“Wake up! Time to die!” I reach over and shake my female passenger from her drunken slumber.

She looks panicked as she awakens. She seems to be trying to convince herself that I am only an alcoholic vision.

Oh well, I can still compliment myself on the fact that I am quite a clever driver. Maybe it is fate rewarding my long imprisonment.

I can even drive with one hand on the wheel. I have to. I need to be prepared to subdue my unwilling passenger if necessary.

“What are you doing?” Brenda screams as the sight of my destination becomes clear even in her hazy state of mind.

I twist the wheel of the station wagon suddenly and the car veers crazily over the road. I laugh, feeling the madness in my voice and loving it.

The highway is all downhill from here. Every inch of it is lined with evergreen trees, and at the bottom, our destination. The hairpin curve is guarded by a weak and soon to be proven ineffective guardrail.

Brenda’s face pales as I push down on the gas pedal.

The added fuel increases our rate of descent until the speedometer is hovering as far to the right as it can go.

“Stop it! Stop! You’re mad! You’ll kill us both!” She screams again in her high-pitched, typically female soprano. It is a pathetic little voice to enjoy the rush of speed too.

“Mad am I?” I jeer. “Look at me misses, take a good look and tell me who’s mad.”

She attacks with a drunken lunge. I parry the blow easily.

Her station wagon smells like mothballs. I hate that. It was probably dust stirred up by the speed, but I don’t care. I know what I hate.

“Around the corner and across the bend lies the journey’s end.” I cackle as Brenda attempts to focus her glassy eyes on my shadowy figure.

She doesn’t say much, she is speechless actually. But then, what can be said in her situation? Very little. Not that it matters, soon she’ll be silenced forever and I will be free…

Brenda, the butterfly collector, the almost perfect environmentalist, will soon become one with the nature she loves so much.

The curve looms large through the windshield. An old cracked, windshield I notice as I crank the wheel toward her doom. The glass is just as ugly as the rest of this wretched wagon. The world will be a better place without it.

We are airborne, hurtling over the edge, off the mountainside highway. The sight below us is a beautiful postcard forest scene. It looks a lot like the forest where I had been captured once upon a time.

You might say that I had become a genie in a bottle. The main difference between a genie and me is that I only grant my own wishes.

I drift upward and out of the open car window.

The car, like her scream, seems to hover in the air for a split second, and then it plummets rapidly downward toward the waiting trees.

I can feel myself being yanked down before the car finally hits the ground.

The vehicle explodes in a brilliant orange fireball that contrasts nicely with the early morning mist that hovers over the snow-covered forest.

As Brenda dies, I bounce upward like a suddenly released balloon. I am finally and completely free, my work is complete.

Brenda was an unfortunate fool to drink the alcohol that I was preserved in. But drunkenness does that to people. They seem to crave alcohol and anything else in a bottle.

I had plenty of time to watch human behavior after all.

I know their ways.

My essence had been preserved in the liquid. A spirit-like cloud to fog minds that needed relief from reality. I didn’t harm my hosts as long as I remained sitting on the shelf with my friends.

Drink by drink my essence would become part of the unwary alcoholic. Even though we remain two separate beings, we are cursed to remain at each other’s side until death.

Tonight the annual drunken Christmas party had made Brenda a bit too daring and a bit too thirsty. How unfortunate that she opened my bottle and let me escape into her.

She almost tripped me too, that sly little minx. Luckily for me, my spirit had not yet totally possessed her. I was still able to escape her grip in the end.

I must say, I enjoyed myself though. I needed that freedom. I needed to drive. Yet as I watch Brenda’s flaming car I am consumed with one thought.

I need another bottle. Even the pain of captivity was worth it. I need the rush of release followed by the thrill of the road. The experience makes even a brief period of captivity seem worthwhile.

It is all part of the game of spirits.

I shift my shapes and colors to make myself look beautiful, to make you want me. I can be whatever you want me to be. Why? Because I want you to chase me, and if you’re lucky, you will catch me.

There is no need to be afraid. I am only a harmless butterfly. What could I do to you?