DARKCHYLDE: The Ariel Chylde Saga - Excerpt

Chapter 1: The Butterfly and the Spider

(Published 10-31-16 by Curiosity Quills Press / Excerpt )

"I am terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me."

— Sylvia Plath

"There can be no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious."


— Carl Jung

My nightmares are teaching me things.

If you're quiet enough, you can hear the world ending. If you're still enough, you can smell blood on the breeze. And if you stare long enough, you start to realize the shadows stare back.

My mother said there wasn't any kind of broken I couldn't come back from, but now I'm not so sure. My nightmares have become so frequent and intense, I'm starting to feel they are my reality, and my waking world the dream. I'm scared I'm losing my mind.

Everyone wants the fairy tale, but don't forget there are dragons in those stories.

~ A Treasury of Shadows, the journal of Ariel Chylde

CHAPTER ONE:  THE BUTTERFLY AND THE SPIDER

It begins with a butterfly in a web, with surges of frantic color eager to be born back on an unforgiving wind. The trap had waited for empty days between the railing and steel column of our breezeway, but now trembles with life as my classmates gather with their phones to capture the final moments of desperation.

Maybe I'm the only one who appreciates an orange monarch on this grey fall morning — even from here I can see how pretty it is. Like me, it was on its way somewhere, and it makes me sad it got tangled. As I head toward them, down the long grass slope from second period History, I see Stacy and Spencer front and center of the revelry. I didn't think they were officially an item yet, but she wears his red and white letter jacket — the same one that kept me warm not three weeks ago. Maybe I wouldn't mind as much if it didn't look so good on her. Stacy is stunning and built in a way boys notice, but there was always something reptilian about her that left me cold. Maybe it was the way she made passes at Spencer right in front of me. He'd always say he preferred sweet blondes to surly brunettes, but I guess he changed his mind about me along with everyone else.

It's getting harder to hide the dark circles under my eyes, but I turned eighteen today and will only have to suffer the critical stares of Salem High a little longer before I make my great escape. To where I haven't settled on, but like the butterfly, I understand feeling trapped and wanting to fly free of a dying place.

I think of how a caterpillar completely annihilates itself while in chrysalis. It turns into a kind of liquid as the cells reconfigure into something new, something capable of migrating through our little back water town of Salem Georgia on the way to a warmer climate in Florida. It's a long journey and one rife with peril. Our lives are not so very different, and I've learned at various crucial junctures that transformation is necessary for survival. So many miracles preceded that web it seems a shame for it to end there. Maybe another miracle is in order.

I have two choices. Keep walking or free the butterfly. Maybe it goes against nature, but I don't enjoy seeing something struggle, and I certainly wouldn't film it. There's enough of that around here, and it gets old quick. But if I involve myself I estrange myself further from the pack. I don't have much time. Death needs that butterfly same as the wind.

The warning bell screams as a plump orb weaver skitters from the tall grass and up the steel column. The others don't see it, they're still waiting for it drop from above. I'll have to get right in there, and Stacy will take it as confrontational.

Make the decision, Ariel.

The butterfly flutters in place.

The spider picks up pace.

Tick Tock.

My gangly legs go faster, and my backpack — shaped like a squirrel because everyone thinks I'm nuts — slides off my shoulder. I sling it back over my slippery jacket, an early birthday present from my father. I don't usually like the clothes he picks out, but this deep crimson suits me.

They're too distracted to see my hurried approach. The orb weaver finds the web and moves with that frightening swiftness of spiders once they have prey. I press through the wall of shoulders, and with an awkward jump off the adjacent rail — "Watch it," someone yells — I take the whole damn web on my front, butterfly and all. There are shrieks as the spider scuttles over my arm. Not meaning to, I spaz and fling it right at Stacy's head.

She spazzes more and nearly goes over the rail. It's almost funny until the spider makes a disoriented dash from the concrete — only to have Stacy's angry boot smash it. Her glare lets me know she wishes it were my face, and I think animosity just escalated to war.

"That wasn't intentional," I say over my shoulder.

Stacy spits the word "disgusting," and I can't tell if she means me or the spider as she lifts her heel to marvel at the squashed mass of trembling legs. There's kind of a lot of blood. More than you'd think.

"It's been there all month," Spencer frowns, "you didn't have to kill it."

Spiders can be creepy, but no, no she didn't.

I sigh as the butterfly shivers in silver gossamer just above my breasts. Stacy calls me a dumb bitch as I carefully remove the webbing from the monarch's wings. Someone else calls me mental. Once the wings are free, the butterfly folds them once, twice, as if in gratitude. The dusty orange patterns are supernatural this close. Its fine legs are whispery kisses as it climbs to my collarbone — where it waits — then the ashen skies are given new color as the butterfly takes flight on a sudden cold wind. My long blonde locks scatter like things alive.

I watch it go as savage people say savage things. I give them a sheepish look on my exit. It wasn't a look of judgment, rather a look to register their judgment of me.

Maybe I am mental. Maybe I am bug nut, bat shit crazy. No one bothered to save the butterfly but me.