Of Basil and Butterflies

A Chapter by MarigoldSeeds

“We breathe the light, we breathe the music, we breathe the moment as it passes through us”

-Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat

When you’re young, you see life through a child’s eyes. You’re born with the notion that everyone is your friend; everyone will love you. Your parents shower you with the hopeless lie that you are the most unique and that when you grow up you can be anything you please. But will you be the Space Cowboy on Mars that you always wanted to be? No, you won’t. Okay, fine, technically theoretically when space exploration expands and we can get to mars, maybe you can be, but that’s not the moral of my speech. The moral is, from a young age we are fed unrealistic expectations; bred to believe the world is within our grasp. We don’t start asking the real questions until we’re finally aware of where we are and how what we say today can affect tomorrow. Sadly for most, we realize this all too late.

My whole life has been dedicated to art. From a young age, my mother couldn’t pry a crayon from my infant hands. I’ve always wanted to live immersed in the arts; to be enthralled by Picasso’s art styles for hours, to be swallowed by Anne Rice and fawn over Lestat, my favorite written vampire (eat your heart out Cullen), and drown my days in the likes of Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac. Though, as we all know too well, life never works out the way we had imagined it to.

I’m 20 years old, a struggling artist living in Maine. I had expected by 20 I’d be successful, granted a full ride to a prestigious art school out of my home state. Turns out that wasn’t in the cards for me. So instead I’m sat in an empty apartment staring at the ceiling waiting for inspiration to punch my teeth in. Or for a burglar to smother me with a pillow. With my luck, the latter was more plausible.

I picked up my work shirt and slid it over my head. If my creative medium hadn’t shown up yet, it was fruitless to make my boss furious over another long artistic brooding session. Locking my door and speeding down my stairs to the first floor, I glanced at my phone screen. 12:10 pm. I had twenty minutes to be behind the counter making sandwiches for rude middle aged women and annoying teenagers from the town over. Hooray for the life of Alek Liddell.

The shop I worked at was small. Albeit that it was the only sandwich shop in our small town, it was the only job I had managed to snag. My ‘artist’s lifestyle’ as some would call it, hadn’t really made me available on the other hours asked of me. Plus, I got free food on my break, and honestly if you aren’t motivated by free food, I don’t want to know you.

The walk there was the same as it was every morning. Quiet and breezy. Ms. Keltzer sat on the park bench feeding the usual pigeons that, at this point, were almost too fat to fly. Diana, the mother of twins that lived down the road was already jogging down the street, stroller of sleeping girls barreling down the sidewalk only steps ahead of her. As she passed me, I gave her a weak wave and continued on to the shop.

From the outside it didn’t look like much; just a family owned small time sandwich place. On the inside however, it always smelled of fresh basil and rosemary and the warmth of the place wasn’t at all temperature based. I was fond of the little shop, much more than I let on. If I was a patron, I can venture I’d like it even more. I could sit in a corner with a hot coffee and a book, listening to the hum of conversation buzz all around me like an eager bee keep. I crooned to myself in satisfaction at the thought, but to my dismay, all I was here to do was stand behind a counter and take orders from Grace, my coworker, and make orders for hungry customers.

As I snaked passed the door, I heard an all too familiar voice call out to me.

“You’re late Alek,” Grace bellowed as soon as my head was through the door.

“It’s 12:20, we open in ten minutes Grace. Nice try though,” I gave her my best detesting smile, and slipped on my apron.

“Let me rephrase that then,” She replied, returning my smile with one much more venomous, “You’re late for being early, and if I was manager, your lazy a*s would be out reading the unemployment section.”

Realizing adding a snarky comment wouldn’t do anything but stir the pot, I ignored her, doing my best to paint a ‘how may I serve you today’ expression onto my face.

The day droned on, and 12:30 turned to 1, then 2, then 3. Soon it was nearing time for my break, when a face caught my attention as it came through the door. In the town I lived in, even if I wasn’t acquainted with every said person, I recognized every face that walked through that door. But this, this time was different.

He wore a tall silk hat adorned with a mere peacock feather, held in place with a midnight blue ribbon. His long raven hair spiked out from underneath, ending right beneath the base of his neck, a few stray hairs curling around his earlobes. He wore clothes that wouldn’t fit in anywhere on this side of the Atlantic. A jet black dress shirt adorned with a dark vest covered in the most enchanting eggplant colored pattern and a silk tie. Not a wrinkle or ripple in sight, with an ornate pocket watch peeking from his breast pocket. His obsidian skinny pants ended with a pair of combat boots laced with bright purple laces. I almost laughed at the sight, until his piercing eyes found my hazel ones. I felt a gasp pass my lips before I could stop it, an involuntary action that I didn’t condone. One of his eyes shone an emerald green, the other an ocean blue.

He sauntered toward me, each step peaking my curiosity more and more. When he reached me at the counter, he tipped his hat and bowed towards me before I could even speak. The tips of my ears had begun to sizzle from embarrassment. Why did I always serve the weirdos? He put his finger to his lips, fingerless tattered leather gloves showing themselves. Grabbing my arm, he slipped me a note, closing my hand and giving me a closer look at his face. A jawline that could cut glass, and lips upturned in what I could only describe as a cheshire grin. One detail gnawed at my insides; next to his right eye, the blue eye, was an intricate black inked design that made the shape of a butterfly wing. A tattoo, or makeup, I was afraid to ask.

He finally opened his mouth to speak to me.

“It’s time,”

His deep honeydew voice shivered down my spine, bringing me further into this moment. All of my senses were focused on here and now. Who was this guy? Turning my attention to the note in my hand, I uncrumpled a few folds not opening it entirely, letting trepidation get the best of me.

“What do you mean?” I asked, expecting to meet his eyes when I looked back up, but to my absolute utter confusion, he was gone.

“What do you mean, Alek? I didn’t say a word to you,” Grace echoed.

I turned to her, in utter disarray. Was she serious? Or was she just so senile that she wasn’t paying any mind to anything happening around her? I chuckled.

“I mean can you believe that guy? I thought living in this s**t show of a town couldn’t surprise me anymore, but I guess I was wrong,”

Grace shot me a perplexed look, “Alek, maybe you should take your break. We haven’t had any customers in the last half hour. Did you sleep at all last night?”

My brain was spinning, hell the room was spinning! Maybe I’d been inhaling too much basil. Is that a viable thing to assume, or was I actually losing my mind? Unintentionally, my hand curled into a fist, when I felt the sharp edges of paper bite against my palm. My eyes shot down to the note he had left me. This was proof I wasn’t going bonkers, wasn’t it? I held it up inches from Grace’s wrinkled face.

“You can see this right? Tell me you can,” I questioned, half hoping she could for the sake of my sanity, half hoping she couldn’t so that this wouldn’t end up more perplexing than a lack of sleep.

She laughed, “Did some girl slide you her number or something?” She swung an invisible bat, “Better go break it to her that you’re batting for that other team before she gets her hopes up,”

My shoulders dropped, and all my hopes crumbled with them. The note was real, but what about it’s sender? Where had he gone? Had he even been here in the first place? I feigned a chuckle back and agreed to my break, adding the white lie that maybe I really hadn’t slept well.

I sat at my favorite corner table with a coffee, my stomach in knots, feeling too sick to eat. Taking a deep breath I unfolded the small paper, and in clean purple ink it read:

One of very few, I will wait for you

It is time to meet us again, right on cue

Like many before you had found to be true

You will be drawn to us, a Liddell anew

Under it in messier writing, it said:

Seek me in your dreams

Nothing in your life is what it seems

My brain went blank. What was this jumble of words on paper? A riddle? As if this chance meeting couldn’t have gotten any more peculier. Reading it was one thing but deciphering it? That was completely different. Questions buzzed through my head like an angry hornet’s nest, too many things to uncover. While lost in thought, I didn’t even notice Grace slide into the chair across from me.

“Now you’re sitting here brooding over a blank piece of paper? Take the rest of the day off Alek. Get some sleep, I mean it,”

I thought of all the ways I could protest, as I really needed the money from this shift if I was going to pay my rent on my own this month, but it would just have to wait. I silently apologized to my sister and nodded my head at Grace. Today was just getting more and more mind-boggling. I was just going to ignore the comment about my blank note for now, just to preserve what sanity I had left. I got up and started my way out the door.

As I walked, the scenery kept my mind at ease. For once all day, I could just breathe and empty my brain. Think rationally. I didn’t know who this mysterious man was, or what he was, since at this point he could be just a figment of my rampant imagination, nor did I know what this note meant. I wanted to believe he was real, my gut was telling me this wasn’t an act of my mere imagination, but my head kept battering me, telling me that pondering on this would get me nowhere, and that all I needed was sleep. I was at war with myself. I didn’t know what to make of today. In my 20 years of life, I had only had a series of odd days, but this one sure took the cake.

By now Ms. Keltzer and her brood of fat pigeons were gone from the park, and Diana was nowhere to be seen. It was the late afternoon, and I found myself just barely dragging myself up the steps to my second floor apartment. I unlocked the door, and flung my keys onto the table, slamming the door with my foot. As i flung myself onto my mattress I studied the note once more to uncover a detail I had not noticed before. At the bottom of the riddle it was signed.

L.H.

I searched my brain for answers. L.H. As much as I tried, there was nothing, nobody I could think of with such initials, at least not that I knew. My eyes had started to feel like weights, my body lethargic. Soon I could feel myself drifting into dreamland, hoping, merely hoping when I woke up my world would be back to normal.