Short Stories

Pain in the Neck

 I'm not scared of many things. I've never been scared of heights of spiders or snakes or all of those other typical things. The only thing that really ever got me was butterflies.

I used to love them, actually. I owned one of those huge nets like in the cartoons and would go out almost every day to go catch them in the flower fields close to my house. I even had this little notebook that my grandmother had given me one year for my birthday where I'd record every single one I caught along with description of how it looked and which flower I'd found it on.

Through this I became an expert in botany as well. The flower fields were immense, spanning acres upon acres in area. The were covered in flowers of all shapes and sizes, but more importantly colour. Every single patch was a mix of flowers, and every patch had somewhat of a pattern. There were swirls and curves and blobs of magenta and yellow and blue and every colour imaginable in those fields. Sometimes my grandmother would come to the fields with me when I was younger, and as I inspected my catches she would teach me about the flowers.

More amazing than the plants were the butterflies. Their wings were of more colours and patterns than the flowers they flew amongst. It amazed me to watch them twirl through the air, battling against the wind on those days when storms were near. I never got too close to them though. I felt as though I would disturb them if I did.

It was not until the day in which I had caught this marvellous little creature that I saw one in great detail. It was rather small, its wings being about three centimetres in width. They were light blue, lighter than the colour of the sky, and had a holographic shine to it. They where speckled with white and had a thin black brim. Its body, of course, was completely black. It flew into my net almost at will, simply drifting into the white folds of fabric. Perhaps it was the wind, or perhaps it was fate, although I've never been the firm believer or the latter.

In any case, I had my butterfly.

It was ever so delicately that I had placed it into a little jar, the cover of which I had pierced soon before with the tip of my sharpest pencil. I had placed flowers that I had picked in the jar as well, a plant that was appropriately named a Butterfly Bush. It was purple and consisted of many small flowers clustered into a cone shape. The insect made not an attempt to fly about, only crawling about its new home curiously.

I brought it home proudly under my arm, showing anyone who would pay attention. I

cannot recall why I had chosen that day to bring home a butterfly for the first time. I think it may have been but a whim that had urged me to do it, I will never know.

After I'd shown my prize to everyone in the household, I brought it to my room, caressing the jar gently in my arms as I made my way up those creaky, wooden stairs. I put it on my desk next to my lamp and went back down to eat dinner with my family. They spent half an hour patiently as I gushed over butterflies and flowers, not wanting to hurt my seven year old feelings by telling me to shut up.

I rushed back up to my room to inspect my catch and write down what it looked like. I didn't notice that it had stopped moving at first as I was busy scribbling down observations, but once I had put my notebook away I realized that it had stayed in the same place for a long time. I started wailing in disappointment, causing my father to rush over to me. I pointed at the bug and started slurring about how it was dead and how I'd killed it by accident and whatnot. My father comforted me until eventually I stopped crying.

He suggested that since it was such a pretty butterfly as well as my first true catch, we hang it up. I agreed, and soon enough its blue wings were sprawled across a plank of wood above my bed, two nails stabbed symmetrically into it. I went to sleep soon thereafter.

I thought I heard flapping later on that night, but I chalked it up to paranoia or some sort of weird dream. I felt a sharp pain in my neck at some point in the night after that, but ignored it. Imagine my surprise when I woke up, brushed my teeth, got dressed, and went to look at my butterfly expecting to see just another insect, but instead seeing two nails on a plank of wood, shards of blue clinging to them.

I was immediately suspicious. I had questioned everyone in the house within the span of a few minutes, as if someone had seriously torn my butterfly of the wall. My mother convinced me to eat breakfast before continuing my investigation, to which I obliged.

My neck still hurt like hell, but I didn't want to mention it until I'd found out exactly what had happened to my butterfly.

Alas, that was not what had been destined to happen. My grandmother was walking behind me to her seat when she noticed it.

It was but a bump on the back of my neck, maybe three centimetres wide. But it moved.

This, of course, was somewhat concerning to her, and she insisted that I go to the hospital. My mother thought differently, living by the "if it still hurts in three days we'll go to the doctor" rule.

So I went to bed that night with a bump in by neck. I woke up the next morning with a big bump in my neck and dozens of small ones around it. No concern arose from my mother.

And the next night, well... I woke up in the middle of the night in a tremendous amount of pain. I was screaming and shaking, but it was not only sweat that ran down my back. I felt the warmth of blood pooling around me as well as something with the consistency of mucus. My father burst into my room, immediately shaking me, screaming and asking what was wrong. I only cried in return, but my father realized what was wrong none the less.

I have been told that the bump in my neck had burst open, a misshapen butterfly the colour of the one I had hung up on my wall crawling out of it, bathed in blood and a lime green mucus. Around it the smaller bumps had risen, some of them oozing out clean, white eggs surrounded in the same slime.

I was rushed to the hospital, vomiting and crying the whole way there. They extracted what eggs they could as well as the butterfly, but were unable to get the rest out without surgery. My family couldn't afford it at the time, and medicine was still a pretty rocky field at the time, so I was sent home a couple of days later.

I threw out my net and burned my notebook as soon as I got home.

I am an old man now, and the bumps are still in my neck. They never hatched, even after seventy years. They must have died by now, but I am still fearful. I have not gone back to the fields I used to love so since the day I caught that blue bastard, and you best believe I haven't gone near a butterfly ever since.