The Dreams of the Black Butterfly

by Mark James Barrett

  “I dabble.”

  “I saw you at the London Gallery–”

  “The National Gallery.”

  “Whatever! You’re interested in art, so I figure you like to paint … I mean, we all do.”

  “You’ve been following me? Who’s we?”

  Wendell banged his coffee cup down on the table and it spilled across his hand. He winced and shook his steaming hand. “I’m sorry, but I have a procedure,” he said sharply. “I like to make sure I’ve got the right person.”

  “Well, I don’t like being stalked.” Paul was past shock and had quickly moved onto embarrassment, then anger at the manner in which he had been approached.

  Wendell looked up at the steel buttressing high above them and raised his voice. “I show him a miracle and all he does is bellyache,” he said, but the words seemed to stall under the cavernous roof. He checked his watch as if he now wanted to be away.

  “We’re look-a-likes, so what?” Paul asked.

  “We’re much more than that.”

  “Really? Is that why you’ve copied what I’m wearing? In fact, how did you even know what I was wearing today?”

  “Please, let me explain.” Wendell unzipped the bulging holdall at his feet. He pulled forth a ring binder and his face cleared suddenly. He set the binder on the silver-hatched table top and flipped it open. “Are you in a hurry?”

  “Listen, if this is some kind of con, you picked the wrong man. I’m not signing up to anything; I don’t care how much you look like me.”

  Wendell smiled as he flicked the pages. “This is not a con, I promise you that.” He found the page he was looking for and brought out a camera. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  The flash seared Paul’s eyes.

  “Could you fill out this questionnaire for me?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Please, it will only take five minutes and it helps to prove my theory.”

  “Your theory?”

  “I’ve met lots of us, Paul, and we not only look the same, we have the same personalities.”

  Paul drained his coffee and frowned. “Impossible! I mean, don’t they say we are products of our environment?”

  “Yes and no; our lives develop in roughly the same way, despite cultural differences and demographics.” Wendell spun the ring binder so it was facing Paul, clicked a Paper Mate and offered it over. The ring binder held a three-sheet, typed questionnaire, which had Paul’s name printed at the top. There was a box in the top, left-hand corner, which Paul presumed was for his photograph.

  “But we have different parents, therefore different genes. We can’t be the same.”

  “You wouldn’t think so, but the law of averages allows for it eventually. There have never been more people on earth than at this particular moment in time.”

  Paul picked up the pen and began to fill in the form. “If that’s true, there would be doubles of everyone.”

  “Eventually maybe. In any case, the days of the individual are numbered. We are the proof that nature is finally running out of ideas.”

  Paul would never have admitted it, but there did appear to be more than just a physical similarity between them. He recognised Wendell’s little facial tics and seemed to understand the thoughts and emotions that forced each idiosyncratic movement, whether it was a furrowing of the brow, a lick of the lips or just a slight flash in the eyes. It was all, however, completely ridiculous.

  “Okay then,” he smiled, “how many have you found so far?”

  “You’re number ten and I have a list of sixty.”

  “Sixty?”

  “Finish the questionnaire. I need a smoke.” Wendell got up and walked to the open doorway to Harewood Avenue. Paul watched the American light up a cigarette with a Zippo and blow a large cloud into the darkening street. This would be the perfect moment to leave, but Paul’s curiosity was beginning to get the better of him. He finished the form.

  Wendell returned and sat down. “Without looking, I’d say you were born in June or July, you are single, heterosexual, have slept with less than ten women in your entire life, possibly had at least one hernia operation and your appendix was whipped out when you were a kid.”

  “Er … yes, I–”

  “You are non-religious, like to think of yourself as a liberal, but secretly you are more right wing. You don’t broadcast that because you think it makes you less appealing to people, especially the type of women you try to impress.”

  “Hang on!”

  “You lack confidence. You smoke, more so when you drink, which you do too much. Your boozing leads to occasional losses of temper. You have an arrest history for violent behaviour.”

  Paul’s cheeks were glowing. For a split second, he envisaged dragging Wendell down to the floor and smashing his smug face against the concrete until it came apart. “You got me just about bang on,” he conceded instead, taking a deep breath, and handed the questionnaire back.

  Wendell read through it. Occasionally, he grunted in satisfaction.

  Paul felt his thudding heart begin to slow down. “Can I see the others?” he asked loudly as the station announcer told of the imminent arrival of the four fifty-two from Aylesbury.

  Wendell turned a few pages and spun the folder.

  COPIES

  Lucas Oppenheimer –

  Age 28, Bull Creek, Missouri, USA

  Robert Kristopher –

  Age 23, Northville, Michigan, USA

  Marius Szislak –

  Age 7, Pensacola, Florida, USA

  Herbert Mills –

  Age 32, Carlisle, Nova Scotia, Canada

  Mark Gregan –

  Age 22, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

  Jay Grendel –

  Age 68, Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada

  Gerinaldo Chavez –

  Age 51, Cuzco, Peru

  George Estebahn –

  Age 45, Nueva Gorgona, Panama

  Agustin Ledezma –

  Age 36, Catamarca, Argentina

  Paul Turner

  Age 37, Reading, UK

  Bruno Arden

  Age 25, Cologne, Germany

  Viggo Hattamarensen

  Age 17, Radlek, Estonia

  Paul turned the top page and looked at Lucas Oppenheimer’s picture and biography. He then flicked through all the names of those visited so far. Despite the age differences, there was no doubting the uncanny similarities. At the back of the folder there were four more sheets, twelve names on each: names from Europe, South Africa, and New Zealand …

  He closed the folder and handed it back.

  “Copies?”

  Wendell cleared his throat. “Well … you are all copies to me.”

  “How did you recognise Marius? He’s only seven.”

  “Coincidence. He won a national art competition for kids, to produce a painting that represented the American spirit, or some bullshit. I was watching Fox News and there he was … There I was. I knew it right away.”

  Paul reopened the folder and looked again at the photograph of the boy. The weak mouth, the eager-to-please expression; it might have been one of Paul’s old school photographs.

  “And now you can cross me off.”

  Wendell began to put his things away carefully. Paul didn’t like the man one bit. It could have been the shock of seeing himself as others did that caused most of his resentment. But Paul knew he wasn’t really like Wendell. He was smarter for a start, better looking as well. Travelling the world searching for people who look like you? Could it get any sadder? And yet something about all this rang true.

  The American looked down at him and frowned, as if he had heard Paul’s thoughts.

  Paul smiled back. “Are you going?”

 
“I thought I might travel with you a ways if you don’t mind?”

  Paul shrugged and moved away through the crowd, heading for the Bakerloo Line. Wendell slipped in front of him when they joined the queue for the escalator. The steel risers fell slowly into a long, steep drop. Paul felt the warm, greasy air sticking in his throat. The ascending escalator passed by serenely, just out of touching distance. The commuters stood straight and even, and suddenly Paul saw the uniformity of their flesh. And for a moment, the idea of diversity in human beings was gone. Replacing it was this endless line of bodies, like stamps punched from a huge sheet of flesh and wrapped in bland clothing. He leaned forward. “How long have you been doing this, Wendell?”

  “I’ve searched image databases for ten years now. I found you on Faces Around the World.”

  “But I didn’t put my picture on–”

  “There are cameras everywhere, Paul. You can’t control where your image might turn up.”

  As they stepped off the escalator, a warm breeze funnelled up from the tracks, bringing an iron smell from the darkness. The crowd shuffled forward.

  “You just wade through thousands of images?”

  “Millions I suppose.”

  It was warmer still on the platform. The air was flat and empty. The crowd, like a blind organism, pushed as far as it sensed was possible and then settled, its components waiting, armless and silent in their discomfort. Paul Turner and Wendell Perkins were 10 feet away from the platform edge, although they could not see it. The opposite wall curled over to them, adorned with giant, peeling advertisements.

  “Mama Mia. Its sixth sell-out year,” Paul read without interest, trying to take his mind off his claustrophobia. The matrix sign above them rolled. The next train was due in one minute.

  “I’d like to contact the others. Could you give me their details?”

  The drone of an approaching train and a stiff breeze passed through the crowd. The train squealed to a halt in front of them. The doors slid open and there was a polite but determined surge. They might just have squeezed on but Wendell held back at the last moment.

  Beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep! … Please mind the gap!

  The doors rattled shut and the train pulled away with a rising hum. Paul could feel panic bubbling inside him.

  “Where will you go from here? Germany?”

  “Jeez, Paul! You ask a lot of questions you already know the answers to.”

  Wendell stepped back from the edge of the platform and squeezed his holdall behind Paul’s legs. Paul looked down at the painted yellow line that ran 2 inches inside the lip of the concrete. The tips of his Converse trainers were touching it. He tried to shuffle back a little but there was the bag and a growing number of people pushing onto the platform. The weight of them was starting to nudge him forward and he had to keep adjusting his feet to compensate. The red dots rolled on the sign: two minutes.

  Paul thought about the names on the list, scored through so carefully with a rule.

  “Creationism or Evolution? Which way do you see it?” Wendell asked.

  “What? Evolution I suppose.”

  “Of course you do. Yet lots of rational people believe in Creationism, even if it is ridiculous. Because if we came from nowhere and we go to nowhere, if we are just a stupid, improbable accident, what’s the point of it all?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Wendell looked utterly miserable. “We’re not even unique accidents.”

  Paul glanced at the matrix sign: one minute left. He felt Wendell’s hands come up against his shoulders. They were shaking. From the tunnel came the clatter of an approaching train. It sounded to Paul like some giant, chittering beetle, scuttling up from a place deep in the bedrock of the planet. He imagined its antennae bristling, tasting the darkness as it moved.

  They were about 30 feet away from the tunnel entrance. Paul stared at the tracks below him, wondering which one was live. The middle one? Or was it all of them? His thoughts dropped away, shrivelling like leaves facing an early winter. He tottered for a second as the crowd pushed harder against him, ready to fight for a spot on the approaching train. The train’s headlights blinded him and he heard Wendell’s words despite the roar.

  “I’ll feel better when none of you copies are around anymore.”

  With an almighty effort, Paul locked his knees and jumped back into Wendell as the man pushed him forward. They wrestled each other and screamed, like a madman staring into a funfair mirror, spinning, falling, and then one of them was snatched away so completely that the other felt the nails tear from his fingertips. Something enormous struck his legs and they caught fire with an unbearable pain. He felt the flames gutter up through his stomach and he curled like a glowing, delicate ember then went out.

  It was just after midday on a cool, spring afternoon when Bruno Arden opened his apartment door to an older, slightly heavier version of him.

  “Mein Gott! I didn’t know if you would come,” he said quietly.

  The visitor extended his hand. “Good to finally meet you. I am–”

  “Me with different memories.”

  “Couldn’t have put it better myself.”

  Bruno looked around outside. “Did you bring the Paparazzi, Paul?”

  “No, managed to get here unnoticed I think.”

  “Please … come in.”

  The tiny flat smelled of oil paint. They sat in the kitchen and drank coffee. Bruno pulled nervously on a cigarette. “So, you are all better now?”

  “Almost. I have a few pins holding my legs together.”

  “Yes, I read about that. And you, we, are famous. You got the whole world looking for themselves. It’s the new craze. The biggest craze since the Church of the Black Butterfly was formed. You have started another religion perhaps?”

  They laughed together as if they were old friends and then the German became serious. “It is a pity about the others.”

  “Yes … and I could be Wendell, you know.”

  Bruno shook his head. “It’s unlikely.”

  “But possible.”

  “Yes, anything is possible. Look at us.”

  The visitor was quiet for a moment. His mind seemed to be on something else.

  Bruno cleared his throat. “You did well to survive.”

  “Well, I was lucky and Wendell forgot his own theory.”

  Bruno stubbed his cigarette and pulled another out of a pack on the table. “That we are all the same?”

  “Yes, if he had a history of violence then so would I, and you, too, of course.”

  Bruno nodded and began to speak.

  “Wait, I have something to say, if I can remember.”

  The German sucked on his cigarette and waited patiently.

  After some contemplation, Paul spoke. “Wendell hat es unrecht. Wir sind nicht Kopien. Wir sind Brüder.”

  Bruno clapped his hands in delight. “Yes, Wendell was wrong. We are not copies, we are brothers.”

  Paul reached into his jacket pocket. Something flashed in his hand as he got up. “I never did get on with my brother, did you?”

  Bruno jumped up and pushed the table into Paul as he stepped back from him. “You were right, Viggo,” he called quickly.

  Paul swivelled in shock, waving the knife unsteadily. In the hallway behind him, a group of people were forming. As they filed out of the living room he realised that they must have been there all along: waiting silently … listening. The small kitchen filled up quickly. Paul backed away until he came up against the window frame. They stopped a yard away from him. Those that couldn’t get into the room stretched their necks to see over the others. They were young and thin, old and fat, but they had a terrible similarity and their silence was unnerving. Bruno squeezed around the table and put his arm on a young man’
s shoulder.

  “Viggo said you would do this and I disagreed.”

  “Is this everyone on the list?” Paul croaked, trying to buy time.

  “No, not all. Some were like you and we are still looking for the others. The world has changed forever, Paul; the age of the multividual is here. We must adapt to survive. Imagine what a person might achieve if they could be in a hundred different places at the same time.”

  “It won’t work. You’re still a group of individuals whatever you say.”

  “No, when we are finished searching, we will decide on a composite name and become a true multividual. The only individual here is you.”

  Paul looked for forgiveness in the familiar faces surrounding him, but he knew better. “Fuck you all,” he said wearily and pointed the knife.

  They fell on him.

  Forever in Focus

  Lyman Dollie washed the blood from his hands in an extravagant froth of soapy water. He always used too much soap because, despite spending a fortune on trying to get some decent water plumbed into the hacienda, it was still dirty and he didn’t like to be reminded of failure, however small that failure was.

  He was troubled by the call he had just received. Whoever this Hawthorne character was – it would come to him – he knew the secret of the Texan’s obsession and in the worst of scenarios, may have blabbed it to just about anyone. As Dollie made his way back upstairs, he rang Garcia, caught in the swing of two very different feelings: buoyant that the process some of his people had been developing was such a resounding success, yet livid that there might be a network of individuals, however pathetic they may be, plotting against him.

  “Get the four by fours out; we’re heading to Iquitos in thirty.” Dollie walked briskly through his open-plan house and sat at a wicker table in front of the huge one-way window that looked over the front of his property at Santa Clara. It was exactly midday. One of his housemaids came through with his lunch: raw strips of prime Argentinean beef marinated in soy sauce, ginger and chillies, and a bowl of wilted pak choi. He forked cabbage into his mouth as he ruminated. Hawthorne was an Englishman, he seemed to remember. Dollie had hundreds of people in his employ, just in Peru alone, but he always remembered anyone he had met. He had learned a technique to do so during hypnotherapy. Yes, it was coming back to him now; he was a tutor, a drunkard and a pederast. How did he know the truth about the black butterfly? It was a revelation that was puzzling, disturbing even. But he didn’t need to worry. They had the son of a bitch’s photograph, so Dollie would get everything out of the Englishman; that was one thing he could be absolutely sure of.