A Bed of Butterflies

You can make a bed of butterflies you know, I've done it. And it requires no cruelty whatsoever.

You need butteflies, obviously, as many as you can get, big ones, little ones, bright and dark. I attract them into a room by leaving a window open on a sunny day, in a room with felt walls soaked in nectar. The butterflies drift gently in on flittering wings, and settle on the felt to drink the sweet nectar.

As they move up and down on the felt, the butterflies begin to get statically electrically charged, and thus they start to attract each other as a jumper rubbed balloon does a wall. Their delicate wings begin to align like molecules in a crystal...to align...to stick together softly.

Eventually, after a day or three, each wall should be turned into a veritable sheet of butterflies. Gently detatch them, as gently as stillness, and place them atop your base sheet. Add other sheets as required, depending on ambient temperature. The butterflies will flap their wings in resonance, keeping them from settling on top of each other.

As night closes in, settle under your butterfly sheets, and sleep the stillest sleep of all, warmed by gentle downdrafts of air. As dawn breaks, lift delicately your butterfly sheets up, and place them back on the nectar walls to recharge, ready for another nights peaceful sleep.

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 22.05.14

STORY - The Moth Man

The moth man stands overlooking the village from the hill by the garden centre, past the swollen brook and the sheltered home for mentally vulnerale adults. He had been a moth for several years, furry and nocturnal, hair unkempt and done in two long spikes at the front to act like antennae as he bumped about in the dark.

Every day he spent sleeping in a bush up on the hill, dappled by sunset shining through the privet leaves, and maintained by sweeet nectar squeezed from summer flowers and fruits. Then, as the sun began to set, he became more active, stirring from his shrubby slumbers and feeling the daily attraction to the settlement beneath him.

As the last sliver of the sun dropped below the horizon, flashing emerald green it it was a lucky day, he set off along the brook as it bubbled along happily down a meadow, the turbulent patches of water acting as a luminescent guide as he danced down the slope shaking his head, twitching.

The brook met a small river as the hillside flattened out. The lights of the village glowed softly behind curtains, but it was not these that drew the moth man, these luminosities were not compelling enough for his vastly altered cortex. It was those who had neglected to pull their curtains or lower their blinds, that were the irresistible candles that dragged him onwards.

And when he found such a window, all he could do was bang his head upon it until his forehead bled and his craked through the glass, and his stomach and chest were cut to ribbons. The only mercy he received were when the incredulous homeowner became aware of what he was, and mercifully turned the light out to bring him temporary relief, before he was driven on to another house.

And women screamed at him, especially the prettier one as his naked form flayed his lepidopteric self to shreds on the tasteless double glazing and UPVC surrounds, but he could never walk away.

For as everyone knows, they are drawn to pretty women as a moth is drawn to a flame. And his shattered body spent every night burning.

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 18/08/2013