2 The Butterfly

"Who are you?" I managed to ask.

"HOW DARE YOU FORGET!? ANGELA! MY NAME IS ANGELA!" she screamed, her voice cracking with a raw intensity that startled me. Her hand shot forward, and before I could react, she punched the mirror with a force I didn’t think possible. The glass didn't break—it rippled, like water disturbed by a sudden splash. "LET ME IN! THAT’S MY LIFE YOU STOLE! GIVE IT BACK!"

I blinked, but before I could say anything, the world around me twisted. My heart pounded in my ears. The mirror shimmered, her face distorted in anguish, and then everything went dark.

I woke up.

Cold. Damp. My limbs were stiff, my neck ached, and as I looked around, I realized I had fallen asleep in the tub. The porcelain was cold against my skin, and the water had long since drained, leaving me shivering in my damp clothes.

I stared at the ceiling for a long moment. The remnants of the dream—if it was a dream—clung to the edges of my mind, but already, the urgency of it was fading. Angela. The mirror. Her accusations. It all felt distant now, like the remnants of an illusion that I couldn’t fully grasp anymore.

With a sigh, I sat up, the weight of the world—or maybe just the weight of my own thoughts—pressing down on me. The mirror was just a mirror. Cold glass. Nothing more. I had imagined the whole thing.

There was no such thing as a soul, no mystical connection between the eyes and some deeper, hidden part of us. The eyes were never the gateways to the soul, because souls weren’t real. My Lola had lied—though I doubted it was out of malice.

Perhaps it was her way of trying to tell me I had something special within me—a way to boost the confidence of a child who was always lost in his thoughts, searching for meaning in places it didn’t exist.

But now, standing in the silence of a small, dark room, I couldn’t feel anything special. Nothing mystical. Nothing magical. ‘I am just me…’

It was 3 o’clock in the afternoon when it happened.

My Lola had been sitting in her usual spot by the window, humming a soft tune under her breath while the sun filtered through the blinds. I was in the next room, mindlessly scrolling through my phone, when I heard the sound. A small gasp, followed by the eerie quiet that could only mean something was wrong.

“Gran… Granny!?” My voice echoed in the stillness as I rushed to her side, panic rising in my chest. She didn’t respond. Her eyes, once so full of life, were vacant, staring at nothing. "Wake up," I pleaded, my voice breaking as I shook her gently, hoping—praying—that it was just a faint spell, that she would blink and smile and tell me everything was fine.

But she didn’t.

It was a heart attack. Sudden. Quiet.

Manila Cemetery. Sunday. 2 o’clock in the afternoon. The rain came down in sheets, soaking the earth as they lowered her into the ground. The weather suited the occasion—gray skies, cold air, and the relentless downpour as if even the heavens mourned her loss. I stood there, numb, watching as the coffin disappeared beneath the mud, feeling nothing. I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t even speak.

The priest’s words were lost in the rain, a muffled hum I barely paid attention to. My eyes were fixed on the small, unremarkable gravestone, and the people around me faded into the background. The world had shrunk to just me and the rain-soaked earth where my Lola now rested. The same Lola who had filled my head with stories of souls and mirrors and beauty I couldn’t see. Lies, I told myself, bitterly.

I wiped the rain—or was it tears?—from my face.

I saw a flower, wilted and half-buried in the mud, just by the edge of her grave. wasn’t special—just a stray bloom, beaten down by the rain, barely holding onto life. But as I stared at it, something strange happened.

The flower began to shift, its petals trembling in the rain. Before I could blink, it transformed—a butterfly. Its delicate wings unfolded slowly, bright colors bleeding into existence as if the rain had painted them.

Without thinking, I stretched my hand out. The butterfly, fluttering through the pouring rain, seemed unfazed by the storm. It drifted toward me, its wings barely moving, and then, impossibly, it landed on the tip of my finger. I felt its tiny feet brush against my skin, fragile yet real.

For a brief moment, there was a stillness, as if time itself had stopped to witness the impossible.

And then my hand began to rot.