We Were Butterflies

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By the second day of the sandstorm, Rob Owen was nearly dead. The old man had the lungrot, from breathing the chalky radioactive dust of the phosphate pits. We were locked in our hut until the storm broke, so I couldn't fetch the camp medics. It didn't matter; they would only have put him to sleep.

A coughing fit occupied him for a while. The deep bubbling sounds he made scared me. I was twenty years younger than Owen, but almost as sick; how long before I started to drown in my own disintegrating body?

He caught his breath, finally. «You know, John, we weren't all monsters. You'd be surprised; sometimes you couldn't tell us from real people.»

«Oh?» I wiped the sweat from his face.

«Thank you,» he said. «You've been kind.»

«It's nothing,» I said.

«No, no, it means a lot.» He struggled to speak. «Did I ever tell you about the time my first wife and I went to see the Battery Man?»

«It was in Denver, you know... used to be a nice place to live, before the Big Dry-something fresh and, oh, adventurous about the place... you had the feeling that anything might be possible. Or maybe it was just that I was young....

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