Butterflies & Machine Guns by Solarism

When Remus drew, he juxtaposed butterflies and machine guns, sometimes massacring the butterflies with silver bullets, other times making the butterflies carry the weight of the guns with their fragile little wings.

He was not preoccupied; he was enamored.

A light fluttering, a dash of magic thrown on the parchment like an inkblot, and everything was animated and colored and alive--vibrant, dying, falling. Remus spent hours behind the dark curtains of his four-poster, conspiratorially drawing portraits of the Madness.

His quill was his savior.

When he felt dark and brooding, he would throw away his quills and promise himself redemption for his sins. A handful of Hail Mary's later and there was nothing left to be ashamed of. A rosary of words hung round his neck. The noose was tightening every instant; a storm cloud forming eerily at his feet, at his head, in his mind. Remus was not a happy man. Spending every day in his diseased body was a part of the Madness.

Inflicted by the butterflies, he drew.

His pulse pounded in tandem, a cycle, a tide, of washing in and washing out: the glowing moon's pull. He writhed and writhed against it, scratching at his face and eyes in repulsion, but there was nothing to tear away. He was bitterness personified.

A waxy exterior; the wax of the moon.

Occasionally his ink bottles would overturn, though undisturbed, a reset hourglass begging for his attention. In his moments of misery he would turn over in bed, punch his down pillows half-heartedly, and ignore the dripping ink. His nightstand was always stained a murky black.

Stains greasy suds could not remove.

The butterflies and the machine guns were hidden away in a crate during the morning hours, a closing time for the melancholy. Remus knew who he was and knew who, at the end of the day, he wanted to fall asleep with. What he did not know was why he was tortured; why, month in and month out, the tide swept, the grains of his humility forming a spiraling castle of sand and dust...

Depraved with a lack of normality, everything fires in unison.

A twisted, painful grimace at midnight echoed throughout his dreams. Memento mori, Remus always thought. Remember you will die.

Salvation among the butterflies; salvation at last.