Short Story: Red Butterfly Part 1 of 2

A man grapples with repressed memories of abuse in a cult his parents were part of when he was a child

Photo by author

Part One

When I was six, I saw a demon in my bedroom. I glimpsed the infernal entity from beneath my bed, where I cowered with my four-year-old sister Debbie, hiding from the frightening events taking place downstairs.

The demon was tall, dark, and thin. I watched in nauseous terror as it crossed the bedroom in a gliding motion. I don’t think Debbie saw the entity, but judging by the fear in her eyes, she sensed its presence. Eventually, the evil spirit dissolved into a shadow of the wardrobe, cast on the wall by the dull orange glow of our bedside light. Once it disappeared, I whispered to my whimpering sister.

‘It’s all right. It’s gone.’

Easily dismissed as a child’s overactive imagination? Perhaps. If I spoke about what I’d seen, I’d doubtless receive sceptical glances and questions about what I’d been watching on television. But we didn’t own a television, I’d never been to the cinema, and my reading materials mainly consisted of heavily sanitised Bible stories. My consciousness had no visual pop culture frame of reference for such entities, but I know what I saw. More importantly, I know what I felt.

There were demons in the house where I grew up.