The Butterfly of Mr. Delmways

Rumble. Ripple. Split. Every day it would do these things. Every day it made itself apparent to its surroundings as it nudged them and budged them; it would crackle slightly around its edges. Openings would appear in its sinew, and loudly it would buzz until it rumbled.1

~*~2

It was always on the common Sunday evenings. There was nothing on the television despite the hundreds of programs, books didn’t satisfy, and there was that strange looming sense of some sort of conclusion. It was in moments like these that Mr. Delmways' mind would take a little raft and try to float down on an asphalt road. It never got too far and thus pushed him into a state of oddness.3

He’d sit up straight in his bed with the lights off, and he wouldn’t move. His dark and slightly crooked silhouette would be edged by the streetlamps glow from outside as he breathed. Under his gut, his diaphragm leisurely pushed his belly back and forth against the dim light. Then whispering, he would utter three, distinct words: 4

"Gladly, I watch.”5

He would then lie down, and his raft would move into sandier grounds.6

When he awoke, groggy and blemished by the sunlight drifting in through his curtains, wrinkled bags would be encroaching on his eyes. His maid, in her pressed and starched uniform (complete with hat), would already have placed his mail on the bed stand to his right and a small glass of bourbon with it.
Mr. Delmways didn’t believe in latter hour drinking and he kept his morning habit. It didn’t go well with his medication, which he rarely took anyways.7

At nine o’clock every morning, the TV was rolled before his bed and he would watch the evening news taped from the earlier night. Never had he actually watched the news at night for he went to bed promptly at eight. Then alone, he would drift off into his premonitions. 8

If ever asked about his dreams, he would always answer that he had none. Therefore, sadly or thankfully, the information of them is unsatisfactory.9

This was all that was ever known of Mr. Delmways, the crispy man who restrained himself into his upstairs bedroom.10

11

It wasn’t until late August of last year that I stumbled upon his dilapidated yard. The once-possibly-bronze fencing had greened with the rain; undergrowth and overgrowth covered and undermined the footpath, cracking the stones; and the fountain, garden cherubs, and statues had all either fallen or crumbled. From the gate, a looped mass of bark and branches grew and careened over the weeds of his lawn. From its highest branch, a writhing and fraying rope hung down. A loop was attached to the end.12

With a shudder (and I don’t exactly know why I shuddered), I peered up at the front steps of his home with the thought of throwing a stone to break a window. It seemed like the thing that ought to be done. Instead, I simply walked to the door, rapped on the maple… and waited. It was chilly outside.13

My thoughts turned to the man who owned the home, if he was really as odd as his family had told me, or warned me. I wondered if he knew that I was there to audit his home as the maid answered the door. Suddenly, a plump face poked out.14

“Hello, Mister Johns," she said as she peeered at me behind her glasses. "I intercepted a letter to Alex—he really shouldn’t hafta to read about such things with his health and all—well, it explained that you were coming this morning.” I couldn’t quite place her accent as she spoke, and I couldn’t help to feel like she was unloading some sort of weight onto me.15

As I tried to hurriedly thank her, I shuffled my feet into the entrance trying to pass. Though as champion, she held me.16

“You don’t know how it is here, sir, all the blame damn things I have to do. I me’n, I can put up with house cleaning, but all this other stuff”—she pronounced “stuff” as “stoof”—“well, it is just the hairiest mess of labor, I tell you.”17

“Yes, of course, ma’am. I really should—“18

“Oh yes, oh yes, all your auditing busy-ness. Well, when you finish up with that, I’ll have a nice old glass of juice for you in the kitchen. That is, if Mr. Delmways hasn’t put me up to do something else extre-aneous.”19

"Yea—er, yes, ma’am. I’m sure I’ll enjoy that.” I nearly tripped over the uneven floor as I pressed past, and as she retreated to an adjacent room, doubtless, to perform some 'extre-aneous stoof.'20

21

Inside, as I looked around, it was evident that the same care that had been applied outside had been applied inside as well. Webs hung down from the ceiling, the stairway’s railing had nearly toppled over, and all visible windows were infested with dirt and grime. Reaching down, I plucked a small, brown odd thing up from the floor. As my mind deduced what it was in my palm, I cast it away and wiped my hand on my pants—disgusting. As I looked downwards again, I saw in the far rooms that toys, tiny cars, were scattered everywhere. Walking over and picking one up, I suspiciously ran its wheel against my thumb as it glinted against the dusk lighting.22

"Huh,” I remember saying. Everything in the house could have been attributed with "huh." It was a “huh" type of place. The overworked maid, the messiness, and then all the random knick-knacks on the shelves gave birth to numerous, sighed huhs. There was always an odd feeling when auditing someone’s home for a will, but in this case the feeling was abnormal. Perhaps it was because the call for an audit had come from the man’s family and not himself. From my observance, I wondered why they wanted it summed up so hastily. With the maid’s attitude, it seemed the man was ornery enough to live for another ten years. I still hadn't seem him though.23

Nevertheless, I went about my job and when I finished, I regrettably went to have juice with the stout little maid.24

~*~25

As the miniscule thing grew louder, all eyes, small in their own statures, turned towards it. They gazed at it, screamed at it, poked it, but the thing was intent only on its own proceedings. It punctured its shell and burst it open, spreading it out, and then stared at the ghostly faces.26

~*~27

He watched the man outside. Everything he did seemed to be done in an awkward fashion. The way he ran his eyes over the fence posts, the yard decorations, and finally the tree--all were given an over-the-top analysis. When the man began inspecting the rope, Mr. Delmways gripped the armrests of his wingback chair. “Ooh, yeah, I know what you’re thinking, boy,” he chuckled to himself. “A genuine noose.”28

As the man began to open the gate though, his smile turned. “No,” he shouted in a wheeze. On the feet of his chair, wheels were attached, and he used to them to slide across the carpet to his door. Opening it a crack, hardly noticeable, he peeped around its corner towards the downstairs foyer. The sound of a knock rebounded against the house’s walls, and Ms. Sellmer, the maid, answered it. She prattled on in her ranting manner, obviously aggravating the man, and then asked if he would like some juice after his busy-ness.29

In the one-sided conversation, there was one word that caught Mr. Delmways’ full-bodied attention: “audit.” He was familiar with its meaning, but the way he reacted to it said otherwise. His lip dropped and his right hand came up to his temple. “Why?” his expression said. Closing the door soundlessly, he rolled his chair to his bed and crawled onto his mattress, lying down. He stared up at his ceiling. ‘The man’s too close,’ he thought. ‘Too damn close.’ He lay like that for good period of time.30

31

Never would he tell the maid, but when alone (which was mostly always), he would sit by his window—the only clean one in the building—and spy out. He knew everyone on his street by watching them. Little William to his left always played ball with John; Dillan, across the road, was an abusive drunk who beat his wife, Alexia; Sandra was a newly imported college student who lived to his right; and James Johnson, well, by all seen evidence was deduced to be a friendly killer, a good-natured murderer.32

All of these people, he bore with passiveness. Although they may have raised some of the most perfectly terrible noise imaginable, he knew they would never come to his house. He had made sure it looked uninviting and dangerous. Even if they ever were to come inside, they would fall on the cars. Mr. Delmways, in all the years of his self-induced seclusion, had always been careful to leave something on the floor to guard his safety. The raft of his mind, with all its turbulence, had jostled him too far back and forth.33

As he heard the man shuffle along downstairs--a "huh" at every other minute--he stared up at his ceiling, watching the fan blades rotate, careful to keep track of how many times they passed a crack in the plaster. "Twelve... Twenty-one... Thirty; how many minutes, how many more minutes?" He swallowed. His throat was dry as it rippled. His knuckles cracked as his fingers strummed against his blankets. "Sixty-one... Sixty-nine... crap. Get out!" He didn't blink. Not once.34

He hoped vigorously, spasmodically, that the man would trip on the cars, that he would break his leg. Alas, Mr. Delmways’ hope was soon trampled upon. For at the very moment his fan blade count reached ninety-seven, the bedroom door opened.35

~*~36

And it was while it was staring that the thing began to beat. Wings on the sides of its body slowly thumped against its skeleton. Moonlit rays gently grew in the shadows, lacing them with tendrils of candescence. Again, it nudged and budged the shapeless eyes as it hovered above the milky earth.37

~*~38

The juice with Ms. Sellmer (I had learned her name over the drink) was barely tolerable. Everything I said, be it just a single word, would launch her into one of her continuous and unstoppable, loathsome, foreign speeches. She would never shut up! My eyes would bore into hers with an intense hatred, but she had no traces of human relations in her blood. She just chattered on in her depriving chitterlings.39

After an hour of it, I insisted rather loudly that I must see Mr. Delmways. For a second her yap stopped yapping.40

“But, sir,you can’t do that. It's not done here... Mr. Delmways, the nasty old brute, just don’t like seeing people this close. Makes him uncomfortable. He don’t like it, and I’ll be repri-mended... I know it. Please, sir.”41

I insisted again. I didn’t care if she was 'repri-mended,' I wanted to leave just as soon as possible, and I felt that I should meet with Mr. Delmways to see what was going on before I left.42

I should have listened to her, but her blubbering fleshy mouth told me to listen to about a hundred senseless details.43

As I walked up the musty stairs, a thought suddenly struck me that the house was dying. I don’t know why. It could have been that the wood creaked wherever you stepped, or maybe it was the toppled statues outside. Or the frayed noose on the tree. I stepped up to Mr. Delmways’ door, glanced back at the perspiring maid, and quietly turned the handle.44

What I saw made my face go agape. Not only was there a clean window, but also the entire room was washed to pearliness. There were no webs, the furniture was in good shape, and the pellets and cars didn’t lie everywhere. My first feeling was a sense of peace or even homeliness. The doorknob felt right in my palm, but it quickly felt cold.45

“You,” a wheeze uttered loudly, nearly making me jump. “I don’t want you—you shouldn’t be here. I don’t want you here. This is my home, you hear?!” The accelerating voice came from a man, Mr. Delmways, propped up on his elbows. He lay on his bead in his bathrobe and a two-day stubble grew on his chin. “This is my home, my place! I don’t understand why people can’t just leave me alone!” His voice never stopped quickening, and he was soon outdoing Ms. Sellmer. I tried to calm him down, push some calm sense into his mind, but he just kept nudging and budging, never-ending. "I don’t want you here. I watch, damn it! Gladly, I watch!!46

"Ever since my youth"--he sat up--"I have watched from here, this room, this fantastic, amiable room. I'm an introvert, for Peter's sake. I wanna to be left alone!"47

"Mr. Delmways," I said soothingly. "I apologize, but your family--"48

"My family?" he asked, and I realized that I had hit a note; however, it was discordant.49

"My family," he continued as his eyes locked onto mine. "Whatever could they want? My binoculars? My spectacles?! The very window?! After so many of years of their careful monitoring, they finally left me to myself. No more did they probe my mind, asking 'what's wrong, Tommy?' No!" He blinked once and then slid his gaze down to his lap. "I-I was apart... as I had always wanted to be. But, even in my solitude, I wasn't happy. My thoughts would never...never leave me alone! They wouldn't."50

Looking back to me, he drew in a breath. "I needed to confuse myself, you see. I began watching people to alter my thoughts so they wouldn't bother me anymore. Then I could be totally with myself..."51

He tilted his head back, his eyes rolling upwards. "One, two, three," he sighed. Blinking few more times, he leaned back and plopped onto his pillow. “Gladly.”52

He lay in the bed quietly, and the maid turned the lights down low, thinking he was falling asleep from exhaustion. But he wasn’t. Outside the window, in the pale glow of one of the streetlamps, a small butterfly fluttered in the night breeze. Feebly, he reached out to it, his hand shaking as a small rivulet of blood streaked down from his lip. I couldn't seem to close my mouth. Tears began to form in his eyes, and his hand fell down against the bed.53

“Gladly,” he said, his voice wavering with the medical machines.54

“Gladly, I watch...”55

Walking to his side, Ms. Sellmer placed a hand on his forehead. "Thomas?"56

~*~57

The slim, gray butterfly lifted away from the ground, leaving the eyes. It buzzed around the flowers, its sound rising and falling. After a few moments, it drifted of into the wind and left. Forever, it was gone. Forever, it was away from observance.58