Page 1 of Butterfly 6, Phase 1

Chapter 1

10 PM

“Nothing” by Brandy

Messiah Williams had experienced a lot of pain in his lifetime. He could recount a million memories that had impacted him over the years.

Moments of abuse.

Terrifying childhood nights filled with acts of inhumanity he couldn’t even think of, let alone say aloud.

Murders he had committed.

His mother’s death.

Finding an idol and then a monster in Mizan.

Being diagnosed with cancer.

The look of disappointment in Ethic’s eyes when his betrayal had been revealed.

Wozi’s last breath.

Being on death’s doorstep and clawing his way back.

Breaking Morgan’s heart.

The destruction of a three-way brotherhood he had relied on most of his life.

All these things had scarred his soul, causing irreversible damage. The injured Black boy had become the Black man who injured others. Despite all those things, he never folded. He hadn’t come up against a battle that had killed him yet. He was a survivor, and he had learned to harvest his pain into ruthlessness. His tragedy had calloused over so deeply that it had made him cold. He was frozen in an emotional tundra, where trauma transformed beautiful Black boys into abominable monsters. They became killers, gangsters, thieves, or drug dealers, and Messiah was as thorough as they came. He was a combination of it all. He was bred to destroy and survive. Messiah didn’t fear shit. Correction. Messiah hadn’t feared anything until this moment. The world around him was moving in slow motion as Messiah absorbed the devastating news.

His beautiful, stubborn, temperamental, little girl was sick with a disease she had inherited straight from him. Cancer was a malady he couldn’t quite describe. It was an unforgiving queen that ruled its territory without empathy. It was an iron fist of power that destroyed everything in its path. Cancer was unbridled anarchy in the form of cells. He would argue that it was the worst way to die because it was measured in slow increments. Cells attacking cells, disintegrating their way through flesh, organs, skin, hair, and bones until there was nothing left. It was like watching a clogged sink trying to drain while your head was being held in its shallow waters. It killed you slowly, and it was excruciating. He remembered days when he prayed for the end just to avoid the misery of attempting to fight for another day. That’s how painful it had been, and now, his daughter was facing the only monster that Messiah was afraid of. It was a crippling revelation. He felt all of what his sweet Yara was going through. In an instant, the doctor spoke words that were so weighted, they almost blew Messiah off his feet. Verbal bullets.

POW.

POW.

POW.

It was a death sentence that he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy.

She got this shit from me, he thought. The self-hatred that manifested in him dug a hole through his gut so deep that he felt like his emotions would spew out of him any second. Despair plagued him. It was a father’s job to protect his offspring. It was a father’s duty to stop the bad things from touching the good things in life. It was a father’s privilege to pass down his likeness, to look into his children’s eyes and see traces of himself. From the moment he had discovered the twins were his, he wished they had inherited more of his features. They were so beautiful. Fair-skinned angels like their fair-skinned mother. A true reflection of beauty and purity. He had thought Morgan was God’s finest work until he saw her online with those babies. Even before he knew they were his, he admired the glory that Morgan’s womb had grown. And the honor he felt when he realized it was his seeds that had lived inside her…ahh, it had been an honor. He searched for himself in them, eyeing them closely, wishing that he were one of those fathers who people could say, “Man, he couldn’t deny them if he tried.” He wished they had his nose, his ebony skin, his woolly hair, his enchanting eyes. He had wanted to recognize something, anything, any part of him in them. He had wished for it. It was a curse for his daughter to inherit the worst part. His DNA was a death sentence that he had declared upon his sweet girl. Now, he desperately wished they weren’t his after all because maybe, just maybe, they wouldn’t be subjected to this sickness. He knew that no matter how hard they fought this, they would eventually lose. Cancer was a queen undefeated, and once again, Morgan would mourn because of him.

Messiah felt like crying. He felt the overwhelming pull of sorrow as it unzipped his chest and made itself at home. He knew it would rot there. The sorrow would transform to anger, and the anger would burst out of him at the most inopportune time, hurting someone else, often someone he never meant to hurt at all, more than likely, the one person he wanted to protect: Morgan Atkins. It always happened that way. The burdens of his heart, bullying him to prevent him from exposing the secrets that lay inside. He felt this new devastation nesting inside him, building. Messiah felt like he was choking. He tried to stand tall, even tilted his head a little higher as he felt brick after brick of terror erecting in his chest. He hadn’t been a parent long enough to know how to process this feeling. He hadn’t been around for the terrifying moments that came along with having newborns. He hadn’t watched a fever creep from 99 degrees to 103 in the blink of an eye. He hadn’t experienced Messari’s first fall off the bed when he had first learned to roll over. Nor had he felt the sheer panic that came with a piece of food getting stuck in a toddler’s throat in a split second. All these things felt like life or death to a new parent. These subtle moments of panic were growing pains along the journey of parenthood that he had missed. Those moments prepared parents for the big scares. They trained parents on how to stay calm, and how to execute through fear. Those small health hiccups gave parents glimpses of what tragedies could occur if a parent slipped, even for a moment. Messiah was untrained, and he was unprepared. This news, this sudden upheaval of his daughter’s well-being, was the first time he had felt the panic that came when a parent discovered their child was in danger. He wanted to throw himself on the dagger. He wished for it to be him. He would take it all. The chemo, the surgery, the unyielding body aches and chills, the nausea, the vomiting, the weakness, the mystery feeling of needles piercing his skin, the hair loss, the taste of poison on your tongue. He would take it all for Yolly. Her body was about to go to war with itself, and it was a horrendous battle. He would die for her, if only God would accept the trade-in.

She’s so little. This shit ain’t fair, he thought, losing his composure. He turned away from the group, placing his clenched fists on top of his head.

Zip your shit up, nigga.

What a treacherous thought. He left no room for vulnerability. He couldn’t let himself fall apart. He knew how to soldier up and hold shit down when shit got hard.

Didn’t he?

He couldn’t understand why his insides were spilling out. It was like someone had cut him wide open, and he was trying to stop himself from bleeding out onto the floor. He felt it. He was completely open and being ravaged mercilessly. His guts and heart were at his feet, and he was trying to wrangle it all, trying to catch it before it killed him, but the injury was too severe. His emotions were like vultures, picking over the ruins of him.

“She was just fine,” Morgan said in disbelief, her eyes betraying her. He turned, and her sadness was the thing famous paintings were made of. Rembrandt couldn’t paint her better. Such a beautiful fucking woman. For the first time, he realized that she was no longer the girl he had fallen for. The reflection of anguish in her eyes revealed a mother. His children’s mother. Oh, how solemn had made a home of her. Those pools she called eyes filled as she shook her head in denial.

“That’s how it happens. You’re fine one day, and out of nowhere, for no fucking reason at all, a runny nose turns into something else,” Messiah said in a bitter tone. There was something terrifying in his tone. Something revealing, a foreshadowing of the inevitable. Messiah’s voice was filled with an understanding that could only come from experience.