1 PLAY DEAD PROLOGUE
**ＮＯＴＥ! I recommend you read with the page color as black, not white for this story. It's just simply a better reading experience, in my humble opinion. If you are on your phone, simply tap the screen and hit display settings. From there just hit the color black or grey. If you're on your desktop, just hit the little icon that looks like a settings gear. You should see something to change the page color there.
---thnx
ᴘʀᴏʟᴏɢᴜᴇ
The skies were a sunken, lifeless, ashen grey. Tufts of thick clouds crowded the skies, blocking out any hint of sunlight. And the air was a frigid, stiffed cold, that faintly smelled of wet concrete and wilting grass. Saturated into the dark skies was the knife of rain ready to splice out from the bloated clouds.
BANG!
A slither of white thunder screeched out.
The rain could no longer be kept at bay, and with a forceful presence, the bloated clouds exploded, rain bursting out from clouds bellies.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Droplets of rain crashed towards the overcast ground. In the blink of an eye, everything became overtaken by the rain turning into murky, grey, and slimy wet damp. Water suffocated the grass and the budding of other struggling green lives. The rain was pouring. Pounding. Thrashing. Bashing.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
The sound of striking rain punched the ground hard, creating a loud cacophony of drumming and slamming.
"Lotty? You're going to get wet, dear. Come inside!" A tenderly coddling mothering voice called out from the house backdoor. From the back door porch, a youthful appearing woman stood, arms folded, her small frame soft and yet defined inside of her flowing sun yellow dress.
For a moment, a cool draft brushed through her curly brown hair, and lighting rumbled in the background.
"Lotty?" The woman raised her voice, her amber brown eyes glued to a tiny crouched child sitting in the center of their backyard's garden. "You heard me. Come inside before you catch a cold." The woman beckoned.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
The rain continued to hammer on, completely drenching the child who stood motionless and silent in her position.
"Charlotte Cane." The woman firmly called to the child. "Your mother is speaking to you."
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Rain continued to pound against the ground and the grass. Even so, despite the downpour of rain, the small child remained rooted in her place. Not a single muscle of hers moved. She sat completely still. As still as stone and as unmoved as a statue. Her tiny feet were glued in her red shoes, and floods of water rolled off her bare head, sinking into the fibers of her hair and her white dress tied that was tied with a red ribbon.
"Charlotte, you'll catch a cold if you don't come in." The mother tried once more to earn her child's attention.
But all words seemed lost on death ears.
The child said nothing and did nothing.
Still. She remained ever so still.
"Charlotte, for goodnes's sake---." She paused to step one foot outside from the back patio door. "Answer me. I know you hear me."
Still, her child did not move.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
"Okay, Charlotte." Her mother stepped away from the patio door and paced through the rain towards her gravely and deathly quiet child. "What are you doing?" she questioned, blocking rain from her eyes with her hand.
"Is...is it...." The child turned around to face her mother, their amber brown eyes shinning of the same color, yet with different emotions. Confusion filled her mother's eyes, but fear---fear consumed her child's eyes.
The child sniffled, icy rain running down her glassy eyes. "Is...is it...dead?"
"What's dead, dear?" Her mother brushed back coils of shiny chestnut hair and crouched down to her sniveling child.
"Is...it dead?" The small girl asked again, dread expanding on her face with every vowel. Her stout, tiny fingers gradually pointed to a crushed butterfly on a circular grass spot between a row of daises. The butterfly had been crushed; its thin black antennas were smashed and its beautiful rainbow colored wings were broken into jagged spliced bits.
"I…. didn't mean to step on it... " The girl's voice wobbled in fear, sobs starting to chop up her speech. "Am I a sinner? Have I sinned, Mommy?" She turned to her mother, her cries becoming desperate as she sobbed, a waterfall of tears mixing with rain splatting on her cheeks.
"Oh, Charlotte." Her mother sighed, rubbing her daughter's arm as the rainy skies thundered.
"Is it really dead? Did I really kill it?" Her tears were becoming an unstoppable storm of emotions.
"Charlotte." Her mother responded, heartfelt concern in her gentle voice.
"I killed it, didn't I? I'm a sinner. I killed something!" The little girl loudly sobbed.
"Charlotte." Her mother's eyes jumped from her crying daughter to the mutilated butterfly corpse. "Charlotte," she said again, this time with a smile. "No, no, dear." She comfortingly rubbed her daughter's shoulder. "It's not dead."
"Huh?" Her intense crying weakened. "It's not dead?"
"Yes." She wiped tears away from her daughter's doe eyes. "You see, Charlotte, the butterfly is doing what's called, playing dead."
"Playing dead?"
"That's right."
A streak of bright thunder struck the sky.
"Sometimes, animals like to play dead." She brushed away more tears from the crying girl.
"The butterfly is playing dead?" The little girl's eyes grew as they focused on the crushed butterfly.
"That's right. When animals or even people, feel sick and get hurt or when things get too hard, stressful, overwhelming----or even for no reason at all, sometimes they like to play dead. When you steeped on it, you probably just injured it just a little." She spoke in a high pitched, babyish voice with an innocent smile. "It might be hurt, but its not dead. No, the butterfly is just playing dead."
"But it looks dead." The little girl pouted.
"Oh, darling, it only looks dead. It's alive elsewhere, but you just can't see it yet. That's why its playing dead." Her mother smiled even brighter. "That's all it is. So don't cry, my sweetheart."
She sniffled, her eyes lingering on the dead. "Playing dead?"
Her mother's smile was sweeter than honey. "Playing dead."
