Excerpt from Clara and The Bear - Butterfly Attack

The snow melted and the butterflies came. Monarchs came in droves to the Butterfly Bush the landlord had planted in the front garden – great, big, vibrantly orange creatures with velvet-like black painted on their wings, and white spots speckling their bodies. Clara would brew green tea and sit on the covered porch to watch them as they drank nectar, their creepy arms and antennas twitching. They watched her back in silence, raising their bright wings slowly. They seemed to be plotting something. She stared into their blank faces, empty masks like endless abysses. They looked soulless, like demons.

She developed a strange but consuming phobia of the congregation of the butterflies in the bush. She would run speedily past them on her way to work, pausing for breath at the end of the street. She'd squirm about once out of their sight, trying to shake the shivering fear they induced in her. Despite her warning glares at them from behind the safety of the porch's screen, they did not leave. They had colonized the landlady's Butterfly Bush and would stay until the harsh frost killed off their happy little settlement.

One rather warm Sunday afternoon the landlady brought Clara homemade lemonade as she spied on the butterflies.

"I notice you out here a lot," the landlady said tentatively, obviously unsure if making conversation was appropriate. "You like the butterflies? I plant the Buddleia just for them!"

Clara placed a finger to her lips and waved her hand at the landlady, who stared at Clara quizzically but remained mute. Clara leaned in to listen as a male Monarch backed his bottom into the behind of a female. She contemplated shoving a stick at the screen, by which she could possibly shift the bush on which they were mating, and stop the expansion of their evil colony. However, she feared sending the whole tribe fluttering into the porch screen in revenge. While she doubted their force could break through the screen, she did not want to risk provoking an attack.

"I don't know," Clara said, sipping on the unpleasantly sour lemonade. "I'm not sure I see the difference between them and any other sort of bug."

"Well, they very pretty, no?" the landlady grinned spectacularly, and brought the lemonade back into the house. If she planted the Butterfly Bush to attract the flying devils, it was certainly not for her own pleasure – she barely left the house except for her numerous vacations to more tropical climates.

The next day Clara was rushing past the butterflies on the way to the basement, as usual, when something caught her eye – it was the glossy sheen of the Kamawango widow and widowers retreat brochure laying in a neglected manner by the Butterfly Bush.

"How did you get there?" Clara asked the inanimate piece of paper out loud. Her eyes scanned the yard for evidence. A black garbage bag lay exposed by the curb, its side ripped open, likely by some small and hungry rodent. A few of Clara's worn socks, sticky chocolate bar wrappers, and used tea bags formed a scattered path to the pamphlet, which now, to Clara's horror, was being molested by two randy butterflies in the midst of copulation on top of its evergreens and blue lakes. Clara let out a strangled scream. A shock of pain hit her forehead as she tried to reason out the best course of action in the middle of the storm of stress engulfing her. Leave the precious pamphlet to be sullied and discarded by those foul insects? Or enter into enemy territory to snatch the brochure away from the trauma of insect intercourse?

She chose the latter, and crept stealthily forward, one arm outstretched toward the pamphlet, the other shielding her eyes as if that was where the interrupted lovers were likely to attack once disturbed. Her heart was thumping at an alarming rate, and she could hear and feel the blood rushing through her head. She held her breath as she inched closer and closer. The butterflies seemed absorbed in their love-making, as Clara managed to gently touch the nearest corner of the pamphlet with the tip of her index finger without a single batting of a wing. Could she manage to slip the brochure from under them without aggravating assault, like a talented waiter whipping a table cloth without disturbing a fully set turkey dinner? She closed her eyes, counted to three, and pulled.

Immediately there was a flurry of black and orange, as the butterfly lovers flew up and spiralled around the interloper on their affair. Clara screamed, and, clutching the brochure to her chest, flopped to the ground in the fetal position, weeping hysterically. She imagined the entire clan of butterflies flying viciously at her, poking angrily at her face and arms and side with their spindly antennas. She begged them to stop, to have mercy, to return to the peaceful ceasefire through which they had coexisted thus far. They, soulless beings, ignored her pleas and cackled with vengeance, deriding her and her pathetic fear, her awkward rolls of fat, her loneliness, her lack of companionship, her obsession with a piece of paper and a support group she was not even a member of. Clara sobbed, tears and snot dripping onto the Kamawango brochure.

Then, shooing away the treacherous bugs like some heaven-sent apparition, Clara's mother appeared before her, and wrapped her bawling daughter in her small but strong arms.

"Clara dear, what is wrong?"

"Th-the b-butterflies," Clara whimpered.

"Hush, darling," Clara's mother wiped the hair from her daughter's face, and produced a tissue, as if by magic, from her sleeve. "Whatever do you mean?"

"They were attacking me!" Clara wailed.

"Oh, honey," her mother kissed the top of her head. "No they weren't, dear. You're just confused. What have you got there?"

Clara showed her mother the Kamawango pamphlet. In response, her mother grimaced and tried to take it from Clara's grip. But Clara snatched it back to her chest.

"Were you the one that threw this out, Mother?!" she practically screamed.

"Yes. I – I was cleaning your apartment, and I thought it'd be…healthy…if I took it away."

"Well, it isn't!" Clara pouted. She extended the brochure arm's length and examined it. It was now ripped in a couple places and stained with salty tears and viscous mucous. She sniffled into the tissue from her mother's sleeve.

"I'm sorry, dear. I just thought – " Clara blew her nose loudly, interrupting her mother.

"That's it!" she cried defiantly. "If they won't leave, I will!" And she stormed into her now sparkling clean basement apartment, the ratty Kamawango brochure clenched tightly in her pudgy fist.