I meant that she was fourteen when it all began, then plus the three it took to catch her, and THEN add the three she’d been jailed for, she is now twenty. This was just a rough draft, basically.
Sci Fi & Fantasy / Butterfly
The girl glared out at the dingy interrogation room with emerald eyes from underneath a fringe of greasy black hair. Her face was now pale and gaunt, but he had seen her when they’d first brought her in- she had been lively and sarcastic, answering all their questions with unanswerable riddles. Now she didn’t answer to anyone at all.
It had taken them until just yesterday to figure out her name. Three years since the arrest that never happened of the girl that never was. Since last night, he’d been repeating her name over and over to himself.
Butterfly Rollins; he loved the way it rolled around on his tongue. Butterfly- that was an odd name, but a beautiful one. He mouthed it to himself as he pushed through the door into the room where she was being held. Nodding at the guard, who gave a tight smile in reply, he plopped down in one of the dented metal chairs.
He smiled at her and she blinked- they had wondered briefly whether being cooped up like this had affected her mental state, but had quickly decided that was not the case after she had attempted to escape using nothing but a broken chicken bone.
Even though she had been captured three years ago next month, it had taken them that long to get her. They had been mailed a letter from her proclaiming that they were chasing the butterfly that could not be caught- how true it was, he reflected. Sure, she was in their custody, but had they really caught her? Sometimes he got the feeling that she was only biding her time here, waiting for the right opportunity to flit away.
“So tell me, Butterfly, have you ever wondered what my name is?”
“Ah, so you figured it out. Smart one. You’re wrong, though, to think that the jig is up, that I will suddenly become more compliant. Though, it would only be fair if I knew your name,” she answered, the trace of a smile fluttering across her lips, an ember igniting in her eyes.
“I take it that the mystery of my name has bothered you.”
“Oh, yes, it keeps me awake at night.”
“Well, my name’s Joe Wallace. Tell me, how it is a fourteen year old girl can anger the entire United States to the point of her very existence denied, despite the fact her name isn’t even known?” he asked her, treading carefully. He knew she had never been told the reason for all of this, for the thumbtacks in the butterfly’s wings.
“Practice, I guess,” she responded, leaning back and grinning cockily at him. He was wrong, he now realized. That spark of life that had kept her defiant wasn’t gone; it had been hiding. He felt sick to his stomach as he thought about how he had felt for her pain.
“Are we done yet? ‘Cause my favorite TV show comes on in, like, five minutes,” she said, a knowing look in her eyes.
“You are twenty years old and worried about missing a television show?” he asked, stalling. He had to keep her talking…….
“What else is there for me to do here other than watch TV? Die?”
Finally, the moment came. A burly man in a pressed suit stomped into the room and growled a few orders at the guard, who promptly turned white and left the room.
“Well, Miss Rollins, your time has come. The President has issued a direct order that you are to be executed. Have you ever wondered why you are here? Why all this security, why we couldn’t arrest you legally?” snarled the husky man, resting his palms on the table and shoving his face into hers.
Joe watched her face with interest, as her lips first curled up in distaste, and proceeded to roll her eyes and sigh, glaring pointedly in the other direction. Briefly her eyes flickered toward him, and he felt like she was blaming him for this disgusting man invading her privacy.
“Well, I’ll tell you, Miss Rollins. You didn’t do a damn thing other than being born, and by doing that little thing, you raised us into a state of panic,” the man began, misreading her silence as curiosity. “Hey, Joe, wanna know secret about your little friend here? She can’t die.”
Joe stared at him doubtfully, until he noticed Butterfly biting her lip and wrinkling her nose.
“That’s what this is about? Well, ‘can’t die’ is a huge exaggeration-,” she began.
“The only way for you to die is for your head to get chopped off,” interrupted the man, pounding his fist on the table. “How is that a huge exaggeration?”
“Because there is a huge difference between life and death, and furthermore, if I can die somehow, how am I a threat?” she demanded, her jaw jutting forward to symbolize her rebelliousness.
“Because if any citizen finds out about you, our world goes to hell. Everyone will be searching for the goddamn fountain of youth- no one will do what they are supposed to do,” the man snarled, but he jumped back from the table as if he had been burned. “What the hell?!”
Joe started forward to help, but Butterfly turned her gaze on him, her eyes backlit with some internal light. So he kneeled and examined the man, seeing the angry red burns on his hands. In spite of himself, a soft smile touched Joe’s lips as the guards rushed in to immobilize her, but she was smirking. Something had happened, but Joe had no idea what it was.
And so, three days later, Joe was slumped on the car seat, and a white, unmarked van sped along behind them, the Butterfly encased in metal. She had laughed when they had shoved her into the van, a knowing laugh, a teasing laugh.
The laugh he couldn’t get out of his head.
Suddenly, a winged THING swooped down out of the sky, and as both the car and van braked, even Joe could hear her victorious whoop. And the THING stood, the wings sucking into its back until it was obvious that this was just a man, who looked about her age.
“Boo.”
With that one word, the winged man laughed as everyone but Joe scrambled for safety; namely, anywhere away from the immortal girl and winged boy. They would pay for it, either with their jobs or their lives.
Joe groaned. This was beginning to sound like a bad comic book.
“Damn it, Michael, stop laughing and get me the hell out of here!” Butterfly shouted, giggling all the while.
Joe just sat there, dumbfounded and wondering what the hell these people were, and why the hell he hadn’t just gone to law school instead of this.
“Why did nobody do anything?” raged Elaine Brookes, her steel colored glasses matching her steel colored hair and clothes. “Why did you let her get away?”
“Because Bird Boy came out of nowhere with retractable wings?” offered Joe, leaning back.
“Well, luckily, she forgot about her tracking device. She’s in an abandoned airplane hangar not far away. Wallace, I want a team of three dozen men hunting that damned girl. Go. Now,” she hissed, pointing towards the door.
The gang of black sedans pulled up to the hangar, the three dozen armed men creeping out and to the large, barn like doors when Joe motioned for them to stop.
The sound of a dozen people laughing and talking drifted toward them, and Joe swore under his breath.
There were more of them. Did they have th-the powers that she possessed? What if they did?
Clenching his eyes shut, Joe motioned them ahead. The screams began.
It took him a few seconds to realize it was his men screaming and shooting blindly at the kind of things that only appear in books or nightmares. There was a girl with a dozen razor sharp fangs, and a boy who seemed to be transforming into a wolf.
The banner hanging on the wall read: Welcome Back, Butterfly- the Weirdo’s Club.
And then the fighting stopped for a moment, and Joe realized what it was- there was a small girl lying on the floor, slowly bleeding to death.
A little girl, in a denim jumper, a long furry tail protruding from underneath it. They had shot a little girl. A teenage boy fell to his knees next to her, gathered her in his arms, and hissed at Joe, showing more fangs.
“She was a little girl. What did she do?” demanded the boy, his voice breaking. And the little girl stirred, reaching up a tiny hand to touch his face, and whispered a word into his ear before fading into the darkness.
The boy stood up and bared his fangs, and lunged for the nearest of Joe’s men. More blood would ensue, of that Joe was sure, but he couldn’t stick around to watch. Butterfly has slipped off down a wind tunnel, and Joe was mildly surprised. He would have thought her to stay and fight, but then he realized she was leaving a trail of blood. The little girl was gathered in her arms, moaning, and Butterfly was murmuring in her ear.
And suddenly, fifty yards ahead of her, the entire group of “weirdoes” burst from nowhere, and Joe couldn’t stifle his cry of surprise.
“Go on ahead,” she called softly to her friends, and they obeyed, disappearing from view, but their squabbling still reached his ears.
She turned to face him, the girl still bundled in her arms and weeping softly. She looked at him with a somber, bittersweet expression.
“You could kill me, you know, if you managed to shoot through my neck enough to sever it. You could kill her.”
He aimed his gun at her shakily, gazing into her fierce green eyes; they were a warrior’s eyes. The little girl stirred once again, wrapping her slender arms around Butterfly’s neck. Butterfly held the girl tighter in a protective embrace; Joe realized he couldn’t do it. Lowering his gun, he uttered one syllable: “Run.”
“You know, people say I like to start stuff. It’s not true. I just wind up finishing them,” she said quietly.
With that, she turned and walked away and was gone from him forever; the butterfly that could not be caught.
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Freedom reviewed Version 1 -
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OK, you’re gonna hate me for this, but I had to stop at the first line for a minute and point out the “The girl glared out at the dingy interrogation room with emerald eyes from underneath a fringe of greasy black hair.” has way, WAY too many modifiers. NEVER use two or three adjectives when one will do. Express the condition of your characters in more active ways. BRB…
I have to say that the rest flowed more smoothly. You still have “adjectivitis”, but you set scenes well, and your talent, rough as it is, is still very much in evidence in your writing.
Kudos! Please continue this!
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AstroBoyJ7 reviewed Version 1 -
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So far so good. It started off feeling like one of those Islamic extremist videos where they behead innocent people to scare governments. The problem is that once you progressed beyond this, you didn’t really explain who Butterfly was, why she was so special or what her group was all about and why all these people want her dead all that well. This is extremely important to explain with some detail so we can understand the situation and emote towards the characters one way or another a lot better.
That said, you are definitely on to something here so I encourage you to keep writing and experementing with new ideas. Best of luck to you!
catherinespark reviewed Version 1 -
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I’m not sure if the girl in the opening is supposed to be compared to a butterfly, but whether or not this is intentional, I did draw this comparison as a first impression, with your description of her liveliness giving way to apparant weakness. This is intensified when I discovered that Butterfly was her name. Good read, though it possibly isn’t that involving for the reader, as it has a rather detatched tone. Her calmness under the abuse of the man who tells her of her execution, and who lets us know that she can’t die, is intriguing, as are her answers. Is this a plot device or a character device? I would say this calmness is definitely a hook in the story. The ending of this story is absolutely brilliant; it highlights her coldness, intelligence, detatchment and arrogance. Very well done. I hope that you put more of a similar type up.
SaiKaorii reviewed Version 1 -
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Merry Meet.
I want to say first that when writing, less is sometimes more. From the first paragraph, you have some extra words that don’t need to be there, but are. They just seem to fill up space that is better off left empty. Make sure you don’t act like the reader is a complete dumb-dumb by stating things we should already know by what you say in the sentence.
...when they had first…
Now she did not answer to anyone -at all-.
Don’t use contractions in a sentence when there is not a conversation or something of the sort going on. It’s a lazy way to write by doing so, and by not using contractions in your descriptions, it makes it easier for the reader to translate and is more precise. You switched from writing out the two combined words to making one a contraction. Stay consistent. (If you’re wondering, I’m using contractions, because I’m speaking with you :P)
“At all” needs to be taken out, because that’s stating the obvious. Of course if she doesn’t answer to anyone, she doesn’t answer to anyone at all. Isn’t that the point of not answering? As for answering questions with unanswerable riddles, how does that work? She would just be answering with riddles that people can’t figure out, right? Perhaps try and reword it.
Three years since the arrest that never happened of the girl that never was.
...he had been repeating her name -over and over- to himself.
I don’t understand the first sentence. It’s not really a sentence to me; needs something more, but I don’t know what. And if the girl never was, why is she there right now? This just contradicts what you just said, right? Also, if you repeat a name, the reader already knows it’s going to be repeated over and over. That’s the point of repeating something; once again an obvious to us.
Another peeve I have, Joe asks how a fourteen year old can cause such a ruckus in one part, then in another paragraph he states that she is twenty years old and is worrying about a TV show. There’s a huge gap in age right there, and she’s only been ‘caught’ for…less than three years so far. What’s up with this?
...how is it a fourteen…
...wanna know a secret…
—
Well, I got one word after reading all this: Wow. Are you really thirteen? Ha! Mm, just a friendly reminder, watch out for the contractions in sentences. Take them out if they are found, I know I didn’t point all of them out. The story is great, I’m sure you could turn it into a novel if you wanted, but I’d go for a different beginning than this (or an alternate ending to this one) as it does leave off like it is a short story, as you say it is.
Very interesting, thanks for sharing and continue your writing.
MichaelLilith reviewed Version 1 -
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Let’s start with what is good about this piece. The style is clean and fast… It reads something like Stephen King before he became so overindulgent… say – Nightshift era. It’s a style which is familiar and easy to get along with for most readers. The kind of style that lends itself to being turned into a television or film script. Direct and to the point.
The story itself has potential. The beginning grabs you right away and is my favorite part of this piece. By the end of the first three paragraphs the reader’s curiosity has been aroused… They have many questions and are likely to finish the story to have them answered. It does seem unfinished though.
I think you’re right about needing t extend it. The amount of action from the middle to the end needs more space to unfold, or else the pacing doesn’t leave room for the necessary tension. It also becomes a little confusing towards the end with so much happening all at once… I’m not sure which girl is which some of time, so be careful about clarifying the subjects and objects of your sentences. This story seems to take place in an x-men kind of universe and as a reader I’d like a little more backstory – even if it’s only slightly hinted at in dialog or in some other nonintrusive manner. What’s happened to these kids? How did the government become involved in hunting them?
There are many problems with grammar and sentence structure and the like – but these could be eliminated in future drafts… maybe you could have someone proofread it. It helps to get more than one pair of eyes looking at a manuscript.
All in all, you seem to have an honest talent for storytelling, but need to work at the details of the writer’s grind – correcting drafts, improving pace and plot presentation… this comes with experience. Keep writing and you’ll get there!
TheHack reviewed Version 1 -
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Okay, I see you’re young, but I’m ignoring that. This indicates a better than average ability to string together words to tell a story. Heavy on the dialog, but overall, the dialog is constructed realistically. If read aloud, it sounds like a conversation, just the way it is supposed to. POV is in order, sentence structure good. Readable without causing me to stumble and stop to reread. This odes need to be either restructured and framed within a novel or crafted into a short with a beginning, middle and end. There are quite a few scenes here, too many. The transitions from scene to scene were good, but the pace left little room for characterization. What I’d like to see is a short story. Write one and I’ll read it. You have skills and the more you write, the better you’ll get.
stephanloy reviewed Version 1 -
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I think you’re right; this should be a longer piece. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a novel, but maybe a long short story, twice the length it is, maybe longer. As written, you jump from scene and timeframe to scene and timeframe too rapidly and too often, a difficulty born from trying to fit too much into too small a space. However, regardless of whether or not you lengthen the story, pay attention to the story structure. As well as you have written this, and it’s very well written excepting a few concerns about the last several paragraphs, as well as you have written this, it doesn’t seem to have much structure. It doesn’t seem to be about anything, just some stuff that happened. determine WHY you are writing this story. What message or theme do you wish to communicate? Then center everything around that message. Tell us what the point is, through the actions, thoughts and words of the characters. You may find you don’t need as much space as you think. You might be able to tell the whole story from inside that interrogation room where the story begins.
hellbunny reviewed Version 1 -
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It could be a short story, but if you change the last sentence, it seems more like the start of a fascinating adventure. You have created an intriguing world, but you have only given us a glimpse. Butterfly is a mysterious character, but she’s fiercely intelligent and shows a great deal of compassion.
“Even though she had been captured three years ago next month, it had taken them that long to get her.”- This part’s confusing. They have her, but they don’t have her?
shigemitsubaki reviewed Version 1 -
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the main story is very interesting and highly amusing, but there are a few parts that could probably use a little cleaning, like
“It took him a few seconds to realize it was his men screaming and shooting
blindly at the kind of things that only appear in books or nightmares.”
maybe it would sound better if it were shortened a bit like so:
”...and shooting blindly at things out of a nightmare.”
While it makes a good short story, I think you might have difficulty stretching this out since she has left no clues as to where she is going, and Joe seems unwilling to chase her further. But if you choose to fix those, it should be fine.
good luck and hope to see more from you.
unusualgirl0 reviewed Version 1 -
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Okay, I’ll talk abotu the little details first, then the larger things.
attempted to escape using
Maybe “Almost escaped”? If you’re trying to show she’s smart, attempted to escape sounds like she was scratching at the wall with it or somethign equally unproductive.
Okay, I think it has amazing potential, especially the first bit. But keep the suspense going longer before you tell me why, just by being born, she was a threat. Also, the sudden rapid-fire scene changes are confusing, especialyl at this early stage. I don’t yet have a character to latch onto, so switching it up so quickly isn’t good. Plus, I don’t yet have a sense of time or place, so because I’m still so adrift, I wouldn’t recomend it.
That said, this has amazing potential. Keep writing!
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