48 HOUR GENRE SMASH FLASH FICTION CHALLENGE WINNER
Prize: £300
and the winner is…
Odette Carrera
THE WINGS OF BUTTERFLIES
They used to describe falling in love so strangely. Head over heels, heart fluttering, butterflies in your stomach. This was meant to be good, exciting, an experience tied in a pretty bow with adolescence and growing up. I always wondered why being head over heels was a good thing, it sounded like another way to say tripping over, a fluttering heart like something you needed a doctor for. Having butterflies in your stomach sounded like the worst of all, tiny insects flitting across your organs, their blood-soaked wings brushing your internal tissues in a droning, unreachable itch. I thought it was for the best that I sold my ability to love, that it’s with someone who’ll appreciate it more than I knew I could.
No one’s entirely sure where the love goes once we’ve sold it. It used to be for ‘research purposes,’ an offer taken up only by the especially desperate or the especially scientific, or I suppose people who’d suffered a heartbreak and didn't want to risk another. That's another funny word, isn’t it, ‘heartbreak’? Hearts can’t be physically broken, otherwise they’d be dead, and if you can feel the ‘heartbreak’ you can’t be dead. Presumably it’s pain or sadness over the ending of a relationship, but still ‘heartbreak’ seems quite dramatic – such huge feelings over one person, insignificant when you think of how many billions there are in the world. If relationships really caused that much pain, it’s not surprising that selling the ability to love became so common. That, and the other benefits you could get from it. For years, people have been trading love for letters to Ivy Leagues and interviews with CEOs and internships with millionaires, and I was no different – I sold mine to some politician for a place in the Portman Academy of Dance.
Every so often I wonder about the people who buy love. Finding people who’ve sold their love is as common as finding ducks by a pond, but it’s rare to hear about those who buy it, even rarer to find someone who chose to keep it. Mainly I wonder what they do with it, and why. Is love some weird kink practiced in hidden basements or abandoned Valentine’s shops, or is it an exclusive club of billionaires who want to feel different. Do people buy it just because they can, because they derive joy from taking something away from the rest of us? I look at my ballet instructors and wonder what they’ve done with their love, what they remember from the time when love was just a feeling, what they think of how it’s used now. I wonder about the girls in my class, if they sold their love, if they regret it, if one of them kept it and rendezvous with lovers in the dark.
There’s one girl I wonder about more than the others, Carmen. Sometimes I catch her eye in the mirror. I study the precise flick of her eyeliner, the complex brown of her eyes, drawn to her with a repressed urgency I don't understand. I inch my hand closer to hers on the barre. There are butterflies in my stomach. They dance across my organs and caress my tissues and illuminate my body, their wings aren’t stained with blood but a symphony of jewel toned chiffon. I know I sold my love, I know I did otherwise I wouldn't be here in this class with her. So why, when I know it’s impossible, do I wonder if there are butterflies in her stomach too, trying to fly towards mine?
About our winner…
Odette Carrera is an aspiring author mainly working through the medium of short stories which have previously been published in Young Writers showcases and is beginning to work on her first full length novel. She explores the complexities of girlhood and morality with an unwavering dedication to aesthetics and, if given the opportunity, would hope to be described as a literary Sofia Coppola. A lover of all things creative, she is in the process of writing and directing a short film and always aims to combine the visual aesthetics of cinema with the uniquely detailed description of literature in her writing.