The Butterfly Garden

by Dot Hutchison

  “Avery uses the same three passwords for everything. I just tried those.”

  I had the feeling Avery was going to have to create a fourth password pretty soon. We weren’t supposed to loiter near the main entrance. That stretch, a little to either side of that locked door, had Lorraine’s room, Avery’s playroom before it had been dismantled, the infirmary and kitchen/dining room, the tattoo room that led into the Gardener’s suite, and a couple of rooms we didn’t know the purpose of, but could guess. Whatever he did in those rooms, that was where we died. All things we weren’t supposed to pay excessive attention to, minus the kitchen, and neither the Gardener nor Avery left while there was a Butterfly who could see them do it.

  “Just what did you think you were going to find?” asked the Gardener.

  “A . . . a garden . . .” the boy answered slowly. “I just wanted to see why it was so special.”

  “Because it was private,” his father sighed, and I wondered if that was the reason he’d actually removed the camera and mic from the cave behind the waterfall. Because he valued his privacy enough to let us pretend we had ours. “If you truly wish to become a psychologist, Desmond, you will have to respect people’s privacy.”

  “Except when that privacy forms a block to their mental well-being, in which case I’d be professionally obligated to urge them to talk through those secrets.”

  Funny, Whitney had never mentioned that kind of ethical jiggering when she talked about her psych seminars.

  “You will then be professionally obligated to keep those secrets to yourself,” the Gardener reminded him. “Now, let’s go.”

  “Do you sleep here?”

  “Occasionally. Let’s go, Desmond.”

  “Why?”

  I bit my lip against a laugh. It was a rare treat to hear the Gardener truly flummoxed.

  “Because I find it peaceful,” he eventually answered. “Pick up your flashlight. I’ll walk you back to the house.”

  “But—”

  “But what?” he snapped.

  “Why do you keep this place such a secret? It’s just a garden.”

  The Gardener didn’t answer right away, and I knew he had to be thinking through his options. Tell his son the truth, and hope he buys into it, keeps it secret? Lie to him and risk the truth being found out anyway, because a son disobedient once might prove disobedient again? Or was he thinking something worse, that somehow a son could be just as disposable as a Butterfly?

  “If I tell you, you must keep it an absolute secret,” he said finally. “You cannot breathe a word about it outside these walls. Don’t even speak about it to your brother. Not a word, do you understand me?”

  “Y-yes, sir.” It still wasn’t fear, but there was something there, something a little hard-edged and desperate.

  He wanted to make his father proud.

  A year ago, the Gardener had told me that his wife was proud of their younger son, not necessarily that he was. He hadn’t sounded disappointed, but maybe against his mother’s easy-shown pride, his father’s was harder to detect. Or perhaps his father simply withheld praise until he felt it had been earned. There were any number of possible explanations, but this boy wanted to make his father proud, wanted to feel a part of something greater.

  Stupid, stupid boy.

  There were footsteps then, growing softer, moving away. I stayed where I was, stuck until the walls lifted. A minute or two later, the Gardener stepped into the far end of the hall and beckoned to me. I obeyed, like I always did, and he absently ran a hand over my hair, now back in a messy knot. He was seeking comfort, I guess.

  “Come with me, please.”

  He actually waited for me to nod before putting his hand on my back and giving me a gentle shove down the hall. The tattoo room was open, the machines shrouded in plastic dustcovers until there was a new girl again; once inside, he pulled a small black remote from his pocket, hit a button, and the door came down behind us. Through the room, the door to his private suite was also open. The punch pad beeped when the door closed. His son stood in front of the bookshelves, turning at the sound of the lock engaging.

  He stared at me in openmouthed shock.

  Up close, it was easy to see that he’d inherited his father’s eyes, but most of him belonged to his mother. He had a slender build and long, elegant fingers. Musician’s hands, I thought, when I recalled what his father had said of him. It was still hard to guess his age. He could have been my age, maybe a little older. I wasn’t as good at that game as the Gardener.

  His father pointed to the armchair under the lamp. “Sit down, please.” For himself, he chose a seat on the couch and tugged me down next to him, all while keeping my back from sight. I curled my legs beside me and leaned back against the well-padded cushions, my hands folded in my lap. His son was still on his feet, still staring at me. “Desmond, sit down.”

  His legs fell out from under him and he collapsed into the recliner.

  If I spilled horror stories to this shocked boy, could he get the police here faster than his father could kill me? Or would his father simply kill him to silence him? The trouble with sociopaths, really, is that you never know where they draw their boundaries.

  I couldn’t quite decide if it was worth the risk, and in the end, what stopped me was the thought of all the other girls. All the air for the Garden came from a centralized system. All the Gardener had to do to take out the entire flock was put a pesticide or something into the air. After all, he had to keep all sorts of chemicals stocked for the care of the greenhouses.

  “Maya, this is Desmond. He’s a junior this year at Washington College.”

  Which would explain why he only walked with his parents on weekends.

  “Desmond, this is Maya. She lives here in the inner garden.”

  “Lives . . . lives here?”

  “Lives here,” he affirmed. “As do others.” The Gardener sat forward on the edge of the couch, his hands clasped loosely between his knees. “Your brother and I rescue them from the streets and bring them back here for a better life. We feed them, clothe them, and take care of them.”

  Very few of us were from the streets, and in no sense were we rescued from anything, but the rest of it could be true from a certain skewed perspective. The Gardener never seemed to think of himself as villainous, anyway.

  “Your mother does not know about this, nor can she. The strain of caring for so many people would put too much work on her heart.” He sounded so earnest, so sincere. And I could actually see his son believing him. Relief worked over his face, chasing away the momentary flash of horror that his father had been keeping a harem for his own pleasure.

  Stupid, stupid boy.

  He’d learn better. The first time he heard a girl crying, the first time he saw someone’s wings, the first time the walls came up and showed all those girls in resin and glass, he’d know better. For now, he swallowed it all. By the time he learned better, would he be in too deep to do the right thing?

  We sat together in that room for almost an hour as the Gardener explained his version of things, occasionally looking to me to nod and smile along. I did so, my stomach churning, but much like Bliss, I didn’t want to die yet. I didn’t quite have the hope that Johanna’s mother had espoused, but if I had a few years left, I wanted them, even like this. I’d had too many opportunities to give up, give in, and I’d kept going. If I hadn’t fallen to suicide, I wasn’t going to go meekly to my death.

  Finally the Gardener checked his watch. “It’s almost two o’clock in the morning,” he sighed, “and you have class at nine. Come, I’ll walk you back to the house. And remember, not a word, not even to Avery unless you’re here. We’ll put in a code for you when I’m sure you can be trusted with it.”

  I would have stood as well, but when I swung my feet to the floor, he made a subtle gesture that had me sinking back into the couch.

  I guess I was the right kind of bitch after all.

  He called us Butterflies, but really we wer
e well-trained dogs.

  I stayed on the couch exactly as he left me, not even getting up to wander around the rest of the suite. There wasn’t a window or another door, so there wasn’t a point. I’d seen it all already, of course, but this time there wasn’t the blur of pain and shock. This was something private for him, something even more so than the Garden. Even Butterflies didn’t belong here.

  So why the fuck was I here? Especially without him being present?

  He returned maybe half an hour later. “Turn around,” he ordered hoarsely, tugging at his clothing and dropping it into careless piles on the carpet. I obeyed before he could see my face, twisting to sit back on my ankles with open air behind me. He dropped to his knees, tracing every line on my back with trembling fingers and lips, and somehow I knew this was him coming apart from the stress of telling his son, the excitement that perhaps this younger son might share his interests in a gentler way than the elder. He fumbled with the hooks on my dress and when he couldn’t get them on the first or second try, he simply tore the fabric away from the fastenings, leaving me in shreds of black silk.

  Yet if hope has flown away in a night, or in a day, or in none, is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.

  But then, by that point I’d been in the Garden for a year and a half, and even Poe was more a habit than a true distraction. I was more aware than I would have liked of what he was doing, of the sweat that splashed from his chest onto my spine, of his groans every time he pulled me back even closer against him. Too aware of all the ways he worked to pull responses from me, and all the ways my body betrayed me by obeying, because there was never enough fear from me or brutality from him to shut things off completely.

  Even when it seemed like he was finished, he stayed where he was, and he blew little puffs of air against the outlines of the wings, and after a full circuit he did it again with kisses, soft as prayers, and then he did the whole thing over again, and I thought how fucking unfair it was that he made us butterflies, of all things.

  Real butterflies could fly away, out of reach.

  The Gardener’s Butterflies could only ever fall, and that but rarely.

  She pulls the lip gloss from her pocket and reapplies it with shaking hands. Watching her, seeing the tattered shreds of dignity the gesture helps her wrap around herself, Victor makes a note to thank his daughter for her thoughtfulness. Such a simple thing, but more than he could have guessed.

  “And that was meeting Desmond,” she says after a minute.

  Eddison scowls at the stacks of photos and other papers. “How could he—”

  “Those who want to believe something badly enough generally do,” she says simply. “He wanted his father to have a good, reasonable explanation, and when he was provided with one, he wanted to believe, so he did. For a while, he did.”

  “You said you’d been there a year and a half at that point,” murmurs Victor. “You kept track?”

  “Not at first. Then I got an unexpected present on my anniversary.”

  “From Bliss?”

  “From Avery.”

  After that first time, when his father raked him over the coals for what he’d done to me and Giselle, Avery had only touched me twice, and only with his father’s specific consent and the threat that anything untoward that happened to me would also be happening to Avery. He didn’t slap me or choke me, didn’t bind me past tying my wrists together at the small of my back, but Avery knew other ways to make things painful.

  After each of those two times with Avery, I spent most of the following week dehydrated, because if it was going to hurt to piss anyway, at least I was going to make sure it didn’t happen more often.

  He still watched me all the time, though, much as Desmond probably looked at those hints of the inner garden until he found a way in. I was something that wasn’t supposed to be touched, therefore I was fascinating and desirable.

  The fourth time I had to put up with him started out like the recent ones, with the Gardener coming to me and explaining that Avery had asked permission for some time with me, but that he had his limits, just like the last two times. It was the Gardener’s way of being comforting. We still couldn’t say no, because that displeased him, but he thought it was reassuring to know that Avery couldn’t hurt us without repercussion.

  The fact that the repercussions could only happen after we’d been maimed or killed was less than reassuring, but he never seemed to connect those dots. Or maybe he did and just dismissed the concern out of hand. After all, this was the man who genuinely seemed to believe that he was giving us a better life than what we’d had Outside, that he was taking care of us.

  So, not particularly comforted, I obediently followed Avery to his playroom and watched him close the door, took off my clothes when he ordered me to, and let him lock me into the restraints on the wall, let him tie a blindfold too tightly around my head. I’d moved on to Poe’s prose by that point, because it was more challenging to memorize when it didn’t rhyme, and I dusted off as much as I could recall of “The Tell-Tale Heart” and prepared to silently recite it.

  Unlike the Gardener, Avery didn’t believe in preparation or foreplay, didn’t care about making us ready or at the very least lubing us up, because he enjoyed causing us pain. It didn’t surprise me that he went right to it.

  A quarter of the way through the story, it did surprise me when he pulled out without finishing. I could hear him at the far end of the room, where he stored most of his toys, but even as time passed he didn’t come back to me. Gradually, though, I became aware of a light smell. I couldn’t identify it, something like stale coffee or a pot on the burner after all the water’s boiled away. Finally I could hear his heavy footsteps against the cold metal floor as he came back, then oh fucking God the pain as he pressed something into my hip that burned and tore. It was unlike anything I’d ever felt before, the agony so tight it pulled everything in me to a single point and tried to shatter it.

  I screamed, my throat clenching around the sound that tore through it.

  Avery laughed. “Happy anniversary, you arrogant bitch.”

  The door slammed open and he spun away, but even after the tool was drawn away the agony remained, stealing all the breath from me as my scream finally choked and died. There were sounds in the room, but I couldn’t make sense of them. I gasped and tried to suck in air, but it felt like my lungs had forgotten how to work.

  Then hands fumbled at the cuffs at my wrists and ankles, and I flinched.

  “It’s me, Maya, just me.” I recognized the Gardener’s voice, felt familiar hands tearing away my blindfold so I could see him. On the floor behind him, Avery sprawled inelegantly, a hypodermic quivering in his neck. “I’m so very sorry, I never thought . . . he’d been so . . . I’m sorry. He will never, ever touch you again.”

  The tool was on the floor next to Avery. When I saw it, I bit my tongue to keep the nausea from overwhelming me. The Gardener got the last of the bonds unfastened and I nearly screamed again when I tried to take a step.

  He swept my feet out from under me and hefted me into a cradle carry, staggering out of Avery’s playroom and partway down the hall to the infirmary. He nearly dropped me on the narrow cot so he could punch Lorraine’s call button. Then he knelt beside me, clasping my hand in both of his and telling me over and over again how sorry he was, even after Lorraine came rushing and panting into the room and set to work.

  On the plus side, I didn’t have to deal with Avery for a long time after that, and his playroom was completely dismantled. But. His father couldn’t deny him completely—the Garden was nearly the only leash he had on Avery—so he still had his other ways to hurt the other girls. Silver lining and all that bullshit.

  He doesn’t want to know. He really, truly doesn’t want to know, and he can see that same wish mirrored in Eddison.

  But they have to know.

  “The hospital didn’t say anything.”

  “You all dragged me
here before the hospital could do the rape kit they’d intended.”

  He takes a deep, shaky breath and lets it out on almost a whistle. “Inara.”

  Without a word, she stands and folds the sweater and tank tops halfway up her stomach, exposing other burns, cuts, and the bottom edge of a line of stitches on her side. The button on her jeans is already undone, so she tugs down the zipper, then reaches to her left side and hooks a thumb through the denim and her green striped cotton underwear, pulling them down just enough for the agents to see.

  The scar tissue is bright pink and thickly ridged along her hip bone. Only the edges of the wings are faded to pale pink and white. She gives them a crooked almost-smile. “They say everything comes in threes.”

  Three butterflies for a broken girl: one for personality, one for possession, and one for pettiness.

  She fixes her clothing and sits down, pulling a cheese Danish from the box that got forgotten in favor of the homemade cinnamon rolls. “Any chance I could get some water, please?”

  There’s a tap from the other side of the glass in answer.

  Victor thinks it’s probably Yvonne. Because it’s easier when you have something to do.

  The door opens, but it’s a male analyst who sticks his head in, tossing three bottles of water to Eddison before closing the door again. Eddison hands one to Victor, then unscrews the cap on another and puts it in front of Inara. She looks at her damaged hands, at the ridges on the plastic cap, and nods, taking a long drink.

  Victor reaches for the picture of the boy and lays it prominently on the table. “Tell us about Desmond and the Garden, Inara.”

  She presses the heels of her hands against her eyes. For a moment, the spread of pinks, reds, and purples across her face looks like a mask.

  Almost like a butterfly.

  Victor shudders, but he reaches across the table to gently pull her arms down. He keeps his hands over hers, careful not to put too much pressure on the burns, and waits for her to find the words. After several minutes of silence, she turns her hands under his until she can lightly clasp his wrists, and he returns the grip.