500: An Anthology of Short Stories
One Last Hope

Aiden looks in disbelief at the butterfly perched upon the petals of a plastic water lily. Its vibrant wing colors echo each other in mirror reflections: bright red encircled by tinges of green.

The attic is eerily hushed. Aiden only hears his breathing, a soft cadence in sync with his palpitating heart, which speeds up as the butterfly slowly opens then closes its wings. “That’s the sign Grandma said I should look for, isn’t it?” Aiden asks his older brother, Miguel. Outside, the wind starts to keen thinly. Aiden’s neck hairs rise involuntarily.

“Yeah,” Miguel confirms, pushing his brother closer towards the nearly motionless insect. As the sixteen-year-old boy stretches a trembling hand ever so carefully towards the butterfly, he recalls Grandma’s last words spoken to Miguel and him.

“The earth has reached the final stages of its devastation,” she had intoned as she lay ensconced within the ragged blankets on the floor of their dilapidated sanctuary. Beyond the doorway, through the shattered windows, the boys had a clear view of a world bereft of beauty, stripped of its natural resources. Grotesque buildings reached ever upwards, all of them tilted, as if the soil upon which they had been built had shifted in an attempt to ease the burdens it was bearing.

“Mankind has exceeded their greed, killing what should have nourished us for eons more. But there is a way to redeem ourselves, boys. One fragile chance to tip the scales of destruction and bring balance back to our universe.” A coughing fit had overcome her before she could continue.

“A butterfly, encouraged to flap her wings in just the right manner, can restore the equilibrium. Two times two leisurely flaps, pause, then two times rapidly. A humble insect is all that can save us now.”

That had been four years ago. Since then, Aiden and Miguel had been searching for just one elusive butterfly in a world that had been razed by nuclear fire, each knowing the impossibility of replaceing one living specimen on a planet that was in its death throes. Today, as if their persistence had been rewarded, Aiden had spotted a sole butterfly flitting through the attic window of an incongruously whole structure.

“Two times two slowly, pause, then two times rapidly,” Aiden repeats softly as he gently touches the wings of the butterfly. As his finger connects with the colorful wings, they unfurl to flap slowly in an interminable count of four. Aiden gapes in stunned disbelief at Miguel, who quickly reaches out to touch the folded wings of the insect. With two quick flaps of its mesmerizing wings, it flits out of the attic into the gray world.

The boys scramble over each other in their desperation to follow the flight of the butterfly … only to see it fall like a felled leaf to the ash-covered ground.

“I guess Grandma was playing one last prank on us,” Aiden says bitterly as the brothers stare at a desolated land devoid of all hope.