Prologue: Butterflies

    there's a girl in my dreams. young, beautiful. i dont know her age exactly. in reality maybe i could guess it to some degree of accuracy, but not in the dreams. dreams dont work like that; dreams have their own rules. maybe twelve, maybe forty, but she's beautiful in the classic sense; silken hair, smooth skin, big eyes. and she can do amazing things like turn into butterflies when we fly.
    when i fly, it's a rather terrifying experience. i don't know how to fly in reality, you understand, so when i undertake this task in my dreams i have no grounded knowledge, no basis of comparison to access. i more or less tumble clumsily through the air end over end perpetually fearing that moment when gravity remembers me and slams me toward earth. not her though; she soars into the air higher and higher until she reaches the point which should be the apex of her arc and where she should start the descent back down; but instead, she turns into butterflies and flutters off in all directions.
    when my awkward journey through space is over and i've arrived - not landed, i never remember landing - at wherever i must have set forth toward, she is there waiting for me as if to say no matter how worried or scared i might have been, she had confidence that i would make it all along.
    i only mention her, this girl, because she's also in my nightmares. even the bad ones. the ones that are so completely disturbing that my mind will only show them to me in black and white for fear that seeing such visions in true color would shock my psyche to some deep place from which there is no return. even in these abysmal conjurations she is there. in color. blonde, blue, pink. dazzling, crisp. she doesn't do anything amazing in my nightmares. she doesn't  do anything at all; but she is there. off to one side, out of the main picture. like subtitles in a movie that you see but dont read. they are no help to you because you dont read them; but you know you can if you need to and that is a small bit of comfort.
    now and then, when a nightmare is particularly unnerving, i want to reach out to her, embrace her; but i fear if i do she will turn to butterflies at my touch and flutter away. so i allow her to just be there, off to the side, minimal comfort.
    then, when that one thing happens, and it always does, that one thing in my nightmare that is so unspeakably horrible that my body knows it is no longer safe to sleep and i'm thrust back into the conscious world; when that happens and i'm gasping for breath, sitting bolt up in bed, face dripping so profusely that i can't tell what part is sweat and what part tears, i think of her and, as my racing heart starts to calm, i smile knowing that sometimes, sometimes the bad has to be so grotesquely, alarmingly evil simply to make the small, good part that much better.

--conn