Satan’s Butterfly
by Shawn M. Klimek
Spanning the stems of a prickly cactus, a spiderweb glittered in the morning dew like a sequined doily. When a yellow hornet—actually, a demon—descended nearby, the web’s owner warily revealed itself.
“What now?” demanded the spider (also a demon).
“Just watch.”
Pimples like blackberry drupelets erupted all over the hornet’s body. These bulged into pustules, before mushrooming into tarry lobes, like a smoker’s lungs. These swelled and mutated until the mass resembled a bloated, decomposing manatee drowned in crude oil.
“Strange,” gurgled the transfigured hornet.
“Don’t tell me! Satan said you’d become a butterfly—and you believed him?”
Shawn M. Klimek
Shawn M. Klimek is the author of the illustrated, poetic fantasy Hungry Thing, with more than 150 works online, and in such anthologies as BHP’s Deep Space, Eerie Christmas, Bad Romance, Jibbernocky, Passenger 13, and the Dark Drabbles series. He lives in Illinois with his wife and their Maltese.
Twitter: @shawnmklimek
Blog: Jot In The Dark