It's located in the basement of the building.
It's lonely and deserted and uninviting.
The air is cooler than usual, darker than darkness.
The high windows are covered with an inch thick black paint.
The pungent smell of chloroform is tingling and penetrative.
I instinctively look up.
The ceiling is masked by a carpet of raven black butterflies.
Flying around carelessly.
They're threatning and scary but something about their demeanour reassures me.
They're harmless.
I walk past the stalls.
The benches are empty, the seats are dismal.
A lamp light shines at distance like a pharos in the midst of a Godforsaken ocean, my feet beat my brain to it.
In the center of the light aura sits a dissection plate.
A frog is pinned down by its extremities on the wax base.
It lies idle on its back, submerged in crystal clear water.
It's alive. It yawns.
I talk to it.
"I'm gonna cut you open now, ok?"
It winks at me.
The sound of the fluttering wings of the butterflies provides a soothing music.
I fetch the blade from the kit by the side of the plate.
I make one deep clean cut from the lip down to the cloaca.
Its stomach unfastens like a zipper by the touch of my skillful fingers.
I master in my dream what i suck at in my reality.
Blood gracefully invades the water, saturating it slowly but surely.
I move the frog's organs to the sides.
The lungs. The liver. The fat bodies.
Below them lies my heart.
I know it's my heart cause the three words are there, tattooed on the ventricle in deep red ink.
"Resistance Is Futile"
It beats in an iambic rythm, like in a divine poem.
It's delicate and light.
It floats intangibly in the water, still attached to the frog by one vein and one artery.
I carefully handle it between my thumb and my index and cut it loose with the blade.
I roll it in my palm.
I bend my fingers and it's trapped in my hand.
Its heat warms me up and its beatings spread through me in a seismic manner.
And once again i'm immaculately connected to that being in my fist.
Being wells up in my body.
Being wells up in my soul.
Being wells up in my mind.
I use the blade to saw my ribcage open.
I plug my heart in my vacant chest.
I feel ok.
No allergic reactions. No fits. No bellyaches.
I examine the frog, mutilated, gingerly dead.
The sea of red is as dead as its only inhabitant.
I use my index to draw circles on its surface.
They echo with the throbbing in my chest.
In the kit i find a needle and a thread.
I approximate the two edges of the frog's skin, tuck its organs in and sew it closed.
The incision is very neat.
The frog is as good as new.
I carry the plate to the sink and i change the water with fresh one from the tap.
Crystal clear water.
I place it back in the center of the light.
I wash the instruments and return them back in the kit.
I stand there, resurrected and guiltless, and gaze at the dead frog.
It opens its eyes.
It's fresh as if up from a casual nap.
I seem unalarmed by the unlikely incident.
"Hey buddy" i smile sincerely.
It smiles back.
I'm as zen as can be while i watch it open its mouth.
While it blissfuly flicks out its backwardly folded tongue and grasps me at the chest with its sticky tip.
While it swallows me whole.
It all happens in a moment.
It all happens in an eternity.
The frog takes its time chewing me, digesting me.
A moment or an eternity later, a heartless black butterfly comes out of its mouth.
It flutters it wings joyfully, playfully, as if spared from a heavy burden.
Lighter than air, it free falls upwards, to the ceiling.
It joins its peers and mingles in.
It becomes a statistic.
The frog stays pinned in the aura of light.
The room is back to its state of naught.
Everything is waiting again.
Everything is perfect again.
I wake up swimming in a sea of cold sweat.
That dream, again.
I'm angry and consumed.
I don't understand.
I'm deaf and mute.
I'm amputated.
I'm crippled.
I'm a freak.
I think tomorrow is a new day.
I think tomorrow i'll resist going to sleep.
I think i'm gonna fail.
Cause
Resistance Is Futile.
Labels: Tales Of The Butterfly
