The Butterfly and the Maggot

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This is a P.A.R.K. Gospel. Go to the Peter Andrew Ryan K[c]ult homepage for more information on the cult.


The Butterfly and the Maggot

By Peter Andrew Ryan


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The would-be bride and groom, still drunk with the uncompromisingly optimistic dreams of youth, wandered eagerly past a sunflower cloaked in an ensemble of tangled weeds and parasites. As this organic gem was drained of its very essence by a world of leeches, it still clung to desperate hopes of salvation while swaying its head back and forth in a frantic search for the sun. Ignoring the flower’s silent screams, the two star-crossed lovers strolled down the glistening yellowish-green trail of sludge the snail left behind as if it were a red carpet rolled out in their honor. They weren’t quite sure where the path would lead them, but they were in a tremendous hurry to get there. As they traveled, they sang joyfully of rainbows, sunsets, and other things they had never seen.


After lunching on the skeletal remains of a discarded apple, Grete and Jonah contemplated their situation. Grete, as a caterpillar, ate from the apple first due to the customs surrounding nobility. She had a high ranking in her royal family tree, but, as a female was treated subserviently to the needs of the opposing sex. Now she worried that her new mate would prove no different despite the sacrifices she had made so that they could be together. "Have I exchanged the slavery of society for the slavery of love?" she asked the warm summer winds without receiving an acceptable reply.

Birthed in a dumpster with forty-eight brothers and sisters, Jonah’s life was the antithesis of high society. He had quickly become a working class Marxist and had ditched his humble beginnings in search of a better life long before his first birthday. "Deep down," he said out loud with conviction, "Everyone knows that the way things are now isn’t the way things ought to be, they’re just two afraid to do anything about it." Grete was about to respond, when iron chains yanked at her tongue and pulled her voice back into the dungeon of her throat. Women weren’t supposed to have opinions. That was the way of things.


As their yellow brick road reached an end, the hypnotic melodies of a violin drew their footsteps into a cavernous opening at the bottom of the Widow tree. The music filled their hearts with hope but these feelings were shattered when, in the shaded shelter of the wooden cave, they found themselves entangled in a devil’s web. When their eyes had adjusted to the darkness they saw a grasshopper violinist, the spider who had captured them, and a snail- the oldest of all the creatures still living in the garden. All three gentlemen had the authority to merge the couple into a single unit through wedlock, and before requesting that they not be eaten, the maggot pleaded for their marriage. A mixture of amusement and shock washed over the trio’s faces. The spider slyly declined with the voice of a sleazy politician, knowing the risks involved with allowing an interspecies couple to exchange vows. He glanced at Grete hungrily with a stomach already full of royal blood, his eyes lighting up as if he wanted to drain her soul with his stare.


The grasshopper refused as well, with disgust dripping from his disapproving frown, stating the illogical nature of marriage without the possibility of procreation. The snail, however, pondered the request carefully. After deep thought, he stated ominously, "You’re adolescence is near an end, and a great change will soon be upon you, a metamorphosis of sorts. Return here in seven days and seven nights. If your request still stands, it shall be granted."


Eagerly, they agreed and, after being released, waited out the tediousness of the week by a bluish-green stream that flowed beyond the golden rimmed gates at the garden’s edge. On the fourth day of their intermission, Jonah awoke to find Grete caged within the confines of a silk cocoon more intricate, and seemingly evil in nature, than any web the spider could possibly weave. "Will she be the same when she is released?" Jonah asked his own reflection in the depths of the stream. Somewhere, amidst the white noise of flowing water and howling winds, he thought he heard an answer. On the seventh day, Grete was born again. Her true creation was finally complete and all the imprisonments of the physical world had been shed from her like an overworn layer of skin. Unfortunately, some of the chains holding her to the ground were not ones Jonah had wanted to be broken. Bright neon wings with paint-on eyes burst from the cocoon’s shell and frightened him into retreat.


Jonah watched as his love spiraled higher and higher, passing the tree’s branches one at a time, until she reached the pinnacle of the Earth and faded into the sun, merging with its radiant light. As she vanished, despair swallowed Jonah and kept him trapped in the darkness of its belly. In his grief, he didn’t notice the paper-thin wings that had sprouted from his own back out of long forgotten roots. Stumbling through forests of grass, he eventually found himself back at the cave. When his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw the grasshopper and spider, their mouths dripping with green goo, eating away at the snail as he struggled for his life. Jonah was too afraid to intervene and too shocked to leave. "It is the way of things," the grasshopper said passively.


"Yes," Jonah said as he hesitantly joined the feast, "It is indeed."


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