Speaker 1: I moved to Bellweather three years ago after my mother passed.
It wasn't a decision so much as inertia. Her house
was paid off, and I didn't have anywhere else to be.
It was one of those towns where people wave when
they drive past, even when they don't know you where
The dinerstaffs still remember your order, even if you've only
been there once. I'd been picking up work where I
could substitute teaching, mostly sometimes weekend shifts at the library
when the high schooler's flake. No One asked many questions.
They liked that I was dependable. I liked that they
didn't pry. There was a quiet stillness to this place,
a hush that settled behind the curtains. Half the houses
were empty, the other half held people who seemed to
have calcified their routines. Church on Sunday, groceries on Wednesday,
yard work until the first frost, and then radio silence
until spring. Sometimes I think the town is like a
snow globe someone shook a long time ago. Now all
the glitter had settled, and we were just sitting in
the stillness, pretending it was still beautiful. That's what made
the painting so strange. They held the town's art competition
in the converted church hall, same place we used for weddings, funerals,
polling days, and bake sails. You could still see the
old crucifix outline on the far wall, faded where the
sun used to hit it before someone painted over it
with a coat of beige. I wasn't supposed to be judging.
I filled in because the usual guy came down with shingles,
and someone remembered I taught high school art for one
semester before they cut the budget. They said I had
a good eye, which is a polite way of saying
I'm quiet and not prone to arguing. Most of the
entries were what you'd expect, oil landscapes of fields following
a Bob Ross's tutorial, water color portraits of dogs that
all looked like they were melting. A kid submitted a
clay sculpture that collapsed in the box on the way in.
I liked that one best, at least it was honest.
Then I noticed the butterfly just hanging there. It hadn't
been there before, Maybe it was snuck in during the
bustle of the event. It was dead center, no name
or frame just canvas and a butterfly. I've seen photo
realistic paintings before, hyperrealism, surrealism, digital rendering. This wasn't that.
It wasn't just real looking. It was real feeling. That's
the only way I can describe it. It looked like
it had been pinned there while breathing, and the instant
the brush touched it, it forgot how Its wings were open,
blue so deep it made black look loud. The body
was textured in a way that made you think about
words you hadn't used in years, velvet, bone, oil. Nothing
behind it, just a blank, white void, like it had
been painted unto the idea of a canvas instead of
the thing itself. People started crying, not everyone, but most,
just here and there. People sniffled behind me. A woman
put a hand over her mouth. Even the mayor, the
one who always made a point to say how he
didn't get art, stood with his hat in his hands, nodding.
I stood in front of it for ten, maybe fifteen minutes,
trying to see what they saw, but nothing came. I
felt fine. I wasn't moved like the others were. I
felt outside it, like I never got the memo. Eventually
I muttered something I think it was incredible work or
nice piece, and drifted back toward the refreshment table to
get some air. That's when I saw Alice. She was
standing a few feet from the painting, Pale, maybe seventeen, hoody,
with stretched sleeves, scuffed sneakers. She was motionless, eyes locked
onto the b to fly. She looked like she'd forgotten
how to blink. I watched her longer than I should have.
At first, I thought she might have fallen asleep standing up.
Then I thought she might be crying. She wasn't doing either,
just staring with the same expression I'd seen on a
man at his wife's funeral. Not grief exactly, but reverence,
like something old was ending and she'd finally accepted it.
I cleared my throat as I approached, Hey, you're right.
For a moment, she stayed silent, blinking slowly. Then she
looked at me, really looked, and said softly. I didn't
know he could feel like this. I thought I missed
my chance. Then she turned back to the butterfly, and
I just stood there, not knowing what the hell to say.
In the days after the art show, the town felt lighter,
that's the only word I could think of. There was
no energy in the air, as if someone had gone
around in the night and loosened some invisible knot in
everyone's chest. People who spent years avoiding each other were
suddenly talking again. I saw two brothers, the Wickcomb boys,
hugging in the middle of main Street, like one of
them had come back from war. Missus Halpin brought a
pie to her ex husband's place, and he cried on
the porch until she hugged him. The Hendersons, who'd barely
spoken since Christmas, were holding hands at the grocery store,
smiling like teenagers. Everything felt softened. The whole town had
been washed in warm water, kindness blooming everywhere, fast and quiet,
like the way mold creeps into dry wall, spreading before
you notice it's there. But I wasn't feeling any of it.
I kept waiting for whatever hit everyone else to catch
up with me, some sense of clarity or relief, or
even just a nudge. Instead, it all passed through me
like I was made of glass. Even Jacob was different,
and he's about as stubborn as they come. I stopped
by the garage one afternoon to say ay, and found
him leaning back in a lawn chair outside the bay doors,
eyes closed, smiling at the sky, as if some one
was telling him a story only he could hear. Hey,
I said, nudging his boot. You're right, He blinked, like
I pulled him out of a dream. Never better. He said,
feels good, you know, like something finally broke loose. What
did I asked? He just laughed, a small, private laugh
that made me feel like I'd missed the joke. When
I asked him about the painting, he smiled again and
said it was something, wasn't it. He looked past me,
like something across the street was calling him. I turned
to look, nothing was there. I walked home feeling hollow.
It wasn't just the painting that bothered me. Now, it
was me. Why hadn't I reacted like everyone else? What
was wrong with me? I could look at that thing,
a thing everyone else treated like a revelation, and feel
absolutely nothing. That question kept bothering me long after I
got home. Later that evening, as I was locking up
the school after a PTA meeting, I heard footsteps echoing
down the hall. It was Alice, wearing the same hoodie
with the same distant stare, but this time her cheeks
were flushed and her eyes had that shimmering look I'd
seen on half the town. She stopped in front of me,
breathing like she'd run all the way here. I didn't
think you would choose me, she whispered. Her hands were trembling,
but she didn't seem scared, more like she was overwhelmed.
I haven't even told her I love her yet? Who
I asked? She glanced past me toward the doorway. Another girl,
tall blonde, one of the basketball kids, was standing there,
staring into the dim hallway with the same dreamy, softened
expression most of the town had been wearing. Alice didn't
answer my question. She didn't need to. She just smiled,
small and shaking, and said again, I didn't think it
would choose me. I started noticing the gaps. That's how
it felt, like blank spaces in a song everyone else
had learned the lyrics to. People would speaking low, tender tones,
like they were sharing something sacred. But every so often
i'd see someone watching from a distance, unmoved out of
step like me. The first was the man in the
rusted car behind the hardware store. I'd seen him before, sure,
just one of those forgotten fixtures you stop noticing until
you have a reason to. He never begged or spoke,
just sat in the front seat of that sun bleached buick,
windows fogged from the inside, watching the world pass. After
the painting, the town shifted, softened like over ripe fruit,
but he didn't change at all. He just sat there,
a statue in denim and dust. Once I passed close
enough to catch his eyes through the glass, he was
staring straight ahead, unblinking, as if waiting for a radio
signal only he could hear. I raised a hand in
an awkward half wave. He didn't return it, just kept staring.
There was the widow, missus Laurie, who walked the cemetery
each morning before dawn, always the same path, the same
three headstones, her husband, her son, and someone else I
didn't recognize. Most mornings, I saw her from my kitchen window,
dark coat trailing behind her like smoke, and buried deep
in her sleeves. After the butterfly showed up, I started
watching more closely, wondering if, like everyone else, she'd stop
to stare at strangers with those new gentle smiles. But
she didn't. She moved the same way, slow and rigalistic.
She never looked up. I tried catching her eye one morning,
brought a coffee in a paper cup. She didn't take it,
just looked at me like I was interrupting a conversation
I couldn't hear. And then there was Nathan. He ran
the post office, usually polite, efficient, and dry as toast.
I didn't know much about him beyond the story. Everyone
knew he had been alone his whole life, never found
a partner in this small town. In the week after
the painting, when couples danced barefoot in the park and
strangers confessed decades of buried affection, Nathan still walked his
usual loop, with mail tugged tight to his chest, jaw
locks shot, like he was keeping something from escaping. I thought,
for a second there might be something between us, some
shared understanding, like warvette who never served in the same war,
but still recognized the look in each other's eyes. I
tried to speak to him once and throw a line
about how strange everything had gotten. He paused, nodded once,
and wore away. The others didn't speak at all, barely
above the bare minimum for conversation. I wondered if This
is how I looked the whole time I was here.
To me, I was laying low, being inoffensive. Was I
just as sour as the others not chosen? I kept
wondering if it was a coincidence, or if we were
all missing the same piece, something simple, something everyone else
had that made them worthy of whatever this was. Eventually
I stopped one morning when I saw missus Lorry sitting
in the church pews. She wasn't praying, just sitting facing
the blank wall where the painting had been. I sat
a few rows behind her at the silence stretched between
us until I couldn't take it anymore. Why aren't you
like the others? I asked, my voice barely carried across
the empty room. She didn't look back, just shifted a
gaze slightly upward toward the ceiling beam because she said softly,
there's no one left for me. It wasn't bitter, wasn't
sad even. It was just the truth. And suddenly the
space inside my chest felt colder than it had all weak.
It started with the lights, people standing on their porches,
faces lit by candles they hadn't held. Seconds before. I
saw the first group from my window around midnight, six
of them walking single file down main Street. They weren't speaking,
but they were humming something low and wordless, not a
melody I recognized. They sounded more like a memory past
mouth to mouth. The next night there were more couples
holding hands, parents with children, teenagers, moving like they rehearsed
the steps in some school auditorium long ago and just
now remember the choreography. They didn't look possessed. That's the
part I kept coming back to. There was no glassiness
in their eyes, no twitching or convulsing, no signs of strain.
They looked grateful, calm, like they were doing exactly what
they were meant to do. Alice was with them. She
walked barefoot through the grass, arms loose at her side,
her face tilted up to the stars like she expected
to be lifted at any moment. She looked so alive,
in hurt to watch her. I followed some nights, stayed
far enough back to pretend I wasn't spying. They never
turned round, never acknowledged me. Then on the fourth night,
I saw the dancers middle of the town square, a
man and a woman twirling slowly in the pool of
light beneath the lamp post, the bodies close enough that
you couldn't tell whose feet were leading. The man's shirt
was soaked with something. I thought it was rain at first,
but then I saw the dark streak trailing down from
his eye blood, a slow, steady trickle, like a tear
that got tired. No one seemed alarmed. Beeple walked past
without blinking. One man even clapped, as if it were
a performance. That's when I started writing it all down,
not for posterity, for sanity. I needed to make it
make sense. Dates, names, times, descriptions, how many people, what
they did, how long it lasted. But the more I
tried to track it, the worse it got. It was
like trying to trace smoke with a pencil. I gathered
all my notes, thoughts, and theories and went straight to
the authorities. But no matter how much I urged them
to action, the sheriff just stared through me, a soft
smile on his face. I think what angered me was
how sincere it was. He wasn't mocking me. Gone to
whatever was going on, Nothing added up. I stopped writing
and just watched. One night, I saw Alice sitting alone
at the edge of the pond, reflection trembling in the water,
I decided to speak to her. She looked up when
I got close, smiled soft and tired. Why are you
doing this, I asked, her. Smile didn't falter. She stood gently.
Then she reached out and touched my cheek, not with pity,
but with something that felt like an apology. It must
be so lonely, she whispered, to have no one worth
blooming for, And then she walked into the dark, and
I just stood there, still, not understanding whether she was
trying to comfort me or mourn me. I went back
to the church looking for missus Lorry. I don't know why,
Maybe because she was the only one who ever answered
me without smiling, like she knew something I didn't, Or
maybe because I still believed stupidly that there were a
few of us left who hadn't changed and were still sane.
The doors were open, candles lined the pews like sentries
wax pooled onto hymn books no one was reading. I
found her sitting in the same spot she always did,
back straight, hands folded. I sat beside her, close enough
that I could hear the quiet creak of her breath.
She didn't look at me, not right away, just kept
a gaze fixed on the far wall. I turned toward her.
What is it? I asked? What does it want? She smiled.
That was the first thing that told me something was wrong.
It wasn't bitter or distant or hollow. It was radiant,
lit from within, the way they all were once it
touched them. Then she said, so softly, I almost missed it.
It finds what still aches, she whispered, that's all it needs,
a wound you've grown used to holding. Her voice had
changed to in cadence, like it had been set to music.
I couldn't hear. She finally turned to look at me,
and for a moment I thought she might take my hand,
but instead she just said, you never learned how to ache,
did you. Then she stood slow and graceful and walked
up the center aisle, her fingers brushing each pew like
a rosary. She had found the ache, and I was
alone again, And now I couldn't even trust the silence
I shared with her. The others, the ones like me,
had thinned out. The man in the buick was gone,
his car sat empty, door left ajar like it. Stepped
out for a moment and forgotten where it was going.
Nathan had closed the Boast office early three days in
a row. No one complained. I stopped by once and
saw him through the back window holding something small, but
I couldn't shake the fact that it looked like a weapon.
I kept wandering around like a tourist in my own life, watching, listening,
wondering if it was too late to be chosen, wondering
if I'd missed whatever subtle invitation had passed through everyone
else's blood. One night, I found myself at the edge
of the park, just beyond the lights. Couples walked barefoot
in the grass. Teenagers sat in circles, head bowed, foreheads
pressed together. You could hear quiet songs, not full melodies,
just threads of harmony, rising and falling in time with
the breeze. I sat alone on a bench and tried
to mimic it, the closeness, the warmth I imagine someone
sitting next to me. I tried to picture what it
might feel like to have a memory that made your
chest hurt in that beautiful, horrible way. But there was
nothing there. It was like trying to start a fire
with wet wood. Waiter at the cafe I ran into Maya.
I hadn't seen her in years, not since she graduated.
She'd drawn quiet, strange things that made the other students nervous.
Now she was older, settled, but still had that look
like she was always five seconds ahead of the rest
of us. She offered me a seat. We talked lightly
at first, then slower. At some point I told her everything,
not just about the painting or the others, but the hollowness,
the fact that I've been watching all of it from
the outside, like a man pressing his face to the
glass of her house he used to live in. She listened,
really listened. Then she looked at me with something like sympathy,
something like pity. I think you want to be in love,
she said, But you never learned how. I didn't argue,
she said to coffee, set it down, and added, I
think you don't want to be alone when it happens.
When what happens? I asked. She silently looked out the
window at the people walking in pairs bathed in amber light,
faces turned up toward a sky I hadn't been able
to look at directly in days. It wasn't quiet anymore,
not in the way it used to be the stillness
of a town half forgotten, with dust settled in windshields,
and dogs barked at nothing. Now the silence felt intentional, sacred,
like everyone was holding their breath, waiting for the next
note in a song they'd only heard in dreams. They
started looking up more. It was subtle at first, heads
tilted just slightly toward the sky, as if something faint
was humming above the clouds. But now people sat in
fields at night, eyes wide open, mouths parted, Couples lay
naked on blankets, fingers threaded together, whispering things I couldn't hear.
They said they were ready. I found drawings scratched onto
the bark of trees, crude spirals, insect wings, cymbals that
looked like musical notation but didn't follow any rhythm. I
knew behind the library someone stacked bones in a perfect spiral.
Bird bones maybe, or squirrels or something that once spoke.
A few houses at windows open and candlelight flickering, like
hearts beating and sink. I passed one porch where letters
were being burned one by one into a metal basin,
love notes, I think, or maybe confessions. No one seemed
afraid except me. I found Jacob outside the old grocery store.
He was standing still, head tilted back, his hand resting
gently on the car handle, like he'd forgotten he was there. Jacob,
I said, too loud, Come with me. He blinked slowly,
then smiled that same warm, distant smile everyone wore. Now,
come where away? I said, just out of town, anywhere,
a day even, just to see if it breaks whatever
this is. His smile didn't falter, but his eyes showed
signs of mourning. Please, I said, I don't know what's happening,
but it's not right. It's not He stepped forward and
put a hand on my shoulder. There was real pain
in his face, sorrow of something I had no knowledge of,
Like I was in the wrong for thinking this. You're
not being punished, Darren, You're just not part of it.
That hurt more than I expected, because there wasn't a
drip of malice. It was pure truth, and truth doesn't bruise,
it carves. He turned and walked back inside, leaving me
with nothing but the sound of insects buzzing in rhythm
I swear i'd never heard before That night. I walked
to the edge of town. There's an overlook where the
grass gives way to gravel and you can see the
train tracks disappear into nothing. That's where I saw them.
Two people, a man and a woman, sitting on a guardrail.
I recognized them. Both. Neither had changed. They were like me,
always had been watching things from the outside. They weren't speaking,
just holding hands like it was the last rope tying
them to something real. Then the woman began to cry,
not from pain or fear, from relief, and the man
he smiled, just barely, but it was the start of
a smile that comes from surrendering to something beautiful you
were once terrified of. I watched heart hammering as they
began to succumb to the phenomenon, and for the first
time since this all began, I felt something split in me,
grief because whatever they were becoming, it was never meant
for me. It happened just before dawn. I hadn't slept,
not in days, really, just drifted in and out of hours,
like a body floating on cold water. I've been walking
the town again, hoping the movement would give my mind
something to grip. But when I turned onto Main Street,
I knew something had changed. They were standing still, all
of them. The changed frozen mid step, mid conversation, mid breath.
A couple sat on a bench, foreheads touching. A teenager
stood on a porch of the book half open in
a hands. The mayor was parked at a stoplight door ajar,
his head tilted toward the sky. None of them moved.
Their eyes were wide and wet, the expression you see
in old church paintings. Mouths parted just slightly, as if
they were hearing something so beautiful they couldn't survive the sound.
I stood in the center of the square, surrounded. The
air felt thick, like it was vibrating, just out of
tune with reality. My ears rang from the pressure. Something
was happening, Something was here. They looked up, every single
one of them, in perfect unison, tilted their heads toward
the sky, not in panic, but in recognition. Whatever they'd
been waiting for had finally arrived. And then they began
to bloom. It started with a shiver, a ripple through
the crowd, like a breath held and released at once.
Shoulders loosened, mouths parted, ice softened. Something pulling at them
from somewhere, very far away, then the first tear opened.
I saw it happen to a man near the fountain,
a thin, perfect line splitting down the center of his chest,
as gentle as if someone had unsipped a coat. There
was no struggle, no gasp. His skin just parted. The
flesh eased back on its own, curling outward. Muscle followed
it slid out in long, warm ribbons, thick glistening strands
peeling away from bone, like silk loosened from a spool.
Each sheet slowed downward, with soft, wet sounds, layering itself
at his feet. His heart sat exposed for a moment,
pulsing like a bright stone. Then it softened too. Around me,
the rest of the town began to open. I could
hear it, that quiet pealing, that almost tender separation of
skin from the living thing inside. It didn't sound violent,
more like fruit being opened by steady hands. A woman's
face split along a jawline, a child's spine pushed free
in a slow arc, vertebra by vertebra, and men's aunts
shed their muscles in draped sheets, leaving the pale gleam
of bone beneath. None of them screamed, They didn't even flinch.
The tendon stretched like strings being pulled taut, then snapped
with little pops, playful in how small they sounded compared
to the enormity of what was happening. Fingers loosened from knuckles,
cheeks peeled from skulls, ribs unfolded like petals. There was
no blood, not a drop. Everything emptied itself cleanly, quietly,
as if their bodies had been waiting for this, as
if the machinery of being human had turned off its
alarms and unlocked all its doors, and through all of
it their expressions. God, they looked euphoric. A woman whose
eyes were already clouding over, smiled like someone had just
told her she could finally go home. A teenage boy
leaned into his friend as his sternam opened, and they
both laughed, breathless and relieved. Before their laughter dissipated. Couples
held hands as their bodies melted. Parents stroked their children's
hair even as their own faces fell away. Some closed
their eyes, others raised their arms to the sky, as
if embracing something descending toward them. No one ran, no
one begged, no one tried to stop it. They welcomed it.
Spines collapsed into soft white powder. Skulls folded inward like
drying paper, bones crumbled at the slightest breeze, becoming dust
before they even touched the ground. I stood there and
watched it all, watched the town peel itself open and
spill into the air, like light escape in a cracked shell.
And something in me twisted painfully, not from the horror,
but from the unbearable truth threading through every smile, every sigh,
every peaceful surrender of the body. They were happy, every
single one of them, happy in a way I had
never been. And suddenly I understood I never could be,
and that, more than the skin and the bones and
the dust swirling in the dawn light, was what shattered me.
Then something rose from the center of the stillness. A shimmer,
at first like oil and water, like air warping over
pavement on a hot day. Then wings, massive, translucent, veined
like stained glass. A body that flickered between forms I
couldn't hold on to, not long enough to name, eyes
like multifaceted mirrors, a head that never stopped turning. It
wasn't the butterfly from the painting that had just been
a door. This was what had been waiting behind it.
It rose from their remains, built from them, somehow, not
their flesh, but what had been inside it. Love, familial, partnership, desire,
all of it shaped and reflected into something too beautiful
to be real. It flew soundless, weightless. It drifted over rooftops,
trailing sparks of gold behind it, like the last light
of a dying sun. It passed above me and did
not touch me, didn't even pause. I stood, I shouted,
I'm here. I said, I'm still here. It didn't slow.
I saw them, I watched, I understand, now still nothing.
I dropped to my knees, coughing in the dust. My
hands trembled, flicks of bone and ash clinging to my
skin like snow. I tried to cry, but the tears
didn't come. I tried to pray, but my voice was hollow.
I tried to plead, but I had no one to
plead for, just me, And for the first time, it
hit me all at once, all the quiet years, all
the nice dinners, all the polite, acceptable small talk, all
the chances I'd had to love someone, to ache, for
someone to need, and how I'd missed every one. I
collapsed into the ash, completely from emptiness. I whispered into
the remains of a thousand open hearts, I'm still here,
I'm still me Why. And the dust stirred around me,
just faintly, and I heard it from inside, like something
had cracked open in the back of my skull, just
wide enough to let the words in, because there's nothing
in you to transform. And then the wind blew, and
the ashes, the ones I never knew how to love,
scattered into the morning. They found me three days later.
I was still sitting there in the square, half buried
in ash. It had settled into my hair, into the
falls of my clothes, into the cracks of my palms.
I don't think I moved the entire time. Maybe I slept,
Maybe I didn't. The days blur when there's no one
left to tell you that time is passing. When the
rescue crews arrived, boots crunching through what used to be
neighbors and classmates and people I borrowed jumper cables from,
I didn't react. A man knelt in front of me,
asking questions, my name, if I was okay, what I remembered,
but his voice was muffled, sounding like he was speaking
from underwater. Staring at the ground, the dust shifted every
time I breathed, little clouds lifting, swirling, falling again. If
I stared long enough, I could almost imagine faces in it.
Not their faces, just the impression of all the love
they carried, hovering for a moment before dissolving again. Eventually,
someone asked what happened here. I thought about lying or
saying I didn't know, but the truth rose in my
throat before I could stop it. They were loved, I said.
My voice cracked. That's why they got to leave. The
man frowned at me. To him it was nonsense, and
maybe it was, but it was the only thing that
made sense to me anymore. They weren't killed. They became
something they had always been reaching toward, and I didn't.
In the days that followed, they kept me in a
hospital an hour out of town, clean sheets, tiled floors,
a window that looked out over fields that had never
known what happened in bell Weather. Nurses came and went.
The psychiatrist sat by my bed and tried to get
me to talk about trauma and massysteria. But every time
I closed my eyes, I saw them. Alice's smile opening
like a second sunrise, Jacob lifting his head to the
sky as if greeting an old friend, the way couples
held each other as their bodies unspooled into light. They
weren't afraid, they weren't alone, they weren't left behind. That
last one hurt the most, because somewhere, beneath the horror
and the dust and the quiet, gnawing loneliness, something else
had taken root to me, something I didn't want to name.
I was jealous, jealous that they had someone, anyone whose
love reached deep enough that it could echo into whatever
came next. I didn't, and that was why I remained.
People keep calling me lucky. They say I survived, that
I was spared. But every night, when the lights dim,
I lie awake in that hospital bed and wonder about
the truth of it, the sharp aching contradiction. If they
are gone and I'm alive, I have another chance at love.
But if I never had it to begin with, if
no one ever felt that way about me, if I
never felt it toward anyone, then is it even possible
with this second chance? And if I did somehow learn
to live this feeling, would I be whisked up? Into
the sky, or was that all just the one off.
Some mornings, I hope the answer will come. Other mornings,
I hope it won't, because the world feels wrong with
this knowledge, too quiet, too flat, like someone drained all
the color or turned off the part of the sky
that used to watch back. And sometimes, when I'm honest
with myself, I wonder whether they were the lucky ones,
the ones who got to bloom, the ones who got
to go, the ones who weren't left behind to figure
out how to start loving in a world that suddenly
feels too big, too empty, and too late. But I'm
still here, I'm still me. Maybe that means something. Maybe
it means nothing at all.