The Orange Butterfly

Photo credit - clemmesen

The smell of the damp dirt as it smashed it's way down the hill stuck in my nose. I could hear the silence as it loudly roared in my ears. I frantically clawed at the coffin lid my nails broken and bloody.


The nightmare plagued me every night and it kept me bound to guilt.
"I can't deny it any longer,"
I knew the time had come and in defiance I fought the inner feeling calling me to return to the island.


“How long has it been since you've been back here?” Taylor asked.

“Five years...not since.............." I felt that unsettling lump form in my throat and grief filled tears ran down my face. I wiped my runny nose with my hand."Not since the landslide.”


No one used the remote island for hiking trips any more; it was deemed unsafe. Taylor and I had been walking the old hiking trail for six hours. The track was hidden by thickly overgrown bushy bracken and wound its way through the rugged island hills. When I saw the old tree with the split trunk, I knew exactly were I was.


Closing my eyes, I was transformed back five years to the very spot. The old gum with the split trunk was where I was standing the day I felt the earth tremble, like I was standing on a rug and two people were pulling it back and forth. I heard the first crack of a tree break as the side of the hill gave way. In one smooth slide the hill side broke away and concertinaed at the foot of the mountain.


My heart started racing and sweat rolled down my face, my hands began to tremble and my whole body shook, as the memory of what happened ripped through me. My legs gave way, and trapped by grief, I fell to my knees. I slowly raised my trembling hands to my face to muffle the moans and cries that escaped my lips. My eyes stung and tears of loss flowed forth like the original landslide. I grabbed a handful of the dirt that took my beloved friends and pressed it hard to my chest...Why was I spared? I smeared the dirt on my tear soaked face and for a moment felt their presences swoon around me.


"It happened so fast. I could hear their laughter; teasing me for lagging behind. Then instantly, they were gone. There was nothing I could do. They just disappeared under the dirt. I dug for hours, I never saw them again........I could see Clare, she had been shouting at me to hurry up and catch up with them but I was preoccupied by an orange butterfly that had landed on a blue flower. The colour contrast was beautiful and I waved to Clare to take a look. She never saw it though. The hill gave way and she was swept away before my eyes. That day my life changed in every possible way. The woman I once saw when I looked in the mirror, disappeared the same second that the landslide took them."
It was the first time I had spoken about the landslide and Taylor held me softly as I cried.


The dirt from the landslide was still there; only the holes of the excavation now visible. When I placed the four white crosses, I scooped up some dirt and rubbed it through my hands; my friends taken, returned hence forth from where they came.

I turned and began to walk away. A flicker of orange caught my attention. I glanced back and there sitting on a white cross was an orange butterfly.