Mottephobia, by Gary B. Phillips

I stretched my legs on the steps of the porch and caught my breath. My shins were red with fresh wounds from running through the thicket of woods. Only a sliver of orange light remained on the horizon as the black sky crept in from the east.

I planted both feet firmly on the wooden porch and froze. A thin screen door, and the hundred or so moths on it, stood between myself and respite from the Tennessee heat.

My biology teacher had said that a collection of butterflies was called a flutter. How precious. Moths were anything but. They didn’t flutter. They carved a pale and erratic path through the night. And I hated them.

“Mottephobia,” the doctor had called it. “An irrational fear,” he told my mother. He suggested a treatment of systematic desensitization. I suggested that he was a quack. My mother was not amused.

Toby shuffled his feet on the other side of the door and smirked, revealing a mouth full of metal on his pockmarked face. Uglier than usual. Why his parents were blowing a few thousand dollars on braces for him I could only guess.

“Looking terrible today,” I said. “As usual.”

He stuck his tongue out and sneered. “Come on in, it’s great in here,” he said.

I didn’t move.

“What’re you so afraid of? These little guys?” He pointed to the legion of moths.

“Godzilla was just a little guy once too,” I told him.

He laughed and slammed his fist against the screen door, sending the moths snaking toward me.

My heart hammered in my chest and I fell off the porch. I struggled to my feet and ran to the back of the house and into the mouth of the woods. It was dark here. Safe.

The tent we had pitched earlier in the week was here and would do for now. A Ball jar with a single firefly in it provided an intermittent light source inside the tent.

“Hello,” I said to the firefly.

He glowed happily.

Other bugs didn’t bother me. I had spent the previous evening catching fireflies with Shannon, the cousin I actually liked. We caught them mid-flight, put them in jars, and set the jars along the path from the backdoor to the tent.

I unscrewed the lid and pulled a fresh knot of grass and leaf from my pocket and placed it inside the jar. The lightning bug crawled on my finger and lit up approvingly before I placed him on the new leaf and screwed the lid back on.

I rested my head on the hard ground and began plotting my revenge against Toby. A concoction of sneezing powder mixed into his soda would be simple and effective. These happy thoughts pulled my heavy eyes shut.

A rustling sound woke me.

“Toby?” I asked in the darkness.

Illustration by Matt Lichtenwalner

The sound grew louder and I realized that it was not rustling but the beating of a thousand tiny wings. Moths. I heard a laugh from outside and then something smacked the tent and sent the moths into a frenzy. I screamed until no air remained in my lungs.

The fuzzy legs of a moth touched down on my tongue. I tried to pull him out but they quickly overwhelmed me. I shut my mouth and winced as the moth danced from my tongue to my teeth. I flailed my arms at the moths that landed on my face. Those that I didn’t swat away crawled into my nostrils. I gagged and coughed as they twitched and worked their way down my throat. Their wings echoed inside my head like the beating drums of an army marching to war. I gasped for air and felt them fill my stomach. I blacked out.

When I awoke, the dim rays of the morning sun illuminated the tent. My eyes could not focus. I tried shifting my weight but was unable to move. Sharp rocks dug into my flesh and I struggled against my own dead weight. I tried to move again, felt my muscles contract and the thick skin around my shoulders ripped open and my arms fell to the ground.

My legs broke off next in a searing bolt of white hot pain. I cried out but the sound was muffled in my own head. Inch by inch my skin sloughed off in great white sheets.

My mother found me first and let out a scream that brought the rest of the family to the backyard. She told me that it would be okay and she tried to come into the tent, but the the family kept her restrained.

I couldn’t make out the detail in her face, only sagging gray skin and dark hollows for her eyes and mouth. They spoke in low tones and none of them dared get close to me. My vision was fading but I heard enough to know their plan.

“What’s happening to him?” my mother asked through the sobs.

I could barely make out my brother’s voice. “We must let him be.”

My mother protested, but they hushed her.

“This is the way it’s been. We shouldn’t question it.”

“It’s God’s will,” another said.

After leading my mother away, they tore down the tent and wrapped the polyester fabric around my broken body.

I was left there for days, without food or water, but I did not hunger or thirst. Where my skin had previously folded with fat it now cracked and hardened. My body absorbed the threads of the tent and created a safe place for me to wait.

In time I will discard this body. New blood will pump through me and I will grow wings to envelop the sun. I will find the light of this world and wait on its door, biding my time until it opens.