I Saw Butterflies
I Saw Butterflies
Was it just a trick of the light?
I swear, I saw butterflies.
It was fleeting, to be sure, but… I saw butterflies.
Was it just a trick of the light? An illusory artifact of the muted sunlight filtering through the tree tops? It had to be.
My hands were frozen. The absence of feeling in them was a constant reminder, even if I couldn’t see them very well. Encrusted diamonds of ice hung from my eyelashes and my eyes watered constantly, lashed by the winds of a classic Alberta Clipper. My soaking wet clothes were beginning to freeze and it was becoming harder to crawl.
With great effort, I rolled over and looked back; my breath a plume in the frigid air. My car had disappeared from view. It was completely submerged in the lake.
It would be dark soon. If anybody drove by, they wouldn’t even know there had been an accident, and the weather report said it was gonna drop to 35-below zero.
Again I rolled over and mustered all of my will to reach forward, slide one knee forward, and propel myself another foot through the frozen wetland.
Highway 2 was always terrible in the winter. A couple times, every year, a clipper would arrive and the bitter wind gusts would pick up and the snow would blow horizontally across the road. I complained about it so many times — how it sucked to drive in it because your eyes got tired from tracking the road through the heavy snow in your field of vision.
Tonight, I took a different route home from work so I could swing by my boss’ house and drop off a Christmas gift from a mutual friend, and from there, I just chose the quickest way home.
I was just coming to the top of a rise on Highway 2 when it happened. My Subaru squatted on all four tires as it bottomed out and started up a slope, where Highway 2 meets County 41. Just as the car reached the top of the rise and started down the other side, when it was lightest on its springs, the tires broke loose on the glassy, freezing asphalt. The car slid and began to rotate clockwise, and as the road followed a bend to the left, inertia carried my car straight off the highway with me along for the ride.
At any other bend in the road, I would have ended up in the ditch, maybe dead, maybe badly injured, but at that particular spot, the lake’s elevation brings it right up to the edge of the road. I skipped over the shoulder and bounced hard on the shore of the lake. My car rolled over then came to a violent, crashing halt, upside down, about 50 feet from the shoreline. I hung upside down, suspended from my seatbelt. Loud cracking sounds reverberated all around me, and I realized my car had broken through the ice, and I was sinking.
I didn’t think I was gonna make it out of there.
As I sank headfirst into the freezing, inky black water of the frozen lake, I remember the voice in my head, asking.
“Is this it?”
“Are these my last moments on Earth?”
It didn’t seem so bad, really. I had lived a good life.
I didn’t live to be 95 or anything, but… 45 isn’t so bad.
Wait. How old am I?
53! Yeah, that’s right. 53. That’s not so bad. A lot of people don’t make it to 53.
My phone was ruined, and by the time I got out of the water, I couldn’t work it with my frozen fingers, anyway. I looked toward the road. A white pickup with a toolbox in the bed roared by without stopping.
It’s alright. He has a family to get home to. Somebody else is bound to come by.
I made it out of there. That was the main thing. If the car hadn’t rolled over and broken the windows, I’d be down there at the bottom of the lake. I had stopped shivering awhile ago, and I was pretty sure that was a good sign. Or did I have it backwards? Was it a bad sign when you stopped shivering? I couldn’t remember. I rolled over, panting from the effort, and looked back again. The hole in the ice was barely visible.
The sun ducked beneath the cloud ceiling and I felt totally comfortable there, in the golden light of sunset. I didn’t even feel cold anymore.
Somebody is bound to come by.
I might just… rest my eyes a bit while I wait.
Wait. What was that?
I swear. I saw butterflies.
Written in tribute to Jack London, author of “To Build a Fire.” Stay safe out there, cold weather friends.
Troy Larson is a writer, digital content creator with hundreds of podcast and broadcast credits to his name, and harbinger of things that go bump in the night. Sign up for a free subscription.