Ana Lucia is seven months pregnant, and she is very tired. She takes the large pillow that she has sitting on her lap and presses it up against the window to take a rest. It is early in the morning; the sky that sleeps on top of the city is pale blue, quiet, and unobtrusive. The crowd on the train is sparse. A woman sits a few seats behind her, smacking the gum in her mouth and listening contentedly to whatever music is emanating from her headphones. A young man, probably a few years younger than Ana Lucia, sits across from her, slumped so low into his seat he almost looks like he’s melting. Ana Lucia barely notices when an old man slowly approaches and sits down beside her. As soon as she feels the movement of the seat, her eyes peel open and she feels an urgent need to sit up straight to offer him up more space.

      He’s wearing a long green overcoat that makes him look like an olive, and his white, patchy beard barely conceals the shining blue of his eyes. He stares at her intently, never once dropping her out of his line of vision, as he unties a plastic bag that he has resting in his lap. She peers inside and her skin jumps when she takes notice of the cooing pigeon buried in the crinkled plastic. She looks back up at the old man in confusion, hoping for some indication from him that will tell her what to do. But he just continues to stare at her.

      “This bird looks sick or injured,” she says with concern in her voice. “What do you want me to do?”

      “Do whatever you want,” he finally says, after a few silent moments. “I can’t take care of her anymore.” He starts to cough in spasms, and doesn’t bother to bring his hand to his mouth. He shoves the plastic bag onto her lap, forcing her hands to accept it. She peels back the thin handles and scoops the bird out of the bag. One of its wings is broken and its eyes are tightly shut. It coos and squirms slightly in her hands. She strokes her hand against its feathers; magically it comes to life and flies out the window in a sputtering sound of wings on air. She watches it get smaller and smaller as the train glides down the track, and she smiles at the fact that she saved a pigeon from its untimely end.

      The old man pulls a small silver hammer from inside his coat pocket and plays with it in his hands. He watches the silver gleam in the morning light. Ana Lucia looks over at him, her hands protectively rubbing her belly, and wonders why he has pulled out such a strange object. He looks back at her with more intensity than ever now, and he pushes her hands off of her belly. He takes the hammer to it, tapping lightly at first the way a doctor would test her reflexes, and then pounds into her stomach with all his strength. He has a menacing look on his face, his dirty teeth grinding together. And all of a sudden, her stomach simply shatters, the pieces scattering into the air as sharp as glass. They float away from her slowly, traveling through space before falling to the floor. She looks at him in utter shock, and then looks down into the cave that her stomach has become. It is nothing but muscle now, hollowed out and throbbing. She feels no pain, but a strange emptiness and uncertainty. She tries to see the baby that was inside of her, but there is nothing there. She sticks her hands in and rubs them up against the wet and warm tissue. It feels just like a cave, like she could walk inside and become lost in the darkness. She doesn’t know what to say, so she just tries to breathe deeply and wait until her stop comes, whenever that may be. Then she feels something flickering deep inside of her, almost like the flapping of wings.

      A swarm of monarch butterflies comes pushing out of her at great speed. She feels them tickle against the wall of her stomach as they fly out by the hundreds and then the thousands. When the last monarch trickles lazily out of her stomach, she looks next to her to find that the old man is no longer there. She looks up, but her vision is clouded by the sight of now millions of monarch butterflies, their orange wings batting up and down at completely different increments. They are so tightly packed together that all she can see are the old man’s bony legs as they make a swift exit off the train. As the train continues on, Ana Lucia opens both windows beside her in a state of panic. The monarchs pour out of the train, nearly swiping their wings against her face as they fly out the windows. And then her vision is once again clear, and she can feel the force of one million butterflies lifting the train up and carrying it to wherever they feel she needs to go.

About the author:

Tia Hanke-Hills is a fiction writing major at Columbia College in Chicago, and a soon-to-be graduated lady. She has been eating a lot of sushi lately, and is hoping that she hasn't ingested too much mercury by doing so. She enjoys writing flash fiction, and looks forward to doing more of it in the near and distant future. This bio was written on a yellow legal pad.