Death of a Monarch

I haven't updated here for quite a while. This story is my brainchild. It's a continuous work-in-progress, so critique is more than welcome. The title is even a work in progress.

A single butterfly quickly fluttered past my head while a plump, balding man chased after it with an oversized net. In one overly dramatic swing of his net the graceful monarch was captured. With a cruel, uncaring smile the plump man pinned the orange clad beauty to a five inch by five inch cork board. Slowly the man looked up at me, the cold smile still on his face, and I felt a chill run up my spine. I quickly looked away and continued toward my destination through the empty park; the man soon followed. My orange and black dress fluttered as I walked, just like the majestic monarch’s wings had. I quickened my pace as I realized what was to come, but I had realized this far too late. The whistling of the oversized net was the last thing I heard before it crashed around me. Before I had not noticed that the net could easily fit a slender person inside, but as soon as I had become the net’s next inhabitance this realization could not escape me. I violently thrashed about trying to find a weakness in the construction of the massive net, sadly, I found none. Soon I became so tangled within my bright orange and black dress that I fell to the ground. The plump, balding man pulled the human sized net off of me, but I was too exhausted to try to escape. The man was talking as he snapped several pictures of me, but all I could hear was my loud heart beat filling my ears. I closed my eyes as I accepted my unavoidable fate. Pain like fire filled my body; it started at my heart and grew with every breath. The last thing I saw before my eyes closed for eternity was the cruel fat man unpinning the now lifeless monarch butterfly from its five by five cork board, and gently placing it over my heart. My eyesight grew dark, my labored breathing stopped, and I became nothing more than an organic monument to a dead monarch.

Orange and black wings slowly began to tremble, and then they fluttered once, twice, three times. Once the lone monarch became accustomed to its wings it embarked upon its journey into the sky. The beautiful butterfly left behind the sad world of death it had been born upon. As the dazzling monarch butterfly climbed into the brilliant blue sky, the vision of the butterfly killer and his latest prey disappeared and was replaced with a beautiful world filled with a rainbow of butterflies. An old man and a young boy appeared in the distance. The young boy carried with him a net. As the old man and boy drew nearer the butterflies could overhear their conversation.

 “My son,” the old man said, “our job is to create new life from old life. Go catch a butterfly and I shall show you.”

The young boy turned from his father and watched as butterflies danced from flower to flower and then up into the air. His eyes landed on a beautiful monarch butterfly. Silently he walked over to it, gently raised his net and scooped it off its flower perch and brought it to his father.

The father then asked “This butterfly will soon be a person, shall it be a boy or a girl?”

The boy thought and then replied “A girl!”

The old man let out a deep chuckle. He gently plucked the monarch beauty from the net and motioned for his son to watch. The man brought the butterfly close to his mouth and whispered to it. Gracefully, the orange clad monarch rose from his hand and began to flutter towards the ground; then, amazingly, through the ground itself. The boy looked to his father and noticed he had moved to a nearby well so the boy followed him.

“Watch” was all his father said. So he did.

The water showed the orange and black monarch flutter to the windowsill of a hospital room. A moment later the cry of a baby could be heard from within the room. On the windowsill sat the lifeless body of a once beautiful monarch butterfly. Soon its body was carried away by a gust of wind; the dead bug floated through the air until an ugly fat man with an oversized net caught the dull orange and black butterfly. The balding fat man cradled the lifeless corpse in his stubby hands, one large tear leaked out of his left eye and landed upon the bugs withered and wrinkled wing. From the dampened spot, color began to brighten and spread across the butterfly’s body. Soon it was once again a bright orange and black beauty. The monarch launched itself from the fat man’s hand and into the air to begin its journey in this new land that it had unknowingly visited so many times before. The ugly balding man with the oversized net watched the noble beauty until it was just a dot in the blue sky, then he turned on his heels and lumbered off into the darkness to await his next victim.