Page 6 of The Butterfly
CHAPTER TWO
he was cold … colder than she’d ever been. The biting chill seemed to sink past her skin and flesh, down to her bones and deeper still. It flowed through her veins, turning her blood to ice and penetrating all the way to her soul.
Curling into herself, she shivered and squeezed her eyes shut. It seemed her skin was perpetually riddled by gooseflesh, the fine hairs on the backs of her arms forever standing on end, the chattering of her teeth as constant as the beating of her heart.
She could not keep her eyes closed for long, as against the blackness of the insides of her eyelids, an image suddenly appeared. A demon with massive horns looming over her, a forked tongue snaking out from between jagged teeth. The tongue undulated toward her, wet and rough as it rasped her cheek, burning hot. One of its hands clamped down over her mouth, making it difficult to breathe, her body pinned so that she could not move.
She cried out, forcing her eyes back open. Confronting her surroundings was preferable to facing the monster awaiting her in her dreams, every night without fail. At least here, in this cramped space comprised of stone walls, stone floors, and a thin cot, she was alone.
That did not last long, the rough, wooden door on the other side of the room swinging open to reveal a dragon clothed in a nun’s habit, its scaly tail swinging about as it stomped into the room and flung something at her. It was a bucket, she realized, and it was full of water … frigid water, some of which sloshed out to splash her, intensifying her coldness until it felt as if she were being stabbed by dozens of needles. A rough scrub brush came next, the hard wood striking her shoulder, the bristles scratching her through her thin, wool shift.
“Time to rise,” the dragon growled, flames spewing from her mouth. “Step lightly! If you want your breakfast, you’ll scrub every stair in this tower within an hour.”
Despite the fire lighting up the room with an orange glow, she could not seem to get warm, the sharp, stabbing sensation created by the water persisting as she struggled to her feet, her bones feeling far too weak to support the heavy weight in her middle. It grew by the day even as the rest of her seemed to shrink, her skin stretched taut over sharply protruding bones.
A hand came against her face, the sharp slap spurring her into action. There was no time to think of how chilled she was, or how hungry. She moved by rote now, her arms and legs propelling her, pushing past the fatigue and the pain. Each day, it was the same … work her fingers to the bone between meager meals and try to avoid angering the dragon who constantly stood over her, snorting smoke and ash, her scathing words bathing Olivia in fire.
“Idle hands are the instruments of the devil!” she roared as Olivia scrubbed the steps, swept the floors, shoveled coal. “Idleness is why you are in this predicament to begin with. Unwed, used, and discarded, heavy with bastard spawn!”
The little life inside of her kicked and squirmed, as if to protest such words, but she worked on, even when her knuckles began to bleed and her knees were rubbed raw from so much time crawling over stone floors.
“Only through service to God can your sins be washed clean!”
Yet, she did not think she could ever be purged of the venom that had been poured into her. Not when it increased by the day, filling her, overflowing, until it poured through the corners of her eyes, from her ears, the crack between her lips. Could no one see it, smell it? She was drowning in it, suffocating in the depths of its dark heaviness.
She collapsed onto the stone steps, struggling to breathe, to swim free. Fighting it became futile, as the dragon’s foot connected with her ribs in a swift kick and a sharp pain tore through her middle, the gush of warm liquid running down her thighs. Her mouth opened on a silent scream that echoed only in her mind, and she curled into herself, unable to escape the pain, the darkness, the streaks of red running down her legs as she was dragged to her tower room, the gnawing hunger and thirst mingling with the sensation of her body being torn apart from the inside.
Falling onto her cot, she blinked, tears running down her cheeks, black and thick and smelling of blood, of death. The dragon hunched over her, rosary held in hand, flames spewing from her nostrils as she prayed that God would have mercy on the soul of a degenerate whore. Olivia turned her head away from the dragon, only to look back and find the demon had replaced her, his sharp horns jutting toward her, lips peeled back to reveal those jagged teeth. He ran his fingers through one of the rivers of blood on her thighs.
“Just a taste, love,” he growled, chuckling as he lifted his bloodstained finger to his lips, groaning at the taste of her, shuddering as if it delighted him to no end.
She was screaming again, but only in her mind. No one could hear her, as the dragon went on praying and the demon’s demented laughter echoed from the walls of her tiny chamber.
And all the while, the pain tore through her, ripping its way through her middle, bowing her back, clenching deep into her inner thighs. As blood flowed from her womb like an ocean, she closed her eyes and surrendered, no longer able to swim free. She was dragged under, deeper, and deeper, until there was only darkness.
Olivia came awake with a jolt, her entire body convulsing as her mind snatched her from the depths of a hellish nightmare. Her heart pounded, and sweat had broken out over her skin, dampening her hair and making her nightgown cling to her.
Her vision was blurry at first, the entire world out of focus as she found herself standing on the line between reality and dream, past and present. Her chest burned, and she soon realized that it was because she held her breath. Her body had wound so taut that her fingers and toes ached from the tension, her scalp tight with it. Squeezing her eyes closed, she exhaled, the clench of her belly easing, her spine unwinding. Darkness encroached upon her vision, fatigue threatening to pull her back down into sleep, into Hell.
She fought it and reached for the light. For so long, she had wallowed in darkness, that thick, suffocating blanket. Now, it took every ounce of her strength and will to pull free of it, to tip herself over the line between the real world and the wasteland her mind had made of her dreams, the very opposite of true reality. As she deepened her breaths and fought to maintain consciousness, she reminded herself of what was real.
My name is Olivia Goodall. I am three-and-twenty. My daughter is Serena Grace Goodall, and she is four years of age. She is here with me, always, safe. I no longer live in that wretched asylum … the dragon was not a dragon at all, but a shriveled up old nun who can no longer touch me. The demon … the demon …
She choked down a sob, shaking her head with a force that still was not strong enough to knock the memories loose. The demon was real, and the things he’d done to her … no, she would not dwell on that. Opening her eyes, she gazed at the ceiling, a vaulted affair with elegant woodwork adorning its edges. The space she occupied was unfamiliar, and it took her a moment to remember where she was.
Maeve, the maid responsible for her care, had brought her to London. Staring down at her own body, she caught sight of the bandages covering her forearms, which throbbed and ached like the devil. She grinned at the sensation, remembering what had caused it.
Everything had happened so fast, yet, somehow, she recalled it all with stunning clarity. The days before the incident had passed her by in a blur of numbness, the world around her dull and lifeless, without color. This was not the first time she’d felt this way. In truth, she had gone through life feeling this way more often than not since giving birth. This time had been different. It had all been darker, heavier, as if she might never find her way back out.
She had been seated at her vanity table while Maeve brushed her hair, staring listlessly across the room. By then, she’d even ceased registering the beat of her own heart, the flow of air in and out of her lungs. Was she even alive? Had she died in her sleep and awakened in this purgatory—this place where voices came at her as if through water, where stepping into the garden offered not even the relief of a breeze against her face?
Olivia had glanced down at the table before her, finding several items arranged there—vials of cosmetics she never used anymore, a silver comb and hairbrush set, a porcelain jar filled with hairpins, a few other odds and ends. A half-empty bottle of laudanum beside a silver hand mirror matching the comb and brush. Blinking listlessly, she had reached toward the bottle, then paused, remembering that she’d just had a measure not an hour ago. Maeve would not let her have more so soon, even though her fingers itched for the bottle, her mouth watering at the sight of it. She’d come to need it as she did water and air, its effects weakening so much over time that she required more and more of the sickly sweet-smelling liquid to survive, to escape the Hell that awaited her every time she closed her eyes.
Her gaze had flitted to the hand mirror next, and for reasons she did not understand, something in her had been drawn to it. Its silver and glass had gleamed like a star in her muted surroundings, a beacon in the gray drabness cloaking her eyesight. She’d taken it up and gazed into it, frowning at what she had found. An almost gaunt face, pale as the moon: dark eyes that were too large looming over prominent cheekbones; a straight nose cutting through the middle; a sad, pouting mouth turned down at the corners, blushing pink; a tiny point of a chin, and the gentle slope of a soft jawline.
Familiar, but foreign, this face. Olivia Goodall, the broken little doll.
Unable to bear her reflection, she had focused instead upon the mirror itself, the feel of its raised, filigree etchings against her fingertips, the coolness of the glass when she’d placed her opposite hand over it. The first thing she’d touched in days that touched back, that created sensation. She’d become enthralled by that mirror, unable to stop staring at it and wondering what would happen if she smashed the glass to bits.
