Butterfly Asylum

Chapter One

 "Normal is an illusion. What is normal to the spider, is chaos for the fly"- Charles Addams

Coming undone was never a deliberate intention of mine. I was born psychologically and physically intact- a perfect blemish-less specimen of the human race created by the combination of my mother and father's too perfect genes, two XX chromosomes perfectly entwined to maximum effect. I had inherited my father's godless eyes and waves of unruly dark champagne hair, my mother's swan-like grace and mottled blue complexion like storm washed pebbles, and my grandmother's petite frame which consisted of little more than twigs attached to a gangly lycan torso. 

If you were to sweep your gaze over my birth record you would see the name 'Pandora Emily Boleyn' neatly scratched into the off-coloured parchment, alongside my birth weight of 4 llbs 5 ounces. A tiny side note from one of the nurses who had looked after me whilst I was hooked up to a blood transfusion machine read 'God's vampyre'. This had alleged catatonic effects on my mother who fainted at the shock of her beloved daughter being associated with one of the Devil's creatures. My grandfather, on the other hand, had apparently chuckled at the thought and danced the nurse around the maternity ward in glee at having his daughter-in-law's prudish front momentarily knocked, whilst my grandmother had raised her eyebrows in a knowing fashion before devouring the rest of her paperback novel associated with psychological impairments in canines.

 She was a strange creature to say the least and was crowned 'Queen Queer' within our neighbourhood by the children, but had committed suicide at the age of 64 from a cocktail of drug-store painkillers, horse tranquilliser and cannabis infused tea. I can still recall the shock of finding her usually pinned greying hairs unravelled down across her lap and entwined through her fingertips, and the glazed stare emanating from usually lively eyes. Apparently she had observed her husband frolicking with another woman, although this theory was quickly discarded and it was put solely down to a herbal concoction mishap. Our household name could not possibly bare the shame of adultery, and seeing as though their was nobody to disprove the alternative theory, nobody but us and our priest knew the truth- my grandfather was a 'very naughty man in God's eyes', but should remain a saint in everybody else's who remained breathing alongside the living. I remained strictly in adoration as he had educated me in the arts of taxidermy and astrology, philosophy and mythological literature in the few hours my parents were away on godly missions- as a young child, these "dark arts" as my mother frequently referred to them as, were the backbone to my survival as a child of religious parents- living or dead, he remained to me a saint.

   I would devote my attention to the woes of 'The Lady of Shalott' or imagine myself as the fearsome gorgon Medusa with her penetrating gaze that turned onlookers to stone. My insatiable appetite for knowledge turned me Thespian, and I gorged on the lifeblood that flowed effortlessly out of Shakespeare's sonnets imagining dark ladies with ravens for eyes and summer studded gentleman waning like a warm summer's day. I would sit in the window where the sun bowed his head down to the earth to watch the sky turn to a sacrificial slab of meat, then watch as the moon rose her wintry tundra head over the horizon to take her presidency as a lotus amidst the night's stars, jotting down notes so that I could scribe poetry into my pastel blue jotter. My grades at school were insufficient to provide me with sufficient terminology to pose anything other than carefully calculated rhyming jargon, but this ceased to matter to my child's brain. My mind was on the page in a hard copy, that swirling calligraphy was none other than my own hand's script and my voice was lost somewhere amidst the words of love, misery, contemplation and depression I had yet to fully embrace as my own in this world.  

I didn't understand our modern day Christian God, whose blue eyes always frightened me as they peered down out of Jesus' Caucasian skull, nor did I ever want to try and get my child brain around the concept of the Holy Trinity, three separate beings entwined to create a single entity. The concept of God allowing the crucifixion of his human son self, always plagued me as verging on the brink of masochism or martyrdom, or a cocktail of insanity or a little bit of everything. If you truly were omnipotent, why would you squander to humanity and entertain yourself with the mundane rituals of walking, talking flesh. I always thought that something with so much alleged power would oversee the cosmos and cosmic flirtations, the birthing of stars and the divine collapsing of suns rather than filling its head with the non-wondrous occurrences of life on earth- me purposefully spreading marmalade tip to tip on homemade bread before ceremoniously lavishing my jowls with it, or me hunched over a fairytale with my knickers around my ankles on the basin. I had even wondered whether it had overseen men and women connecting themselves via their genitalia or people masturbating in the privy of their own boudoirs. My mother had told me not to contain such ungodly thoughts in my head because God was inside listening to my sinning, and I can remember cursing his omniscience, putting my hands to my ears and singing a lullaby orientating around collecting black sheep's wool in the hope he'd grow tired then pray on some other child's head space who hopefully was thinking godly thoughts. I didn't want him coming back full circle and prying on me once again. I can remember stubbornly telling her that if God ever did come knocking at my door again, that I would tell him that the Devil had come inside for tea, just to see how forgiving he really was of sinning. Mother had slapped me around the cheek, gone upstairs to lie down and not uttered a word for the rest of the day in sheer panic she had given birth to "blackened spawn". I had not minded her silence as it gave me time to count the dead flies on the mantelpiece and tuck them into the folds of the curtain, and gave me an extra hour of free time- instead of bible reading I cavorted with sultry looking sirens within the Bermuda Triangle and helped lure sailors to their deaths. It was time better spent than learning about a man sacrificing a sheep on the top of a cold mountain.