Electric Butterfly - 001

Kimberly Rosario decides to save a boy's life. (may add a prologue)

Samuel Perri was the type of boy that most people, including myself, would have written off without a second thought under normal circumstances. It wasn’t that he was a bland character, it was that his introverted, quiet nature and innate ability to blend in with his surroundings made it very hard for him to make a lasting impression on others. The only noticeable thing about him was the fact that, despite being a male in his twenties, Sam measured at five feet and four inches in height. He was the shortest boy I had ever met. His light brown hair fell to his chin, framing his face rather cutely, drawing attention to soft, frightened blue eyes. His fur was a pale off-gold color, paws a white that faded into it. He always wore nondescript clothing in shades of blue and black, often looking like an office worker. Still, if he hadn’t fallen from a building right into my arms, covered in blood and half dead on the evening of January 25th, I honestly would have never known he existed. I wouldn’t have been able to recount these traits to a passerby if asked, because, under any other circumstances, they wouldn’t have been of note. I’m not saying this to be mean, I’m just trying to say that for all intents and purposes, Samuel Perri was a ghost. I would later come to find out that was his intent, and that living as quiet and nondescript a life as possible was his biggest goal. As it turned out, we had a similar commute to work and I probably would have seen him dozens of times since I started this job.

When he fell into my arms, barely breathing, covered in his own blood, I’m sure if he was in any way conscious he would have known that at that very moment, his goal became impossible.

If you’re envisioning this as some graceful ‘fallen angel’ scenario, I can assure you that was not the case. People have weight, and gravity is a demon all its own. If it weren’t for my above average strength and his below average weight, I would’ve crumpled underneath him. Instead, I fumbled a bit, lurched forward, and nearly dropped him. I let out a disgruntled groan, regained my balance, and looked up. That roof was pretty high up. If I didn’t catch him he would have definitely been dead, if he wasn’t already definitely dead. It turned out that he wasn’t.

Still, the observation of ‘Barely breathing’ is important to note here, as I was surprised he wasn’t dead. That alone was enough to drive me to the decision to carry him through the streets of Boston, Massachusetts in the middle of the night, back to my job.

Now, I don’t work at a hospital, or an urgent care center, nothing of the sort. My job is that with many titles. An exorcist, a ghost buster, you could even go so far as to call me a shaman, though who uses that term in this day and age is beyond me. Whatever the term, the job description remains the same. I work with two men, Jason Maccon and Zein (whose last name will, for the record, always remain redacted), to handle cases involving supernatural creatures known as Visitants. Visitants is a broad term that we use to describe any type of supernatural phenomena, although the type that our office deals with is part of a malicious subcategory called ‘Morbid’. I exterminate these creatures for a price, using a unique ability called Echoes. Echoes are powers that lie dormant in all people, or so scientists theorize, and drinking the blood of a Visitant can bring those powers out. However, eighty percent of the time people that ingest that blood die. It’s a painful, ugly process no matter how you look at it. You either die screaming or wish you died screaming, before waking up and feeling all better, with the exception of some crazy new superpower, like you just wrote your own anime self-insert origin story.

As I walked with this boy in my arms, a few thoughts crossed my mind. The first was that, although feint, he was still breathing. Normally, being gored by a Morbid would instantly kill most people. The second thought was that perhaps he had drunk some of its blood before I suddenly found him in my arms. However, that didn’t make much sense, as there hadn’t been any indication of the things that typically denoted the awakening of an Echoes ability. He wasn’t writhing about in pain, and his wounds certainly weren’t healing. Perhaps this wasn’t the least bit Morbid related, and he was attacked by a serial killer or something. Maybe he just tried to kill himself in a really, really elaborate way. In that case, I thought I should probably take him to the hospital instead.  But I didn’t. Instead, I found myself standing in front of the office, ringing the doorbell while adjusting him in my arms. If I had rang the doorbell of any other establishment at this hour, I would’ve been met with more than just a confused look from the residents, covered in blood that wasn’t my own and holding a dying boy in my arms, looking mildly shocked but confident in my decision to carry him to said establishment nonetheless. I was quite awkward in most interactions with other people, not because of my lack of interest or emotion, as some would so kindly put it, but because of a constant feeling of unease that permeated my consciousness. That was something I would have to address much later in the year.

The matter at hand was saving this boy’s life.