The Butterfly Demon

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Night lay like cold glass over the deserted garden. Mist hung between the apple trees, which had long since ceased to bear apples, and a pale glow hung in the puddles, as if the stars there had forgotten how to be heavenly. I returned to where the voices had led me for days, a murmuring that passed not through my ears, but through my hands, through the scars on my knuckles and the wrinkles in my brow. Beneath the broken archway, the air carried the scent of iron and cold milk. A shimmer flickered, barely more than a sound in my eyes. Then it emerged: the butterfly demon. Its wings were large and translucent like thinly ground bones, a delicate latticework in whose chambers rested skulls—four of them, each different: one with a cracked frontal bone, one with a sharp smile, one blind and smooth, one that seemed to be listening. Down the middle of the body, one rib after another ran like small teeth down the spine. The insect's eyes glowed coldly, but not evil; more as if they were conducting an audit in the darkness. I couldn't retreat. The garden had become a room, and the demon sat at the door. "You carry debts that are not yours," it said voicelessly. "Inherited chains lie lightly until noticed." "From whom?" I asked. "From those who gave their debts before they spoke. I carry what you give me. I carry and remember." It raised its wings. In the chambers, skulls moved their jaws as if nibbling at the light. Images assaulted me: an old trial, files in brown envelopes; a hand practicing a forged signature; a walk home across a bridge where the snow swallowed the sounds. I hadn't experienced any of it, yet each image pressed against my sternum as if exhaled from there. "Take them away," I whispered. "I want my own memories back." "Payment." "What do you want?" "Something you won't miss until you realize it's missing." He stepped closer. The edge of the wing brushed my temple—icy, clean, precise. I felt a tugging in the depths, a cold slipping away: the fear that had accompanied me for years slipped away like a poorly fastened button. For a breath, I was weightless. Then the place was silent, and in the silence grew a new emptiness, a kind of clarity that was no consolation. "Still open," the demon said. "The images are old. There are new demands." I understood that he hadn't come to torment, but to take stock. He was the bookkeeper of an incomprehensible account, a bearer of someone else's burdens. In the wing chambers, writing now blinked, as if the skulls stored names. I recognized one. Mine. "Why am I standing there?" "Because you've begun not just to repay, but to borrow. You've filled my chamber with your fear. In return, you take something that seals the images." "What could that be?" "Your doubt. Your ability to question yourself. When you give them to me, the images remain on the outside, like rain on a glass."