The Contrary Tale of the Butterfly Girl: From the Peculiar Adventures of John Loveheart, Esq., Volume 2

by Ishbelle Bee

  I walk into the bright box of space. I change the colour of the sky; a flash of green lightning strikes St Paul’s. Unexpected ! I move onwards. My mood as black as dungeons. Loveheart on my mind. LOVEHEART ALWAYS ON MY MIND.

  The creatures of London are wobbly lines, something drawn from a sketchbook with charcoal. They can be smudged out. Top-hated rich gentlemen are deformed bird-men on the paper. Bright-eyed, pretty ladies in their rainbow dresses become screaming tropical birds, fanning themselves and twittering nervously. Black swirls of charcoal, nothing more.

  And those lower, darker forms of London, the creatures of the underworld: the feeble, the half dead with their wretchedness, starvation and filth, the cheap scent of lavender on the gutter-piss girls, their black toothless mouths, the enormous emptiness.

  A canvas. That is all you are London. A canvas for my artistry. HAND ME A PAINTBRUSH. Let me give you a lesson in creation.

  You open your mouth like a money-box. You’ll swallow what I give you.

  The whores round the horse trough, washing their thighs, tongue waggling lies. Exhausted, worn down, swamped in sadness, they cluster together: a mass of bruised flesh, putrid insides, black lungs and rotting bones. The vast sky above them swirls and simmers, savage green – the soupy concoction of a sorcerer. I click my fingers. MAKE THEM MOVE.

  Horse shit stuck between their swollen toes. They stick fingers in their mouths, count their remaining teeth. A backside pinched by a grubby face drunk. They are the foul little specimens. I glide past. I AM THE SHARK.

  I AM THE SHARK

  I am being observed by a man with porridge stains on his waistcoat. I have seen him before. He comes out in the darkness. Yellow fingernails, leech fat fingers. Killer of women; girls go missing all the time; slip off the edges of the world. Fall into holes.

  I stare into him, make him evaporate. MELT ON THE SPOT.

  I leave him behind, move past the butchers, where bloody sausages hang in sloppy ribbons from a hook in the window. The butcher examines me as I pass: one big hairy hand clutching a glittering wet intestinal loop.

  Meandering through the maze of side alleys, I make my way towards the museum. The sludge-brown streets are bobbing with excrement, bubbling foul odours: the stench of tanneries, pie shops and soap-boilers. I gaze into the cobwebbed window of a Hocus-pocus den: see a human skull painted blue, and tiny fairy-size candles sizzling in the darkness. Inside, hovering over a dirty crystal ball, a decrepit looking gent peers goggle-eyed into the future. He wears a tattered robe of indigo with embroidered stars, now falling off. What future does he see? What other-worlds can he glimpse?

  I AM FROM THE OTHERWORLDS, FORTUNE TELLER.

  I AM FROM THE UNDERNEATH.

  ONLY AN INCH AWAY.

  I move through the narrow streets, passing rows of shops: smell pickles, dead dog, green cheeses and hot cider. I could gobble up the lot.

  I am blistering black, blacker than midnight, blacker than space.

  I AM THE SHARK

  The museum gates loom open, the jaws of a beast carved in marble. The sky is full of spirals of milky clouds, whipped up white. I turn them green. Sour the palette.

  I am an executioner today, I imagine a thousand skulls lie under my feet.

  POWER

  Loops of energy spin round me, demonic atoms colliding and exploding.

  Do you want to know what power is?

  I pick out a small gentleman in the crowd carrying a heavy pile of books. He staggers under their weight, wobbles on his feet. I have chosen him.

  He explodes; pieces of his body splatter a school party. A small child holds up a severed arm with delight. His teacher, drenched in intestinal juices, screams, “PUT THAT DOWN THIS INSTANT, PERCY!”

  Percy looks disappointed. That’s education for you.

  I tip my hat at him.

  Percy waves back and then turns his attention away, looking for the head.

  I am in a world of skulls. The pieces of you.

  I take off my coat. Reveal my waistcoat, which is quite extraordinary: embroidered with exquisite lizards and butterflies in a dazzle of aqua and cornflower blues. I am getting hot. I feel the boil in my blood.

  Young women drift past: they smell of buttercups, bluebells and raspberry jelly. Not really my thing at all. I like my women to taste like fireworks. Melt in my hands. Under my weight.

  And here comes the spindly curator Uriah Cushing, hunched very low, his words a muttering wetness. “Prime Minister, it is an honour to see you again.”

  I nod, acknowledge his feeble existence.

  “And may I say,” he blithers on, “your last donation to the museum was considerable.”

  He’s a nervous little creature, hook nosed, fearful of predators. Smells of something cabbagy. Everything has to be labelled and positioned carefully within white spaces in his world. The wondrous and magical are stuffed into glass jars and corked, sealed within a vacuum. Never to be released.

  I follow him up the great stone steps into the mouth of the museum: my eyes wandering to the heights of the vast ceiling where, hanging from wires within the gloomy depths, the complete skeleton of a great dinosaur is ominously suspended above us. I listen for the creak of chains. I listen for the breaking.

  We move into dark indigo space.

  “I have an interest in viewing the bottled mermaids,” I say to Uriah, who leads me up the flight of steps to the upper level of the museum.

  Within a glass cabinet sits a monstrous stuffed frog, observing quietly.

  Within the velvety black shadows of a corner of the exhibition, a pickled giant octopus floats in a jar of formaldehyde, a weird creature of surveillance.

  I imagine the curator stuffed and preserved within a cabinet. The thought amuses me.

  Uriah points to the cabinet, “Here are the beauties.”

  BEAUTY BEAUTY

  I HAVE SEEN SUPERNOVAS

  YOUR BEAUTY IS A PIECE OF SHRIVELLED SKIN IN A JAR.

  I peer at the bottled mermaids. There are a dozen of them, misshapen and pickled. Soft green and purple-veined. They have eyes like huge white spaces, as though buried under deep snow. I want to pluck out their eyeballs. Taste them.

  In my mind I move charcoal over the paper, catch them, the little fish women. Catch them on powdery sheets, fingers black with dust.

  Now I want to look at the dinosaur. I like its bones. All crack and splinter. I want to feel its great teeth. I look over the balcony. I see two little girls. Sweet as a custard tart. I want to eat them up. They are part of a guided tour squeezing down the narrow corridors, wafting a stench of mutton fat and tobacco. I can see the mummified Pygmy midgets, with scissor-smiles. Snap Snap Snap. Teeth biting bone. Teeth biting bone.

  And then I smell him.

  LOVEHEART

  I peer over the balcony; he’s within the guided tour. He’s wearing green with red hearts exploding all over his coat. And he’s with the butterfly girl. She’s like a bottled mermaid; she’s been pickled in a weird formula. I want to stick my fingers in her jar. She’s carrying weaponry! Unbelievable! You’d think there would be some sort of security.

  The tour guide, who is a hunched dwarf, screams, “And so he died from a festering wound!” and then “If we can hurry along, there are some fascinating examples of cannibalism in the next room.”

  Loveheart looks up and I speak over the tour guide. “And if our paths cross ever again, Mr Loveheart, AND IF OUR PATHS EVER CROSS AGAIN,” and I begin to descend the great staircase. The bottled mermaids explode in their jars.

  The butterfly girl throws a blade at me. It zizzes… impales my top hat to the wall. I am impressed! I am laughing.

  Loveheart, Boo Boo and bottled mermaids

  “What a coincidence!” I shout out, “We JUST keep running into one another,” and I draw my sword.

  “YOU ARE A PIECE OF SHIT ON MY BOOT THAT NEEDS REMOVING,” he bellows.

  Boo Boo launches herself up the stairs and leaps into the air, blade aimed at his hea
d.

  He grabs her by the throat and pulls her to the ground.

  As quick as a wink she spins her blade and sinks it into his heart.

  He staggers backwards. Pulls the blade out, “You have completely ruined my waistcoat !” and holds her by the hair mid-air.

  “LET HER GO!” I demand.

  “Or what!” he laughs.

  He clicks his fingers. She disappears. Reappears behind him inside a glass cabinet of the mermaids. Suspended in water. Bashing her fists against magic glass

  “BOO BOO,” I shout and leap up the stairs. Hack into him.

  The curator appears, “Gentleman! Could I ask you to desist?”

  The demon pulls the curator’s head off with his hands; it rolls down the steps, tomato-red splattering the glass coffin, within which a stuffed crocodile smirks.

  The guided tour screams and segments. The tour guide glances at his clipboard in bewilderment, the head bounces playfully down the steps and rolls by his feet.

  I smash the glass, the water falls out and Boo Boo tumbles into my arms. She coughs water, grits her teeth.

  I AM LORD OF THE UNDERWORLD.

  Energies loop and sizzle.

  I AM OUTSIDE YOUR RULES

  I stab my sword into the demon’s gut. He grabs me, pulls me closer to his face. “I am having you for dinner.”

  We disappear in an explosion of sparks.

  The House of Zedock Heap

  I awake on an immense bloody-red velvet-cushioned bed. I YAWN!

  The room smells of Turkish delight. I am a sugar cube! I AM A SUGAR CUBE!

  I wonder if I have I been drugged?

  I was dreaming, I remember. I was dreaming I was a Lord of the Underworld. My name was written upside down on paper stars. Each one a part of me. Each one dangling on golden thread; wobbling in deep space.

  Perhaps I have been dissected. Oooops! I fall off the bed.

  My legs buckle under. Where is my sword?

  I hold the bed post, prop myself up. My name is Heart.

  My name is HEART. I have a cat. He is very fat. He is a fat cat. I love my fat cat.

  I’m in a bedroom! So much red, it hurts my eyes. The walls are made up of roots which intertwine with one another and they are moving. The walls are alive! I touch them and they swell and then spiral in my hand. I examine the doorway – a red portal with a black wet hole for a lock.

  This is a very odd place and my brain feels rather soft. Perhaps I should have a little sleep, dream of icing sugar, dream of spaces made of sugar.

  A great watery mirror hangs on the wall above the bed and it shimmers. I can see sea-worms and small opaque starburst-fish swim within its depths. I stick my hand into the mirror and remove it, dripping and glistening. The looping roots begin to entwine around me and pull me across the floor to the vast bed which splits open like a flower. It has fangs!

  On a small table by the bed sits a solitary book. I reach for it, my fingers fondling the cover which is made with human skin! How very curious! This book must belong to a mad man!

  The Vinegar Doctor

  There is no author. I open at a random page:

  “It excites you, doesn’t it?”

  This is indeed a very ODD thing. What was the last thing I recall? Mmmmmm, I think I was talking to a butterfly. I was kissing a butterfly. I saw a shark, I saw a shark. I SAW A SHARK.

  I pick another page:

  Black as boiling nightfall. Unripe fruits hung like poisonous gifts, lustrous greens, other-worldly blues, beetle blacks, devil reds, pomegranate.

  Whose bedroom is this? Some sort of demon I can only presume. My mind is a little muddled, a spoon in the jam.

  blood-orange

  blood-orange

  blood-orange blood-orange

  blood-orange blood-orange blood-orange blood-orange

  Brain damage perhaps? Am I inside a fairytale? IF SO, who am I? I am the black-eyed prince. I am the thing that kills the wicked magician. I AM THE LORD OF THE DEAD. I reanimate you!

  Come here and give me a kiss.

  I recall I ate rice pudding with a splodge of marmalade for dinner.

  Inside the forest there are dead shiny creatures.

  I wonder if anyone will bring me supper for I am awfully hungry. Perhaps some toast? Thickly buttered.

  I eat eerie bulging-eyed insects.

  Am I within a dream. Inside a space, a room, a brain? Tiny flowers of starlight. I REMEMBER! My name is JOHN and I like cake.

  Don’t be alarmed. Everyone is made of marzipan.

  How curious. I pick another page

  You will have to eat your way out, Mr Loveheart.

  Or cut his head off.

  Aha! A book that is helping me. Now, where is my sword?

  You’re standing on it.

  Ah! Yes of course. Thank you.

  You’re welcome.

  I shut the book. I think I am a PRINCE. I am a fairytale. I am a fairytale. I look in the mirror at my face. I have black eyes. That, perhaps, isn’t quite normal.

  I move closer to the surface of ripple, up to the curious mirror. Am I a demon prince? I feel my heart beat. I feel the thud, the spongy thud thud thud. I remember now. Ah, I understand, I am a bit broken inside. THUD THUD THUD

  I am quite mad.

  THUD THUD THUD

  I am not really human anymore. I want to step inside the mirror, wiggle my toes under the waters. BECOME LIQUID.

  A CREAK!

  The door opens and a queer-looking butler, for he is wearing a pink turban and holding a blowpipe, enters.

  “Mr Loveheart, you are required for dinner,” and he shoots the pipe. A dart hits me in the thigh.

  “I feel rather ill-used!” I proclaim before it oozes into my bloodstream. Fizzing, wobbly jelly, wobbly jelly wobbly jelly.

  I hear a screech, see him bring in an old iron wheelchair which he plops me into, squeaks me off down the corridor. Into a darkness that oozes. Rather splendid plum velvet walls dripping with splodges of vanilla scented wax. Lots of tapestries hanging about the place, withery dithery!

  “I don’t believe I have any tapestries at Loveheart Manor,” I say to the butler, “Or, come to think on it, there may be one of an infamous and weird-bearded ancestor in the basement.”

  The butler ignores me.

  “I am feeling rather wooooooooozy.”

  I see the pretty pictures; a knight is battling a great white coiled worm. Poppy red, bone white, sea serpent green, Aztec gold. They fizzle and dazzle my head. Eggy splat and green jelly flubber. Oohh another one. A mermaid the colour of seaweed splat and foam. She wriggles, she giggles, fish tail question mark.

  I sink out of the chair, stare at the carpet, “IT IS BLUE!” I shriek.

  Tapestry tapestry: black dragon, a maiden tied to a tree, waiting to be devoured. She is smiling. How extraordinary!

  Fairytale fairytale fairytale fairytale SPRUNG to life! leap from the walls!

  I AM WITHIN A FAIRYTALE

  The wheel chair squeaks, “AND THE CARPET IS BLUE!”

  TAPESTRY tapestry tapestry: this time a magician in a top hat speckled with stars, sawing in half a girl confined within a magic box.

  “MAGIC BOX!” I shout, “MAGIC BOX.” Above him hangs a moon, a wax egg. “I WOULD LIKE SOME CUSTARD.”

  The butler sighs wearily and opens a door into a dining room, a room with food on a big red dining room table. I see custard tarts! macaroons, butterfly cakes, sponge fingers, gingerbread. I want to gobble up the goodies, suck my fingers of sugar.

  There is a man at the head of the table. A big man. I KNOW HIM! HE IS THE SHARK.

  “Hello, Mr Shark!” and I wave.

  He looks happy and his words are all jelly squish and cherry flavoured. I don’t understand, but I watch his lips move. Gums like a rubbery fish. He has got a big spoon in his hands.

  I am wheeled to the table. In front of me is a big trifle dish.

  The butler pours me wine. He smells of peppermint and formaldehyde – corpse p
reservation stink.

  “Why is my head funny?” I say.

  His lips move and his words move in a jumble. “Demonic paralysis. Feebles the brain, Mr Loveheart. It affects anything of our kind.”

  “I have a feeble brain!” I announce, followed by, “May I have a bowl of trifle please?” I point to the wall behind him. I see a big butterfly in a frame. It is moving. “It is alive!” I shout.

  “Yes, of course,” he smiles – oh so many teeth – and steps closer to me. He eliminates the space. I know what the butterfly is; it zaps into my brain.

  “BOO BOO,” I shout, “BOO BOO NEEDS THAT BUTTERFLY.”

  “She is a predator,” he speaks. “Isn’t she beautiful?” He taps the glass. “She is the only one in the world. It’s funny how you don’t appreciate something until it is gone. Until it is no more. Will someone miss you, Mr Loveheart, when you are eaten?”

  “I believe my cat would miss me.” My head rolls backwards. On the ceiling is deep space. I see planets dangle, a shooting star whizzzzes past. Comets collide. Black sparkle and a whiff of sulphur.