by Madeleine Swann
My neighbour and I were clearing out my garden for the bonfire when he fell out of the hedge. Through the smoke, I saw Dan from next door and a multi-coloured, sparkling butterfly man.
“Oh, bollocks,” said the intruder, fluttering his wings, “wrong place, sorry.” With that, he launched himself into the foliage growing against the back fence. Dan and I peered into the branches and were quite surprised to see a thousand or more iridescent butterfly men cavorting to house music.
“There’s a gay club in my hedge,” I said simply.
“There is,” said Dan, picking up the shears. “The whole thing will have to come down.”
“Wait, maybe we should just leave it for now?”
Dan shrugged, but I could tell he wasn’t happy.
The next day, I was making homemade lollies when there was a knock at the door. It was Dan and he looked strange and pale like he hadn’t slept. He held up a box of stuff. “I brought Hedge-B-Gone,” he said, his left eye twitching slightly.
“Just leave it.”
“No!” he shrieked, “they’ll destroy the flowers; they’re known for that, and they eat dogs.”
I shrugged. “I don’t have a dog.”
That night, I was about to go to bed when something in the garden drew me to the window. There was Dan, struggling with the grace of an epileptic elephant, clambering over my goddamn fence. “Dan,” I yelled, “sod off you freak!”
I heard a dramatic “Noooooo!” while the dark figure outside shook his fist at the starry sky. Maybe it was time to back off from Dan, he was a bit weird. I went to sleep and dreamed of glitter and prancing pachyderms.
No one heard from Dan after that. Every friend and relative was called, and all searches led nowhere. I didn’t tell anyone that on the morning he’d gone missing, I looked in my hedge; there was a new figure amongst the other butterfly men, furnished with fake wings and garnished with diamanté. He smiled and laughed, prancing and twirling amongst the branches. I went back inside and had a lolly.
Madeleine Swann has had several articles published by various magazines including Bizarre and The Dark Side, ranging in subject from church restorations to toe wrestling championships.
She writes from her home in deepest, darkest Essex and has surreal comedy and horror in Polluto magazine, LegumeMan Books, Black Petal magazine and The Strange Edge. She also has erotica published on the Forbidden Fiction website, The Darker Edge of Desire anthology and the Big Book of Bizarro.
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