By: Erin Moine
The sky wept metallic rain on the day Josie encountered the lump in the road. It simply hunched there; a brown, furry lump soaked by the rainwater. She slammed on the brakes of her old Chevy.
The truck screeched as it struggled to a halt in the mud. The low evening light made the soaked lump resemble a boulder in the middle of the muddy road. Probably just a deer, or a dead bear, Josie thought. Her muscles stiffened. What could have killed a bear?
Pulling up her hood, Josie muttered a curse and shoved open the door of the truck. The lump sat in the middle of the road, its form rivaling the size of her truck. As she neared it, the mange of its fur became
more noticeable.
Goosebumps crawled over her arms and along her spine as Josie slowly approached the lump. She moved carefully toward the object, the balls of her feet treading carefully in the slippery mud.
Her eyes flicked over the object, watching for movement. It wasn’t breathing. Josie’s stomach crawled, her palms turning clammy.
Annoyance soon replaced the sense of unease. The only way to get around the lump meant driving into the deep mud, at the risk of the old truck becoming stuck…directly beside the lump.
Josie pulled out her phone, hunching over it to shield it from the rain. She dialed a number, her fingers stiff from the cold. After two rings, Daryl answered. “What?”
Always so cheerful, Josie thought at the sound of her ex-husband’s greeting. “Yeah, hi. So, there’s this thing in the road, and I’m going to be late, because it’s right in the middle of the damn road,” Josie replied louder than necessary.
“Well, go around it.”
“I’ll get stuck in the mud if I do that.” Josie sighed in frustration.
“Can you just tell Mabel I’ll be late. You know how much she hates phones…and poor punctuality.” Mabel wouldn’t even own a landline.
“Yeah, sure. Just don’t get stuck,” Daryl replied. Josie could hear
the smirk in his voice.
Jerk. Josie hung up and reassessed the lump.
Only now, the lump faced her. Josie’s heart pounded as she stared, frozen, at the massive bone-white deer skull attached to the large body of a bull elk. Something moved along the creature’s face.
Josie’s brow furrowed as a butterfly with wings of sapphire shyly peeked out from the animal’s eye socket. The butterfly fluttered its wings, drifting in the deluge to land on Josie’s nose. She glimpsed her reflection in its inky eyes. A strange calm overcame her. Everything would be all right. She would ask the animal for a ride to Daryl and Mabel’s, so her truck wouldn’t get stuck. Maybe the animal would gift her a butterfly of her own in reward for asking a favor of it.
The confusing train of thoughts made Josie blink, her vision encompassed by the butterfly’s eyes. Wait, that doesn’t make any sense. Not a moment after her mind caught up to her, a sharp pain traveled along
the bridge of her nose and into her forehead.
She yelped and slapped her face, frantically trying to dislodge the butterfly. It fluttered back to the animal, disappearing into its eye socket. Josie felt her nose, the stinging sensation nearly blinding her. Her fingers came away red.
Heart pounding, she raced back to her truck, slamming the door behind her. She grabbed some old coffee-shop napkins from the center console and pressed them against her nose as she shifted the truck into reverse, and back to drive. She floored the gas pedal, swerving dangerously around the creature, which sprouted greenery along its side and back. She kept her foot on the gas pedal until she pulled into Daryl and Mabel’s driveway, her hands still shaking.
“What the hell happened to your face?” Mabel greeted her as
Josie hurried through the door and into the bathroom, searching for
rubbing alcohol and a Band-Aid.
“What a way to greet your great-niece,” Daryl said from the living room.
“I’m fine,” Josie said, a bit shortly. Why hadn’t she simply found a motel? Sudden memories of the accident a month ago accompanied the self-reflection.
“Well, fine then.” Mabel huffed, her silver hair standing in stark contrast to her pink nightgown. “I’ll put on some tea.” She disappeared into the kitchen.
After doctoring her nose, Josie shrugged off her wet clothes and pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a long-sleeved cotton shirt. She headed into the kitchen, lowering herself into one of the creaky dining
room chairs. Mabel poured hot water over tea bags that smelled of rotting dirt.
Daryl sat beside Josie, and the pink scar running the length of his handsome face twisted and writhed. “What happened?” Concern pulled at the corners of his eyes.
Josie thought for a moment how to explain her observations.
Finally, after a strange look from Mabel, she told it outright. Both Daryl and Mabel’s faces were blank by the time she finished her story.
Daryl picked at a piece of wood on the table. Mabel brought them their tea. Josie glanced into her cup and blinked at what might have been a fuzzy moth, swimming around in the hot liquid. She blinked, and it disappeared.
“You didn’t see anything,” Mabel said, sipping her tea.
“I know what I saw,” Josie protested. The stench of the tea assaulted her nostrils, burning the delicate hairs.
“I’d listen to Mabel if I were you,” Daryl said quietly.
“Don’t act like I’ve done something wrong,” Josie snapped. Daryl’s look of concern morphed into a glare.
“Oh, now I’m crazy because I witnessed a dead deer birth a fucking butterfly out of its eye—which bit
my nose!”
“Keep your voice down, Josephine,” Mabel commanded, her voice nearly a whisper. “We’re trying to help you.” Mabel’s tone had transitioned to pitying.
Despite her ire, a wave of fatigue overcame Josie. Her head pounded, and her nose throbbed from her wound. “Fine, I’m sorry. Whatever.” She sighed and took a sip of her tea. She nearly choked on it,
spitting it back into the cup. “What is this shit?” she shouted.
“It’s tea, what else?” Mabel said, finishing her cup. Daryl nonchalantly took a drink of his own. Neither of their faces wrinkled with disgust.
“I’m going to bed. We’ll talk in the morning,” Josie said. Her head swam from the conversation.
Mabel and Daryl remained silent as Josie left the room.
Later that night, Josie awoke in a cold sweat. Her eyes could pick out each granule of wood in the wall and grain in the floor. She smelled dust in the vents. Josie rubbed her eyes and trudged through the house toward the kitchen. A knock sounded from the hall.
Her body fully alert, she snatched the old pistol from Mabel’s spice cabinet. She slowly approached the door, the knocking still present.
Opening the door a crack, she glanced out. Silence and still night air greeted her as Josie clicked off the safety and opened the door wider, stepping outside. She glanced around, rolling her feet carefully so that
she made no sound on the soft grass.
She glanced around the front yard, only her truck and Daryl’s car in the driveway. Josie turned to go back inside when a shriek sounded from the woods across the large front lawn. The shriek sounded again,
and Josie recognized her name within the sound.
She wheeled around to run back inside and make Daryl and Mabel explain what the hell was going on.
Josie yelped as she came face-to-face with a bone-white deer skull mounted on a large, mangy body. The creature from earlier stood not five feet from her, blocking her way to the front door. The depthless black eye sockets stared into hers, a familiar blue butterfly drifting past her head to land on the creature’s horns.
An intense, nauseating fear gripped Josie. All the hair on her body stood on end, and her heart pounded so hard she wasn’t sure her breathing could keep up. The creature cocked its head and hissed something. Josie snarled back at it and aimed her weapon. She supposed telling it to move wouldn’t do much. So, she pulled the trigger.
The monster stood firm. The bullet tore into its hide and made it step back a little, but then it righted itself, shaking its body in a sickly, deer-like way. The butterfly on its horns fluttered its wings in annoyance. Josie spotted something crawling from the bullet hole in the monster’s chest. A long, green stem, decorated with elegant leaves, sprouted from the hole. New life, born from the violence.
The front door flew open, and Daryl stood there, his blue eyes
locking on hers. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Trying to get back into the house around this thing!” Josie
screeched. She tried to point her weapon at the creature, but her eyes landed on a simple patch of
grass. She glanced around, turning in a full circle.
The creature had vanished.
“That doesn’t make any sense. It was there. It was…” Josie rambled.
Daryl actually uttered the words “calm down.”
“No, Daryl. I saw it—I shot it!— and you are choosing not to believe me. Like always.” Anger replaced the confusion and fear warring in her mind. “And, on top of that, it takes a gunshot to get you out of bed
to see what’s going on rather than the thing screaming my name a minute ago!”
Moments like these reminded Josie why she divorced Daryl: his constant obsession with making her appear as if she were the crazy one—making her question the reality she lived.
Daryl shook his head. “All right, I’m sorry. Let’s just…go inside and talk about this, okay?” Now he wanted to talk.
Josie clicked the safety back on and followed him inside, fatigue enveloping her. She sat at the kitchen table, and Daryl made a pot of coffee. After several long minutes, she spoke. “I’m sorry I woke you.”
“Don’t apologize,” Daryl replied, setting a cup of coffee in front of her. The black liquid swooshed and writhed like the flora beneath the creature’s skin. “I believe that you saw something, Josie. I honestly don’t
want to say I believe you saw…that.”
“Why?” Josie asked him. “You’ve lived here your whole life, and you’ve never mentioned anything strange happening.”
“You’re new to this place, I know. Things are a bit different, but really, they’re no different from life in Bozeman.”
Josie mentally sunk deep within herself. She pushed the rising emotions deep down, locking them underneath a trapdoor. Josie inhaled deeply, the thought of arguing with Daryl sending the hairs on her arms prickling. She glanced down into her coffee, and palpitations fluttered in her chest like butterfly wings.
“Let’s go to town tomorrow and get ice cream. Sound good?” Daryl asked, taking a long drag off his coffee. A small rivulet of liquid spilled down his chin. The color ran deep red.
She glanced into her coffee cup, meeting the inky black eyes of a sapphire blue butterfly. It blinked and licked its long proboscis out to taste the coffee. Its wings fluttered, splashing coffee over the lip of the
cup.
Josie took a deep breath, willing herself to forget the terror that gripped her from earlier. “Okay,” she said. She entertained the idea of ignoring all of the strange observations—perhaps that would solve this
mess.
Taking a sip of coffee, she tried not to gag as she felt the butterfly’s proboscis tickle her tongue. She reached to scratch the bridge of her nose, her fingers instinctively dancing around the delicate green stem and single leaf that had sprouted from her skin.