Author: Rory Mcalpine

By Rory McAlpine

‘Insects are drawn to carcasses. They swarm above them- like the ragged form of a departing soul’.

(Excerpt from The Meaning of Metamorphosis) 

They flit from the reeds that slip above the water. They flit from the trees that huddle in forests and the wild heather- like a fallen shard of a sunset’s hue- that flares across the slopes. Forming serpentine shapes, the insects sway and plunge in movements directed by something otherworldly. They skim just above the loch, coil around branches, weave among grass. The butterflies are the most beautiful. Their wings, when the light glances off them, at just the right angle, are nature’s stained-glass windows. Light illuminates much of the insect’s beauty. It glimmers on the spider webs, and glimmers on the dragonfly wings; that come night cluster around lamps meaning their weird bodies can be closely marvelled at. Avery learnt from a young age, placing lamps outside her caravan, invites insects to cluster. One of the more unusual beauties is the sound they make. For Avery she cannot think of a piece of music that could rival the insect orchestra. 

The thrumming. It’s what she calls the collective voice of the insects. It thrums through the ground, the air. Its permeance means it often melts into the background, but if you listen for it, then it’s deafening. Avery could feel it, the thrumming, as she sat balancing the notebook open across her knees. The binding had disintegrated long ago, leaving the loose sheets of paper to be sandwiched between the covers. The scratching of her pencil itching her curiosity as she sketched- in fragile detail- a butterfly. Her pen strokes pay obsessive attention to mark even the most insignificant of details. If you turned to the front of the book, you would see the title written neatly in the middle of the page with her name printed underneath: 

The Meaning of Metamorphosis

Avery. C. Tomlinson

Insects fascinated Avery- in every way imaginable. Yet one process had become something of an obsession: metamorphosis. The process that makes a tadpole a frog, or a caterpillar a butterfly. Avery spent hours cataloguing insect behaviour, appearances, habitats, and food sources in her notebook. It was crammed with tiny spidery writing and large sketches that started off in a straight line but ended up slanted, so the writing on every page was slightly lopsided. She worked on it whenever she wasn’t cooking or cleaning. 

Completing her sketch Avery headed back up the loch to her caravan. The caravan was nestled under the cover of a few sparse trees. It had been patched up so many times nothing of the original structure remained. A wooden veranda had been constructed around the caravan with poles at either end that dangled paraffin lamps. Once inside the caravan was cluttered, with stuff covering every surface. Mainly it was paper, drawings, and small sculptures. A few pebbles, flowers, mismatching crockery. Yet by far the strangest addition was a large wooden table at the far end. A large tree branch had been suspended a few inches above the table. Hanging from this branch were twelve chrysalises. They looked ornamental hanging there. Coloured a deep jade and speckled with gold. If you watched very closely you might spot their occasional quiver as something happened inside. Sheets of paper plastered the table below them with Avery’s endless observations and drawings. Avery placed her notebook safely away and went over to examine the chrysalises, gently touching one before noting down its texture. She proceeded along the line looking for even the slightest change. Her notes already track how initially these chrysalises had been a very pale green before transitioning to this deep jade and gold. The one at the end was even beginning to show a hint of blue. 

How Avery knew something was wrong she wasn’t quite sure. Maybe it was the change in temperature when the door opened. Maybe it was a sound she had subconsciously picked up on. All she knew was suddenly she was no longer alone. Before she had a chance to react Avery felt the claw grasp her and pull her violently backwards. Snapping her neck back, her knees buckled. Taken off guard it took a few seconds for her to wrestle free and twist to face the creature. It was a blur, a flash, a stinging pain on Avery’s cheek. She saw bared teeth and matted grey fur. Gaunt and gnarled, it lurched- clawing, and spewing a guttural intonation. It scraped her face, tore at her clothes. The weight of it was light but the force of its attack knocked Avery- who stumbled, then fell. Half-blinded. Spittle flew in moist goblets- rainforest rain. It reared up, eyes devoid of anything, the rational sacrificed to instinct. Puppet to the primitive. Avery heard her fluttering breath in her ears. Screeching wings flapping… not wings, clothes? “Muriel?” The wild creature came into startling clarity as Avery lay on the ground, blood smeared and dazed. The vicar’s wife. Not some animal. Just the vicar’s wife. Muriel screeched again, that awful animalistic sound. “Satanic child” the words mangled by her hoarse throat were barely recognisable. She spat it out as if its presence burned her tongue. Avery felt something hard and blunt hit her once. Twice. “Devil spawn”. 

‘What drives the change tadpole to a frog, what alchemy delivers the winged butterfly from the slovenly caterpillar?’

(Excerpt from The Meaning of Metamorphosis) 

She learnt it through the stares in the village, from the butcher who cussed at her from his shop. From the young boys that crossed the street to avoid her, and the children dragged frantically by parents out of her path. The whispers as she passed were as loud as the screaming abuse that snapped at her heels as she ran away. She was hungry because the town would not feed her. It was as if her money was stained. 

She pieced it together, news clipping pasted over some gaps. The vicar’s daughter, sweet angel Annie, salt of the earth Annie, all the children wanna be Annie. No longer. Now dead Annie. Gone Annie. 

And no one knew how Annie died. Healthy then suddenly not. Breathing then stilled. But they did know. The creature in the woods, they said, that lived among the bugs. Whose mother made the potions and chants, communed with the dead and dealt in the dark arts. She killed church choir Annie. 

Yet none of them probably knew Avery’s mother, the women who mixed not poison healing potions from flowers, soothing lotions from leaves. A woman who praised the moon and whispered to the woods thanking them for their fruits and air and medicinal properties. A woman who was gentle, a caring soul. However, to the villagers she was the one no one could understand. And that lack of understanding bred fear. She became the cause of bumps in the night, rotting crops and diseases that bedded households. And Avery her daughter; her spawn. Avery had killed Annie. The motive was hazy, the story heavy with embellishments and interpretations picked up from fireside chats and tales to the children. All converging on: Avery killed Annie. 

Avery stopped visiting town. Before she had been reclusive, sure, daughter of a feared misunderstood mother but a girl the town would tolerate, entertain, feed. She had, if not friends, acquaintances, people she would talk to. She would sometimes sketch families, paid a pretty penny for her troubles, or bring some vegetables to sell at the market. But the Vicars wife had taken this, bathed it in the poison of her tongue. This isolation was different, it was personal, targeted with no respite. Avery was no longer Avery. She was the embodiment of sin, the devil, a bundle of peoples’ angers and fears. Hate can do that, scarily fast. Dehumanise you. You become distorted in people’s perceptions, a reflection of what they fear. The truth was a peculiar thing, it was liquid and malleable. Avery was no longer Avery. The village had chosen their truth and would see only that. Not Avery but a creature, a poison, a child killer. She had become like the fallen angel Lucifer they preached in church, a concept abstracted from her individual: an object of hate with no life or being behind it. 

She felt it for the first time that day. When she walked out of the village for the last time. The blood was beginning to congeal on her forehead, like some third eye, from where some young boys had thrown a rock at her. The rock made contact leaving her head singing and eyes slightly blurred. Blood had run down her nose and slipped into her mouth. Sharp and metallic like biting a copper penny. She felt something bloom in her gut, dark and cold that drew her stomach into knots. Something alive.

Avery had enough food stockpiled to last a few days. She had the few edible plants that grew in the nearby forest as well. She didn’t see any alternative but to hope at some point the hatred would pass. She continued observing her insects, and her pet study watching the chrysalis’s swell. She sometimes wished she was like the bee, who could change pollen into honey, to Avery this was as miraculous as turning water into wine. She considered scooping honey from the beehives when she felt very hungry. But restrained herself, she wouldn’t destroy such a beautiful creation as the hive. 

Avery had been sleeping poorly. She would awake in cold sweats from dreams where the vicar’s wife Muriel was slowly strangling her or beating her. In that moment between dreaming and waking, shadowy furniture in the darkness would morph into her leering form. 

She had been awakened by one such episode, when she heard the tinkling of glass, that sent the silence of night similarly falling to pieces around her. Creeping to her window framed by the slither where the curtains didn’t quite touch, she could see two shadowy figures. A rock hit her deck. Then her first lamp hung outside the caravan; smashed. The light died and the bugs that clustered it were engulfed by the night. Then the next lamp, then the next. She wanted to scream, to cry as the bugs fled and the lights winked out. She thought of the bugs fleeing into the night alone and separated from their families. She thought of herself sitting in darkness on the deck without their companionship. A rock sailed through her window dragging the cold and darkness of night in with it. The last light fell away shortly after. Avery lay in darkness; the insects had fled leaving her alone. She wanted to cry for now she was truly alone. In that moment it seemed her final resistance had been extinguished. As the darkness hemmed the cabin in, her head began to pound.  

It had grown and spread from that moment the vicar’s wife had knocked her to the floor. What had bloomed in her stomach had now burrowed itself into her mind. It had wrapped her spine and polluted her blood. It was something dark, primitive. Like a cuckoo egg deposited in some different bird’s nest, when the chick hatches it knocks other eggs out, killing them. Taking control, seeping in. Avery had no room, she felt herself pushed and pushed. Compressed within her mind. She was suffocating under the weight that had no form but merely a presence. Like a current in her mind. Pounding. There was no strength left to press back. Better to submit. To huddle in the corner. A fly in a puppet. No control of her limbs any longer. The thing that was left was Not Avery. Avery was before the hatred; the lamps being extinguished and the fleeing of the insects. What it was, I cannot say. I can only say very clearly what it was no longer. 

‘When the chrysalis is shed what emerges is unrecognisable. It has undergone such an unfathomable change so profound that it truly cannot be considered to be the same being which it formerly was.’ 

(Excerpt from The Meaning of Metamorphosis) 

When the time came, from a distance, they looked like fireflies delicately suspended over the loch. Their numbers doubled by the reflections. It looked beautiful, almost mythical. Flowers of fire charring the night like stars that had fallen and just been caught before the extinguishing water. Yet if nature had any wisdom to impart it was often the things of great beauty that are deadly. The villagers gathered around Avery’s caravan, drawn like the insects every night. Muriel faced them all. Her flaming torch she brandished overhead. “We must be driven by the Lord’s wishes. We must be just. We must forgive. We must have mercy. Yet we must also protect ourselves from the devil’s temptation. His allure to The Under. Where sinners are roasted on spits. This girl was bad from the start. It started with her mother’s potions and false gods. Her unnatural and sinful ways. Now her daughter has carried the blackened heart and taken my dear Annie.” Tears fell down Muriel’s impassive face. 

“We must end the circle of sin, end the temptation. This is not a trial. This is a rescue party. We are saviours guided by Him. We shall free this girl from her sin. She will be judged and atoned by our father. Where he will cast fitting judgement. We are merely to deliver her.” Muriel’s speech was met with pounding feet and gleaming eyes. She raised the torch above her head. “Father deliver us from evil,” she cried and with that tossed the torch through the caravan’s front door.  

As the fire unfurled its limbs inside the caravan the chrysalis on Avery’s desk began to quiver, then split. Blossoming like a flower, thin legs protruded pushing the fragile structure open, until the insects wriggled free. What crawled from the chrysalises was not the expected butterflies with wings like Picasso pieces. They were butterflies cloaked for funeral mourning. Moths with wings of aged or scorched parchment. They swirled upwards in their cloud, the eclipse of moths. Like burning paper scooped from the fire. Disappearing out the window, out of harm’s way. 

The thing that used to be Avery- that was now a Not-Avery creature- watched from the shallows of the loch as her caravan went up in flames. The eclipse of moths settled on the reeds around her. Eclipse: when one thing completely hides the other. Completely trapping the other. An unnatural eclipse had occurred within Avery. By what, it was not known. Something dark. It was moulded and fed by the villager’s hatred, driving her to attain a gleam of madness in her eye. Avery was the devil, they had proclaimed. So, she had become just that. Avery had changed. She was no longer the girl she was before. Not-Avery climbed out of the loch. Silently approached the villagers. She clasped a knife. Her eyes were dead. 

‘Once changed, it can never un-change. Metamorphosis is permanent it seems, a process where a new creature is born, one utterly changed; forever.’

 (A line among the charred remains of The Meaning of Metamorphosis. 

Posthumously discovered).

By Rory McAlpine

It consumes you, a dinner party such as this. You become no longer a person but an omnipresent host. You are the hands serving canopies and topping up delicate champagne flutes. You are the decorator and the entertainment; the gentle smiles and the “lovely to see you again” and “how is the family” and “how was the summer, it was France wasn’t it, where you went?” And the laughter, the flirting with the men – but tasteful – because you have a husband, and the smiling. You are even the weather. I have learned that the only way to ensure others’ happiness at these events, it seems, is one’s own deep unhappiness. But only if that unhappiness is hidden from sight. 

Henry and I had hired staff for the event, naturally. But the bodies do not matter. Still, I feel the responsibility, still the weight of everything all at once grinding me to the earth. Atlas should pity me. What is the weight of the world when I must shoulder this dreadful dinner party? 

The candles are being toyed with by the warm evening breeze, and every one that flickers I feel a flicker in my breast. They must remain lit. It would be on me if one was to extinguish. Henry had insisted on a garden party. And a lovely garden we have, gently sloping down from the house to level out towards the cliff. It is full of flower beds and old bowed trees, statues and benches and an herb garden. There are olive trees and oleander, pomegranate, and paper flowers. The colours are best at this time of year, vibrant and fully realised. Then once you reach the edge of the garden out over the cliff, is the sea. 

People are jealous because of it. They would never breathe a word of it. Yet when they come round and step out of our French windows and see the view, even if they have seen it a thousand times, I see that flash of jealousy in their eyes. It feels unfair to them that someone could possess such a view. Money cannot buy it; I imagine that is part of the problem. It is the one thing that our guests, women and the men alike (friends I suppose I should call them) are unable to have. Sure, they have beautiful views from their own homes, but it is like placing a Picasso beside the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. Both are beauty incarnate, but one is mortal, and one belongs to the realms of heaven. 

“How is Reuben?” Daphne brightens as I ask, her hands are moving like spiders across her high neck dressed in the lavender shawl and bulbous pearls that she has a habit of fiddling with. I would slap her hands away, but now that wouldn’t be proper, would it. “Oh Reuben, yes he is back for his second term at college at present. He is studying in Britain; I think I may have mentioned it; he reads Arabic. I look at the symbols and despair but my boy he just gets it. Really it is a wonderous thing to witness”. I nod my head; my neck is stiff and sore already. I sip the white wine, it is French. It sharpens me, the crisp alcohol. “Children, they do amaze us”. 

I pass our pond; it is freshly stocked with fish for the occasion. Their golden scales dart below the lily pads and lotuses, like glimmers of sunlight that have been left behind. The sky is fast darkening. Sparks leap into the air as some of the servants shovel more coal onto the large fire pits that are placed around the garden. Coal does not smoke like wood, and the pits were raised so any smoke will waft high above the guests. It would be unimaginable for smoke to mingle with the mix of perfumes, scented candles, colognes, and flowers that are being rolled together in the sea air. 

I watch my husband at the far end of the garden, over the pinkish oregano flowers beside the olive and lemon trees that we had planted only last year. They were so slender, those olive trees, they would so easily snap. Given time they would grow strong. Or alternatively; break. He is talking to someone. I cannot see her face but the short cut blonde hair and green flowing dress tight in all the right places is enough for me to know. My husband takes her hand to help her up the steps to the garden’s upper tiers. I feel my hand squeeze the glass stem and breathe deeply.
In and out. In.
It was weighing heavier now. This whole evening. The throb in my temple was worse. I answered it with another delicate sip from my delicate glass.
And out
I want sea air. I walk down through the tiers of the garden. Nodding politely, smiling. “Lovely evening, isn’t it?” I am like water, slipping unimpeded across and around stones. The stones; my guests. I reach the edge of the garden and sit on the simple wooden bench I had placed here so long ago now. I can hear the waves crashing below. In the same way rocking a baby soothes it, the sea was my mother calming me in her swell and tide.
In and out. 

The background behind me: beautiful people, beautifully dressed, in my beautiful garden. The band has begun to play, and their gentle strumming and opening notes waft down to my ears. The dying daylight casts everything in a rich honey hue. This was my beautiful life: the sophisticated parties full of lawyers and bankers and government ministers. The holidays, just a few weeks ago I had returned from St Tropez. I sat on the boards of foundations and charities; my photo appeared in the press catching me at just the right angle. I had raised three children who were polite and excelling in their respective fields. Then I had my husband, the man who held the art world in his hand, a God that could mould critics and public opinion to his will. His art hangs in galleries across Europe and the US. Reviews of his recent exhibitions never failed to allude to not only his work but his handsome face and charm. The man himself was admired in journals almost as much as his paintings. He had the world enthralled, adoration and jealousy of his life and success, culminating to create a fervent worshipping. And I had that sea view. The entire world in front of me, the sea a gateway to countries afar. What an ironic view to have from a cage. A gilded cage, with glass bars. But nonetheless, a cage. 

I didn’t know what love was when I met Henry. I thought I loved him. He was older, successful, good looking and interested in me. But it wasn’t love, I was dazzled by him, just like the rest of the world. Once we married that bright light quickly faded, and the ugly darkness was left to seep back in. There was the Henry everyone saw, the artist with the house and the powerful friends and the idyllic life. But that was just a façade. A façade I was to play my own part in. On his arms at the galas and balls I was just like his Italian suits or Swiss watches, the right accessory to make the right picture. A doting, pretty wife to hang off his arm. Henry was a celebrated artist, but his greatest painting was his own life. He had planned the composition, the shading, the elements so they looked beautiful. Makeup to mask the ugly truth. 

There were the affairs, the harem of young women that would wander half naked through my living room while I ate breakfast. In the beginning, occasionally he would welcome me back to his bed when it suited him, I would hope each time he was returning to me, but it was never for long. Then there was the drinking, he was a mean and scornful man made worse by alcohol. I was left to do everything, at his beck and call night and day, more servant than wife. He would at one point insult me, at another profess his love for me. I would often open the door to a different Henry then the one I had left. 

When we first met, I had told him I wanted to be a writer. He had encouraged me then, and read my stories. He said he knew friends in publishing, people who could help me. But our marriage changed that. He became dismissive of my work, he discouraged me from it. “Why spend your time with silly words,” he said. He had a place for me at one of his friends’ charities, somewhere I could make a real change. So, I joined these boards, but soon learned I was to be a pretty face for the press photos and nothing more, do not speak dear just smile. So, the truth of my beautiful life was that it was hollow, there was no substance to it. You wonder why I stay. Why does any prisoner stay in a locked cell? I had married a God in the eyes of the world, I had everything a woman could want, and the ancient Greeks will tell you what happens when you make an enemy of a spiteful God. They destroy you. 

I don’t know when people began to leave our party. I think some came over to thank me. I am sure all of them thanked my husband. Henry who did little more than turn up, showered with praise for months of work by his wife. I think I missed the point where I became an extension of him. I lean against the railing, it was designed by a sculptor friend, large looping curves of iron that form the wings and bodies of birds in different stages of flight. The final laughter of the guests departs the house, the fires dim and for the first time I feel the chill of the night begin to set in. 

A hand wraps around my waist.
I breath: in and out.
I can smell the alcohol on his breath, the perfume of the pretty woman in the tight dress on his jacket.
In.
Like Jekyll and Hyde, Henry is a collection of identities. An actor playing every part in the
play.
The kiss on my cheek
Out.
My husband.
In.
“Come to bed.” the words are slightly slurred.
He wanted everything. He could have everything. I was always his wife, but he could pick and choose when he deigned to act like a husband.
In and out, in, out, in.
I tear myself away. My headache echoes the thundering of my heart. I throw the delicate wine glass from my hand and watch Henry twist out the way as it shatters. “I can’t do this,” the words rip at my vocal cords, my anger is a physical thing clawing its way up my throat. “I won’t.”  

Before he can react, I continue. The floodgates are open. Maybe it’s the wine, maybe the stress. I have opened, no, smashed, Pandora’s Box.
“God, Henry, can you not see we live in an illusion?”
We stare at each other. The thread holding everything together is unwinding itself before our eyes. I see the anger cloud his eyes, but I am too riled to understand the warning signs. This night has broken me. I have been holding the pieces of me together for so long.
“And you know the problem with illusions Henry – they aren’t real.”

Henry moves across the grass; his movement is so quick my anger dissolves to fear. He is inches from me. His cigar smoke, a hand that slides over my mouth. My voice is choked. “Illusions are only false when you stop believing in them.” Henry says, his voice is quiet. The tip of his cigar flares red. “If you believe in the illusion, if you live in it. What does truth matter, it is irrelevant. The illusion becomes what is real.” 

I stare at him. He is so calm. No, not calm, dead. Dead behind the eyes. He has no emotion towards me. It would be better if he screamed, if he called me every name under the sun, rather than this. “Just think if someone owns a golden statue. That everyone treats as gold, admires as gold, buys as if gold. Well then, if the truth is that the statue is tin painted yellow. Does it really make any difference?” He tosses the stump of his cigar over the railings and the glowing spark is engulfed by the dark waters below. “No, it doesn’t. Because regardless of what the statue is made of; it is gold my dear”. 

Trust an artist to love appearances. 

His eyes are inches from mine. If this was a love story we would be poised to kiss. To the servants from the house, it most likely looked like that. But this was not a love story. 

“One doesn’t leave a man like me,” Henry says, his voice isn’t threatening, but the words are sharp as knives. “Why give up all this? Because if you leave me, make no doubt I will ruin you. The stories I will tell, the people I will talk to, the favours I will pull.” Henry takes my hand. The wedding band he still wears is icy against my skin.
“Live in the illusion darling. It really is such a beautiful one. You have the house and the children, the fancy events, the money, me as a husband. If you let it be real, then does the truth really matter?” 

My necklace. It is so heavy. The emerald that hangs from it, a dropped anchor. I cannot move, I cannot leave. I dissolve into his arms.