Chapter Seventeen. Opening a Can of Butterflies

Opening a Can of Butterflies

A jack hammer. It was as if a jack hammer was thumping and grinding a hole through his skull. Someone was talking to him, but the jack hammer was pounding. A non-stop throbbing. Rat-tat-tat-kaboom-kaboom-rat-tat-tat.

"Derby, there isn't much time," the voice was coming in more clear as he started to wake up. The pain and throbbing were hard to not be swallowed up in. There was light. He was trying to open his eyes.

"Listen to me. They'll be here. They are waiting for you to regain consciousness so they'll have the satisfaction of watching you be aware of them killing us together. Now Derby! Now Derby! Wake up! NOW Derby!"

Jeninqua was standing with light behind her but she seemed to also be a source of light. Like Angelic light. The details of the dingy dungeon chamber and its damp greasy walls were starting to come into focus as well.

"Derby. I am what is called "Naive" Yang. Early Yang. I don't even know how I know what I'm telling you. It may be Umpa or something way upstream from me. I'm very very minor. But you have to tune in. We don't have much time."

"My head," Derby complained while he moved his chin from side to side with his hand. It was hard for him to talk after the butt of the gun had fractured his jaw. "It feels like a war zone in my head. Pounding pain. I don't think I can do anything. I need to just close my eyes."

"I'm coming in."

Derby heard her say it but as soon as she said she was coming in, there was clarity and the throbbing stopped. As strange as it sounds, she seemed to climb in through his eye ball.  He saw her talking to him, just as before, when she was standing above him, except now he was watching the scene inside his head.

"Derby. Listen to me now. You have a few minutes in which you can focus on what I'm telling you, without the throbbing pain. Then I'll step back out and you'll have to follow my directions exactly."

Derby wondered if he could talk to her from inside his own head or if a gesture would suffice. He also suspected that he had fallen back to sleep and was now dreaming. Either way, the pain had stopped so he decided to leave things how they were. He motioned that he "understood," to the Jeninqua in his head.  She continued.

"Back at the hotel. From before. In the morning when you woke up in the Peninsula. Derby, are you with me?"

Derby shook his head yes. He remembered the morning very well. Few things seemed as vivid to him as the morning he woke up and watched beautiful Jeninqua, get out of the sheets and walk naked to the bathroom.

Jeninqua continued, "Fredalnte came into the room because you had passed the first challenge of our work with you. You were correct, you hadn't touched me. You never woke up and you didn't know we were in the hotel room. The champagne bottle and my showing you my naked body were both tests. We needed to know that you could overcome your false energy."

"False energy?," he found himself asking the question. Now he knew he could actually talk to the Jeninqua in his head, as if he were physically in the room with her. This thought confused him and she clarified it immediately.

"I'm still outside you Derby. Both outside you and inside you. But this way we can overcome the pain and the throbbing. You'll understand much more later but for now just know that the naive Yang, or "early Yang" is integrating with "mature Yin." These are extremely high energies at work, both very subtle. But there isn't much time. You need to focus on the details of what I'm going to explain if we are to survive this."

Derby motioned that he understood and for her to continue.

"The reason Fredalnte had to burst in suddenly was because I come from a low stream. I function in accordance with other subtle forces. You had overcome false energy but you were getting so confused. As you stood on the balcony and considered escaping, you also were being pulled by physical desires. Upstream powers knew it was time to interfere. Besides that, my own fire had started to merge with some of your water. I know this is confusing. But some of you had spilled into me and I may have eventually become a strong enough force to corrupt your false energy."

Derby understood enough of what Jeninqua was saying to ask a question. "So if I had given in to your advances...if I had come back to bed, for instance, and made love with you. If I had kissed your gorgeous mouth and let myself be wrapped in your sweet embrace, then what?"

Jeninqua was thrown for a loop with the question. She seemed to be looking into the distance or deeply into her self to find words or knowledge. "I don't know Derby. As you ask those questions, I find myself being confused. I feel the tug of desire myself and I picture our bodies entwined with you inside me. I need you to break this spell right now Derby. My energies are extremely subtle and easily co-opted."

Derby flinched and his right eye blinked. A bolt of electrical current seemed to enforce an internal will power and confidence. He felt a much higher presence as he let go of the image of sexual stimulation and as he did so, the glow of genuine affection reinforced the wall of determination which had erupted in him at that moment. He saw that he had exerted a power over Jeninqua. He had dabbled with energy and had tested something, without even knowing what he was doing. But he was so satisfied that something greater was ruling his senses now.

"Everything is going to be OK Jeninqua," he said quietly the first time. "Everything is going to be OK!," he said a second time with much more conviction.

The look of concern Jeninqua had and also the lapse of confusion which she had experienced briefly was gone. She smiled and continued the instructions.

"This is a cockroach's wing," she held up a small object and continued. Normally it would be crushed if you tried to use it to cut anything. But at its edge...at its microscopic edge...it is extremely fine and sharp. You need to imagine that it is a steel bayonet. You will cut my head off."

Derby went from a "can-do" attitude to stunned surprise. He waited for a minute for her to finish the joke or provide the meaning. As if "cutting my head off," was a figure of speech by naive-Yang-low-stream -spirit things. After all, she had tempted him. She had transformed in to a shrieking cat-like banshy. She turned into a white marble. She had been a mouse and a kung fu fighter. Certainly she could have meant any number of things by telling him to cut her head off.

"Derby, focus," Jeninqua continued. "Jade, and whomever they're working for know that they don't want my flesh to be torn. Once my skin is opened, they know that my energy gets absorbed back into the light. They will be in here in a few minutes to kill you but first they'll beat me to a pulp without cutting my skin open. I'll appear dead to you. That is what they want. Then they want to kill you, so that you die  feeling desperate and helpless. That is the only way Zol will vanish. If you die in this way, without hope and without love, they'll have won. And Zol will be no more."

Stunned and worried, Derby motioned for Jeninqua to continue the instructions.

"You must cut my throat cleanly all the way around, like you're opening a tin can. Do you understand?," Jeninqua waited for Derby's affirmative gesture. Once having it, she continue, "inside yourself you'll find a calm. This is what Fredalnte meant when he told Opie for you to act like a cat. You need to find this cat like calm within yourself. This calm will guide you. You will find an edge...a razor sharp edge...within yourself. You'll need to merge that edge with the cockroach wing and use it as a can opener around my neck."

"But cut your head off?," Derby questioned. "Isn't this a bit extreme? Can't I just poke a hole in your side or something? The butterflies seemed to do a fine job when Fred ripped your gut open. Even tearing a hole in your stomach would be better than cutting your head off!"

"NO!" Jeninqua was emphatic. "This must be done like this." Jeninqua reached out with the wing of the insect and handed it to Derby. In his mind, he grabbed the wing and watched her climb back out of his head through his eye. As her body made the transition from inside him to back into the dungeon cell, the thumping jack hammer commenced again and Derby braced himself for what he had to do.