Reflection of a Butterfly

I gasped, jolted awake by terror, drenched in the cold sweat of a nightmare. The feeling of uneasy coldness penetrated my core. My insides shivered, and I promptly threw up on the bed. Tears stung my eyes as I carried my soaked bedding to the washer, the smell of vomit burning in my nose. As I passed the window, my reflection flashed in the glass. My heart jumped, bringing my stomach along with it. My skin crawled as I stared at myself. I eventually tore myself away and sat down shakily in my recliner. I tried to relax, but every time I closed my eyes, my reflection would flash across my mind, and my eyes would flutter open again. After much struggle, the weakness and exhaustion took me.

My eyes opened and nervously danced around the room. The sunlight streamed through the blinds. Where was I? I sat up abruptly. Why wasn’t I in bed? What had I been doing? What was this awful taste in my mouth? I felt very…strange? No. Uneasy? Yes. I had an inexplicable sense that there was something wrong. That soon faded as I became aware of the feeling of gross emptiness in my stomach. I moved to the kitchen and caught a glimpse of a butterfly flitting around outside. I walked to the window to get a better look and then, I saw it: my reflection. Breathless, I stared, glued to the window, as the horrors of the previous night came flooding back into my memory.

I had had nightmares before, quite often as a child, but something about this one was different. I had never felt a fear so raw, so visceral before. In the past, my nightmares had always made me fear for my life; some horrific monster would always chase me, or I would fall from a great height. But this time, I felt afraid of my life. Survival was no longer the happy ending but the extension of the nightmare, drawing it out into my waking hours. A butterfly had flown in through the open window. I followed it to the foyer, where it stopped briefly in front of the mirror before flying through it. I saw it flitting about on the other side, but as my own face appeared, it vanished. Surprised, I blinked and continued to stare into the mirror. My reflection…there was something strange about it. Something…different. It was perfect. I was beautiful. Every imperfection, every scar, gone! I breathed, admiring the perfected me on the other side of the glass. My skin was entirely flawless, the acne scars absent. The bump on the bridge of my nose had flattened into a smooth slope again. My hair was thick and full again, and even the split ends were gone. The bags under my eyes had smoothed, and the fine lines around my mouth and forehead had disappeared. There was not a scratch, nick, or bruise on any part of my body. All signs of life’s toll had entirely vanished. I continued to take in the perfection, but the longer I stared, the more my feeling of utter disgust grew. This person in the mirror wasn’t me. She was far too perfect. I became disgusted with myself for not being so flawless. No. That wasn’t all of it. There was something else—something off—about my reflection. It was my eyes. They were empty, soulless, dull. As I noticed this I began to notice the perfection fade. The flaws in my appearance were now magnified. I gasped as I watched myself change from perfect to hideous. Suddenly, my reflection vanished and the butterfly returned in its place. I heard a faint whispering sound, but I couldn’t make out what it was. I felt empty, like something had been ripped out of me. Then I woke up. This time, the monster was me.

I sat at my kitchen table, pondering. If I thought about it logically, it shouldn’t have been scary at all. So why did I have such a primal reaction to it? My anxiety about the dream itself became compounded by the irrationality of my reaction to it, and I spent the rest of the day stewing in my fear. I nervously avoided windows and mirrors—a difficult feat considering I worked in a department store full of both. Any reflective surface made me shudder. What is wrong with me? I wondered. I was usually a little vain and ordinarily would have taken any opportunity to admire my reflection. Now, nothing terrified me more. My coworkers noticed this and brought my abnormal behavior to my attention. Where I would normally join in my fellow employees’ gossip sessions, cracking jokes and complaining about stressful customers, I silently stared at the floor. I seemed off, unusually stoic, they said. Unwilling to admit that I was still scared of a dream I’d had the night before, I simply said I wasn’t feeling well. That wasn’t a total lie; my anxiety was making me nauseous, and no amount of mouthwash had made the taste of last night’s vomit disappear. I eventually told my manager I felt sick and left early.

Being home didn’t make things much better. Everything I saw brought back a memory of the night before. Everything seemed to be taunting me. I gave up on trying to take my mind off of it and just let my thoughts run. I sat in my recliner and stared off into space. My reaction to my dream was entirely irrational; that much was obvious. But why? The dream itself had been so innocuous. No matter how hard I tried, I still couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something intensely disturbing…my eyes! There had been something about my eyes. They hadn’t seemed to belong to me. And the whispering! What had the voice been saying? Who’s voice was it? These two things disturbed me more than anything else. I made a bargain with myself: I would try my best to forget the dream, but if, when I woke up the next morning, it still bothered me, I would talk to someone about it.

I eventually drifted off to sleep, only to wake up a few hours later in the same mortal terror I had felt the night before. The dream had returned. It had happened the same way: the butterfly, the mirror, the perfect reflection, the transition from perfect to grotesque, and the whispering. The whispering had seemed a little louder, but I was still unable to understand what it said. It almost sounded as if the voice was underwater. I was now scared to go back to sleep, fearing the dream would return again. I made myself a cup of coffee and waited for the morning.

My pride prevented me from seeking help from another person, so I decided to look up the meaning of recurring dreams. Supposedly, my dream had happened twice because of some unresolved issue. But what? And what had the voice been trying to tell me? I was startled out of my thoughts by the sound of my alarm going off. I decided that the second occurrence was merely a coincidence. I had been thinking about the dream all throughout the previous day, so it made sense that it would happen again. This made me feel a little better, but I was still unable to shake the uneasy feeling that had accompanied me for the last 24 hours.

At work, I was just as distracted as I had been the day before. At the end of the day, my manager approached me to ask if I was alright. She had received multiple complaints from customers and other employees about my abnormal behavior. I was unwilling to look like a childish idiot, so I lied and told her that everything was fine. I think she saw that I was lying because she sighed and firmly told me that I needed to “get it together.” I drove home even more anxious than before. What if I had the dream again? How would I be able to get through another day?

I desperately tried to fight off sleep, but eventually, I succumbed. The dream returned again and I woke up in the same state of fear I had on the nights before. How long would this nightmare last? I burst into tears; the tiredness and anxiety were getting to me. I became fixated with the voice. It was louder this time, but still unclear. I was so frustrated. I knew the dream was trying to tell me something, but what?

The dream kept coming back, the voice getting progressively louder but still no clearer. The sleep deprivation and constant fear were making me crazy. After the fourth occurrence, I called out sick from work. I spent the whole day pacing, trying desperately to divine the meaning of the dream. By the fifth occurrence, I was constantly seeing butterflies out of the corners of my eyes. By the sixth occurrence, the anxiety had turned to anger. In one fit of rage, I took a dumbbell and smashed it into my bathroom mirror. I stared into the broken glass and screamed. Multiple tiny, distorted images of myself screamed back. “What do you want from me?!” I shouted, not knowing who the “you” was. I couldn’t take this anymore; something had to change.

On the seventh night, the dream went on as usual. But this time, the voice was not an underwater whisper but a clear, thundering boom. It said one word, and I instantly knew the answer to the question that had been plaguing my mind for days. A wave of relief washed over me. My anxiety was over, but there was still a faint feeling of uneasiness. What I had to do was not simple and would likely be scary at times. That one word played in my mind, over and over again: “METAMORPHOSE.”