The Butterfly Collection - you’ve heard of it, or read about it - well, I was there. Yeah, I’m ‘that guy’.
The nightmares haven’t stopped even after all this time - honestly I doubt they will but my therapist is keen for me to go over this, again. Says it ‘may help’. So here I am. Ready to word vomit all over you to try to let some of the demons out, or at least silence them for a while.
I guess I should start at the beginning.
We met a wine bar of all places.
I just wanted friends (and wine) - I would have been happy for a little ‘more’ but Keith had told me he had no interest in that sort of thing. I apologized for ‘assuming’ - he was an attractive man in a gay wine bar - but he waved it off as ‘immaterial’ He said he wasn’t interested period; men, women, anything else sexual. It was all just ‘distraction’. I remember he used that word and it piqued my interest, and I stayed to talk to him. Maybe he had a secret to not feeling like I needed someone in my life. Maybe I’d learn something.
New city, new me kind of deal.
I spent a few weeks getting to know Keith Pennington - he was a bit of ‘odd duck’ as my aunt used to say. He’d been a medical student for a while, he said, but quit when he found he just didn’t have the empathy for patients.
He’d worked in a lot of places since then, but didn’t mention what he was doing now.
He could talk for hours about his butterfly collection though. I thought it sounded cruel but he said he didn’t kill them - he just kept them - although he had a few ‘displayed’. He asked if I wanted to see it sometime and I said yes, although I think the words I used at the time were ‘I guess’, but we didn’t have any time that night - or for many nights afterwards as I had a job that kept me busy and Keith said he was out adding to his collection. I remember thinking that was odd - butterflies sleep at night don’t they? and he just laughed. I didn’t push it - I know almost nothing about insects.
You’re probably not interested in all of this preamble but I have to work myself up to get to.. what happened.
It’s like getting into a piping hot bath, stepping right in with both feet is unwise and could lead to burns. I know all about that. I still live in a place that is soft and quiet and medicated because of it. Burns to the soul don’t seem to heal the same way skin does.
One night we were both free and I accepted his invitation to see his Butterfly collection. Lame as it sounds, he was still one of the few people I’d connected with in the city and because we saw each other quite often I felt comfortable in his company.
He had a normal house. I want to emphasize that. It was a normal house. It wasn’t a mansion, dark and scary or surrounded by acres of nothing. It was on a normal suburban street - among other normal houses. It had a front yard, full of flowering plants (I assumed to attract butterflies) and a blue front door.
I remember the door clearly and I don’t know why.
We went inside and Keith became quite animated, telling me about his specimens. He had a new Large White, a male, quite rare he said. He had it displayed and did I want to see it? He obviously was excited to show me that one first so I nodded but something in the house, the quiet, or the atmosphere, began to make my stomach churn.
I had an irrational moment of fear as if my body was telling me to run.
I didn’t listen to it and, of course, I should have.
We went into the back room. The air was still, and it was warm. Funny the things you remember.
He opened the door, still jabbering, (very unlike him he was usually so spare with words) and then I saw it.
I saw HIM.
My eyes flicked over the man, pinned to the wall like a hideous decoration, while my mind struggled to comprehend the sight. He was young, white (just like Keith had said), and his.. parts of him were flayed open to the muscle, to the veins.
The skin secured open with large pins. Keith said something - it sounded now as if all noise was coming from far away, and underwater. I asked him to repeat it.
“This is one of my displays - you can see all the moving parts in some of the others but this one is male, much harder to catch, so it made sense to highlight that part”
I wrenched my eyes away from his lower body and it was then I noticed that he was still breathing. An IV snaked out of one arm. I think I spoke, but it didn’t sound like my voice at all. Time seemed to slow down.
Keith seemed pleased (dear God he looked happy) that I hadn’t run away or started screaming.
I couldn’t scream because vomit kept rising up my throat - I was surprised I managed to talk without puking on both of us. My mind was screaming though but my legs remained still.
“he’s not dead” Keith said, “and he’s not in pain either - I’m not a monster”
I felt like a passenger in my own skin as he led me out of that room and into another.
He had relaxed now and was eager to show me more.
There was more.
I wanted laugh but I knew if I gave in to that urge I’d not stop - and it would sound like screaming.
He opened another door - this was a smaller room. A woman this time. I couldn’t look at anything except the IV but my brain still noticed everything (I know this because years later, it haunts my dreams).
It’s at this point that my memory gets hazy.
I remember.. pieces. Jagged flashes and feelings.
Another room. Another woman, this one moaning and making sounds. Everything sounded like it was underwater now.
Keith babbling about his lovely butterflies.
Showing me the tools he used to ‘display’ them.
Showing me the basement where he had some he just kept for looks (people, in cages, drugged up so as not to make noise).
Asking me.. something. Letting me touch the tools again.
The next part is clear - but I remember it as if it happened to someone else.
Like a movie.
Me, taking the small hammer and large pin-nails.
Me, slamming the nail into his head and pounding, pounding, pounding it into his brain.
I heard screaming, distant discordant screaming.
That was me too.
I don’t remember calling police; I do remember them coming.
Then, questions, medications, a long silence inside my head.
You know the rest. The documentaries, the enquiry.
There was never a trial because I killed Keith. Overkilled him in fact. His head was almost split in two. I have no memory of that part. Only a cold rage and despair. I was judged as ‘not fit to stand trial’ but even if I had been, no-one was pushing for a murder charge.
I have no regrets. The people, Keith’s Butterfly collection, were sewed up and saved. The guy I saw killed himself last year though, you may have read about it.
I understood.