Other stories for this prompt

butterfly is my name, butterfly is my code name is what I mean. Small 'b'. Serial number 123456123456. One day I will be allowed to see green hills and blue skies but for now I am living under fluorescent light in the bunker I get told is home. Did I tell you I am an alien, accidentally arrived here ten of your years ago and kept alive, miraculously, not sliced up like my companions for the delectation and curiosity of the military and scientific communities.

One day I might be free to fly away like my namesake.

My wings are...

A crappy painting of a girl in headphones standing on the crest of a mountain, surrounded by butterflies. This is what passes for art these days? Seriously, thought Darren, I've seen better finger paintings.

As he made his way from picture to picture, Darren realized that art wasn't really his thing. Eventually, he made his way back to the entrance of the labyrinthine museum and stepped back out into the practical, utilitarian world of the city in which he lived.

Still thinking about the butterfly painting, Darren wandered through the streets of the bustling, monochrome city, occasionally bumping elbows with...

She heard it calling out to her. Her clearing in Yellowstone -- it was whispering that it longed for her presence. And on this day, when she felt like the world was collapsing around her -- its edges bent and frayed and its fringes burning up in smoke -- she dragged herself there up winding paths and wild trees.

While most people saw Yellowstone as a national park, she saw it as her backyard, her sanctuary, her refuge. She had a clearing there, all her own, that bears in the hundreds of years they'd been there hadn't even found. But...

I had been running for just over an hour, almost breathless. Whose idea was it to train for this marathon anyways? I've always liked running, but never really enjoyed it, you know? There are only so many routes you can take. This time, I decided to say screw the concrete jungle, I'm going to take this somewhere different. So I took to the hills, as they say. Not gonna lie, it was much more interesting than running on pavement. The damp grass under my shoes, the crunching of the twigs, all that good stuff. I stopped at the top of...

Listen to the sounds that the butterflies make. Listen what they say when they communicate, as they talk to each other, their little butterfly whispers, back and forth, their conversation. Through these special headphones, you can for the first time hear the conversation of the butterflies.

Sadly, twenty seven years ago was the last time we saw real, live butterflies. The great butterfly passing of 2017 was a hard, lonely time for human beings.

But thankfully, forward thinking scientists recorded every sound, every movement, every bit of data they could about 2102 different butterfly species. And now you, through the...

One day a man called Gilbert played with small electrical appliances, he named this activity "duckery". He played so much his fingers became paranoid. This paranoia soon ran from his fingertips straight to his heart. After a couple of weeks he noticed a strange, yet, comfortable feeling in his upper right shoulder, he called this "proper". Proper became so "happening" that he made up words like "happening" and "bloodthirsty". But things started to take it's toll on poor old Gilbert. He lost his confidence in playing with small electrical appliances. He became depressed and fell in a coma, he named...

I was just taking a walk when it happened. Listening to music, enjoying the fresh mountain air, nothing special. It started with two butterflies. Two pink butterflies.

I had never seen two flying together before. I'm not much of a nature person. I don't like the woods, I just like the solitude. But these two butterflies caught my attention. I followed them through the woods, watching them zig and zag out of each other's paths, always staying together. I know nothing about butterflies it just seemed so unusual.

When they finally fluttered out of sight, I looked around and realized...

Introducing a brand new innovation in audio-pharmaceutical technologies - The AudioScape! Culminating 30 years of painstaking audio cerebro research, HeadSoup finally unveils its first all sense encompassing headphones specifically designed to truly tune into the user's music! By listening to any piece of music won the AudioScape, you can transport yourself fully into your own mental image conjurations of whatever it is that you are listening to! Just plug the headphones into any standard 3.5mm headphone jack and begin your very own journey into the music video of your mind!

Only four days were left until the end of camp, and he'd resigned himself to his fate. He wasn't going to talk to the girl with the ponytail. He had run through the reasons why she would never see anything in common with him, and could almost recite it like a creed of self-defeat.

He saw her at the ridge, looking out over the farms in the valley below. Her headphones were plugged into her walkman, and she seemed completely at peace.

The tape player clunked to a stop. She sighed, took off the headphones and looked around. He realized...

She closed her eyes and disappeared. The notes swallowed her, refusing to let her go. The beat aligned with her heart beat, giving her the illusion of impossible strength. The music grew louder until it was an explosion--as if thousands of butterflies instantly fluttered. She wished she too could fly away. Fly like the waves of the sound. Fly like the butterflies.

But instead, she was bound like the hair on her head. Bound by responsibily. Bound by expectation. Bound by fear of the unknown.