A Butterfly Flaps Its Wings

The noise made by the excited kids outside drifted upwards and though the window. They entered Patrick's subconscious and he groaned and opened his eyes. As a soldier he had woken up in many strange places, in tents and trenches all over the world, once he had woken up in hospital after coming of worse in an encounter with a landmine, but for a moment, he didn't know where he was.

He looked around the sparsely furnished room and it all came flooding back.........

Not many life changes can be traced back to a single event, but his could. It all started when he put his hotmail address on a public forum. Talk about a butterfly flapping its wings, how on earth could that act lead to encounters with ex cia hitmen, wedding proposals, and an adventure that crossed continents and ripped apart lives?

Can I have your e-mail address?

Such a simple request.

He had been chatting on a public forum about a kidnapping case that was making headlines around the world. His kids were grown up and living away, he and his wife worked strange hours and so rarely saw each other and it was a way of passing the time. As an ex military cop, he liked to look at things from a different perspective and it always lead to lively exchanges on the forum whenever he said his piece. After all while an imaginary image would build up of the regulars who he chatted and argued with, some were intelligent and witty, some seemed barely able to communicate and some loved to do nothing but hurl abuse, all of which added to the fun.

One stood out.

A woman.

She would wait for him to come online and then chat directly to him, asking him questions, always using his name, making it seem personal, intimate almost. As the days drifted into weeks, he found himself looking forward to her coming online, they would chat about the case that was still ongoing, but would also drop little hints about themselves and where they were in the world. He was in England, she was strolling Venice beach in Los Angeles.

Then came the day she asked for his e-mail.

He gave it willingly and waited for that first mail, that mail that was going to lead to flights across the world, to run ins with American authorities, brushes with the dark underbelly of American life, and to the highest highs and deepest lows he had ever known.

Her first e-mail was quite bland but chatty, a written version of a woman in a bar making eyes at you but leaving it up to you to take it further. His hotmail address was a very simple one, just his name followed by the address and funnily enough, her was in the same style, but with a very unusual name. Curious to try something he had heard about, he searched her name. It came up in a list of company directors, in a list of ex pupils at a posh public school and various hippy, new age groups. The best part though was that they were around the same age group. At least he knew he wasn't developing cyber feelings for some spotty teenager.

The first dozen or so e-mails flew backwards and forwards, sometime crossing in cyber space as they both typed and laughed at each others humor. Finally she asked for a picture of him. He made a few jokes about how ugly he was and how he would scare her away and in the end they decided they would both send a picture at the same time.

He only had one picture stored on his computer and dint know how to upload more to his hard drive. He didn't think asking his children would be a good idea and his wife knew even less than him and so he sent the only one he had.

It showed him lay by a hotel swimming pool. He had on a pair of very tight speedo swimming trunks, his tattoos won both arms were plainly visible, as was the fact that he was semi erect under those Trunks.

Hers was quite different.

It showed her standing next to a white Porsche 911 parked on the driveway of a very large house that had obviously been converted from an old country barn. The whole picture screamed wealth and class. His, if anything, screamed porn star.

He didn't expect a reply.

Ever.

That was his first shock, she replied and they carried on with the emails and in the end she asked for his telephone number.

She told him she would be returning to England for a few months and would like to chat to him.

He had explained he worked strange hours and so now just needed to explain away the fact that he couldn't give his telephone number. He quickly invented a male friend living at the house and said they needed to house phone kept free and he offered his mobile number as well. As she was recently divorced and living at her mums house, this was accepted without comment.

That first phone call would forever stay in his mind, her ultra posh accent, very similar to the actress Joana lumley, it contrasted sharply with his nortern working class accent.

She seemed fascinated by his hard life, the fights he had taken part in, the years spent in a biker gang, the shootings in the army, the experiences that had shaped his life. They would talk for hours on the phone, sometimes his wife would be upstairs sleeping, sometimes she would be at work. The longest call lasted over ten hours, and they only called a halt because he needed the toilet.

Of course it wasn't long before the calls became more intimate, she would ask him all sorts of questions about his outlook on life, his morals and his experiences with women. Finally the calls became very erotic, they would touch themselves and describe every feeling and act in detail to each other, they would make cyber love over the phone. Firstly as themselves and then later they would play roles games. It was probably being done all over the world, but to him it felt special and new and somehow clean and pure, even though the words were dirty and crude and exciting.

He Knew that she was planning a new life in the USA, She wanted a fresh start, she had money to invest in businesses over there and she would soon be leaving England.

And so he asked for a date.

They agreed to have a weekend in a hotel in Ross. He would tell his wife he was working away.

In the long rambling chats they had enjoying they had discussed all sorts, including drugs. She wanted to try cannabis, he had used plenty in his time as the road captain of a local biker group and so he arranged to bring some down with him to the date.

He arrived in plenty of time at the hotel and had a beer in the hotel bar. One o'clock came and went with no sign of her.

He tried her mobile number but there was no answer. One thirty came and went, and so did another couple of beers.

Again there was no sign and no answer. By the time two o'clock came he decided he had been stood up and went out to his car, drove a little way down the road and lit up a joint.

After the joint he decided he didn't care.

He went back for a final beer and at two thirty she walked in the door.

By this time the beer and the joint had worked their normal magic and his speech and thought patterns didn't exactly match up. They had a few beers later that night before tumbling into the only bed in the room. The next morning he had vague memories of stroking and caressing her body but that was all.

Obviously nothing further had happened.

That day was spent browsing old books shops before they had lunch. He raised to subject of love making and asked if she would like to go back to bed, perhaps this time it would be better?

She declined.

They returned back to the hotel, having looked in all the shops and he diced that although they had one night still to come, something had happened and the spark wasn't there.

She agreed and so he drove off, knowing he would never see her again.

It was a simple cyber sex thing that hadn't jumped the gap into the real world.

By the time he got home, he knew he had made a huge mistake. He phoned the hotel, she was staying there alone for the last night and he spoke to her. Told he her had made a mistake and should have stayed, she agreed and said it would have been nice.

He asked could they still chat when she went to the USA and she agreed.

She finished the call by saying he could always come over to see her in Los Angeles.

Perhaps THAT was the single moment? The simple sentence saying come over some time?