Chapter 8: Take The Long Way Home, Page 38: The Aversion Version - Up Late With Barry The Butterfly
Posted December 22, 2023 at 12:00 pm

Izzy has always had a habit of staying up past her bedtime. Insomnia has had her number for a long time. No matter how hard she tried she just couldn't fall asleep.  So she'd often occupy herself by seeing what her dad was watching on television. He'd usually watch random movies that sounded interesting. No matter what the genre was. Izzy would rarely make it to the end of a film, tiredness would get the best of her and she'd fall asleep right there in the living room. 

A couple of movies she fell asleep on were about man-eating butterflies. The Butterfly Killer was a giant monster movie about a massive butterfly on a rampage. Killer Butterflies was about a summer camp plagued with the titular creatures. The movies had completely different tones and were made decades apart. But there's only so many titles out there. Izzy never made it to the end of these movies. She kinda dreamed how they'd end. 

However, it wasn't just these movies that inspired Izzy's fear. It was this mascot character for the US Forest Service, Barry the Butterfly. His cartoonish features and the way he'd just suddenly appear in a commercial about National Forests really unnerved Izzy. In fact she had a dream where Barry grew giant and ate her. She never got over it. She'll have to one day though. 

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