The Rose

A rose amongst the many white and black blurs, she walked. Burgundy layers were clasped to her bodice of lace and her lips were painted to match. She walked and smiled, and walked and smiled. But then she saw how old, cracked, yellow . . . terribly cruel . . . he looked.

And upon seeing that face, she fled. She fled and fled and fled, and her eyes bled black. She tripped and stumbled upon the petals that were once luscious and full, but now were ripped and ragged. There were gasps and sighs, but still she fled into the open rain, and she let it fall on her. She paid it no mind; it was her friend, her only friend.

She finally stopped at a withered tree—which was all alone in the middle of a meadow—and placed one hand on the knotted bark and the other on her knee so as to catch her breath.

The heavy boughs of the tree lightened the fall of the rain, creating a mist that gathered upon her petals and dampened her already-wavy hair.

Tree, she coughed, please do not fall. Please do not fall. The rain has already fallen. You would only add to the disease. She murmured it over and over and still, over again, shaking her head. And only when ran had stopped and the sun had peaked over the horizon did she decide that the tree would not fall.

Thank you. She straightened out her body, weary from the night’s stay at the lonely tree. She smoothed and picked at the folds of her once beautiful rose, and smiled. And she ran back to where she had come from, and this time when she saw him, he was as beautiful as the first time she had seen him.

The disease had fled.

Absence

They had all stopped, every last one. Not a hand moved, not a second was passed.
Time had completely ended. And all I could do was smile.

The kids in my class thought that it was only our clock until the principal came over the intercom saying that every clock in the school wasn’t working. That even the staff’s cell phones weren’t working. A few people in the room gasped, but I had seen this coming. Time was a wasteful thing. Our whole lives are built around it from the time you were born to the time you died. When you know of time, you waste your life doing things you think you have to do before you die.

Without time, life is infinite.


Most people think that time is a good thing. I look around at the –scared?—yes, scared faces in the classroom, and I want to laugh. Instead, I turn back to my notebook to doodle a clock with both hands pointing “up” at the twelve.





I didn’t bother drawing in the other numbers. The twelve was all that mattered, for, that was how the clock was stopped. 12:00:36 was the time when all the clocks of the world ceased to tell us how long we had to live.

12:00:36.

How, the children asked, how are we to tell what time to go somewhere?

“Idiots,” I muttered. It doesn’t matter now, I thought. We have been liberated from the worst disease that mankind has created and spread. Worse even than the Bubonic Plague. At least that took away some of the people’s misery. And most of them died without a headstone. Without time above their decaying faces.

I got up out of my seat and began to walk towards the old iron door when my teacher asked, “Where do you think you’re going? Class is still in.” He said it as if I should care.

I stopped and turned around with a smirk upon my face and asked, “How can you prove it?” His fake smile soon turned into a grimace. Without waiting for the response I knew I wouldn’t get, I put my hand on the cold door handle and pulled it down, still wearing that triumphant smile.