass, how to distinguish one species from another. Orange, red, blue, black, purple, yellow, white...Those beautiful wings would never be eaten by ants or disappear on the dirt. They would stay beautiful for a very long time, safe from the ugly nature.

I realized that, by killing them, I was actually saving them from a world that would have turned them ugly. All what life did was taking away those colors and turning them to dust.

And when I realized just how artistically noble were my actions, I decided that it was selfish of me to give that eternal beauty just to butterflies...

"Why did you kill them?"- The police asked me, with disgust on their voices.

"It's just a hobby..."