The Yellow Butterflies

The Yellow Butterflies
Creator	Rhiannon H
Cover Art	Rhiannon H
Protagonist	Wren Candle; Assorted
Antagonist	Sharp Jack; Assorted
Genre	Supernatural horror; Crime
Format	Written Anthology
Colkiverse	Y
Rating	R (Strong bloody violence, disturbing and sexual themes)
Status	Ongoing

The Yellow Butterflies is a supernatural horror mystery based in Colkiverse Y. The first act is comprised of mostly seemingly unrelated two-part short stories, which detail a number of seemingly unrelated events, ranging from monsters to murders to a meat Midas touch, while the second act is more serial, following Inspector Wren Candle's attempts to solve the mystery.

Act One is nearing completion and parts of the Intermission are in progress. The stories feature dark topics such as gore, violence, cannibalism, cult activity and kidnapping.

Plot Summary

Inspector Wren Candle tracks a series of mysterious cases. Apparent suicides, missing persons, collapsing windmills, murdered children - each case seems unrelated, happening years apart, dating back as far as 300 years. But what seem like unrelated cases are linked by one key detail - there's always a death. And there are always yellow butterflies.

As Candle, along with their assistant Penny, tracks down the cases, they get closer and closer to blowing the case wide open - but Candle is already closer to the case than they let on.

List of Chapters

Act One

1. The Hunting of Sharp Jack
2. Snowmobiles
3. Windmill on Sin Hill
4. Untravelling
5. Manning's Meats
6. House of Jack
7. Fence Dog
8. Snowmobiles 2: Snowmobilening
9. Clusby and Gray
10. Chalmundsweigh

Intermission

1. Notes on Chronology
2. Soldier
3. Self-Perception
4. Tranquility
5. Bottled Water

Act Two

1. Jack Be Nimble
2. Her Daddy's Daughter
3. Gone Visiting
4. ???
5. ???
6. ???
7. ???
8. ???
9. ???
10. The Yellow Butterflies

Characters

Major Characters

• Inspector Wren Candle - A paranormal investigator and law school dropout who investigates the Yellow Butterflies cases. Runs the Couresbury Paranormal Investigation Bureau out of their apartment in Couresbury. First seen in Manning's Meats.
• Deputy Penny Gaines - Candle's assistant. A second-year sixth form student who aids Candle between studies. Earl Gaines's daughter. First seen in Manning's Meats.
• Inspector Julian Asker - A detective and former law school teacher. Quit detective work after the Sin Hill Windmill incident. Candle broke his nose during an exam. First seen in Windmill on Sin Hill.
• Sharp Jack - A mysterious murderous cryptid summoned by saying a brief verse into a fire. Eats children and grants wishes. First seen in The Hunting of Sharp Jack.

Not Major, But Still Pretty Important Characters

• Sven and Clive - The main characters of Snowmobiles and Snowmobilening. Gay. Sven is the narrator of Snowmobilening.
• Daniel - The narrator of The Hunting of Sharp Jack.
• Michael Shelterfield - The protagonist of House of Jack. Lost a brother to Sharp Jack.
• Gina Ewing - The protagonist of Fence Dog.
  • Amanda - Gina's 'friend'. Not what she seems.
  • Ella - A little girl who got lost and stumbled into the bar.
  • Joseph from Work - Gina's acquaintance. Has relationship issues.
  • Edward Acker - A mean old man.
  • Jessica Church - A matronly woman, ironically has problems with her mother.
  • Leon - The bartender. The first to be affected by the mysterious barking.
  • The dog - Good dog.
• Doctor Chalmundsweigh - Has a silly name.
• Clusby and Gray - Two serial kidnappers, the namesakes of the story Clusby and Gray, and the prime examples of Asker's 'don't look back' and 'everything works out' codes.
• Grandmother, Logan, Patrick, Ethan and Charlie - Grandmother, Logan, Patrick and Ethan are the villains of Windmill on Sin Hill. Between then and the events of Clusby and Gray, Ethan is replaced by Charlie. Logan leaves the windmill to track down Asker and stays with him.
• The Sealskins - Unnamed cult members, named by Sven for their sealskin coats. Candle briefly mentions them in Manning's Meats as the 'Membra', a subarctic cult.
• Giant Hand - Mentioned in Windmill on Sin Hill and Snowmobilening. Eats skinned people.
• Mrs Manning - A woman whose son was murdered. Owns a meat shop and a strange gift.

Trivia

• The working title was 'The Hunting of Sharp Jack', the title of the first story.
• It is the only Colkinom-related work featuring heavy, dark horror, gore, bloody violence, explicit language, torture, abuse, rape, murder, suicide, demonic summoning, demonic sacrifice, child death and blunt facial trauma. As such it'd be 18 rated and placed far out of the reach of Colkinom's general target audience.
  • As such, it is possibly considered to be set in a seperate Colkiverse Y in order to quarantine its violent content.