The Rose

It was a dark and cold night. The moon and stars were obscured by dark clouds that ate all happiness from the world, yet there was no rain, nor thunder, nor lightning. An eerie, silent fog slowly blanketed the dry air. I shivered and shoved my pale hands into my coat pockets.

I continued my unhurried saunter through the darkness, the occasional streetlamp illuminating my path. I looked up at one and thought of how out of place it was, a lone light in an ocean of darkness, a doomed ship with its last flicker of light before plunging into the murky depths where the monsters of the old sailor stories dwelled.

I was only outside to get some fresh air, although I had the everlasting feeling that something had lured me out of my home, my safe haven of warmth and light, into the gloom of night. Never, in the rest of my life, would I know the real reason I walked outside that night, and that’s why I would always remember it.

The silence was heavy on my shoulders. I felt tired and weary from the moment I walked out of my front door. There was no wind. If I had dropped a pin and disturbed the silence, I feared that a thousand eyes would glare at me from a thousand directions like I had just desecrated the holiest shrine. I kept my footsteps hushed.
I could not smell nor taste anything. The air was empty, a contrast to the overwhelming thickness of the silence. Usually, one could smell the burning of a family’s fireplace, but not one fireplace cast its warm and comforting glow that night. For a moment, I thought I caught a small wisp of a flower’s fragrance, but it was gone as quickly as it had come.

I looked down at the ground as I walked. I saw the sidewalk, cold and monotonous as it was, and I grew angry at it. I didn’t want to be monotonous like the sidewalk, or cold like the people who walk down them. Was it the air around me that was cold, or was it me? Was I cold myself? I started to run, to try to break the coldness and the monotony, but it just came quicker and sharper.

I tripped and fell on my face. I grew very angry—was it anger? Or frustra-tion?—at the sidewalk. I realized that I could not run from the cold or from the monotony. I needed to defeat it. I gathered myself together, my lip was bleeding and my cheek smarted, but other than that I was fine. I looked around me.

The fog had become exceedingly thicker as time passed. To my right, I knew, from brighter times, that there was a church in a field devoid of trees. All I could see of it now was its steeple, looming forbiddingly over the field, almost as if saying, “Steer clear of this place!” I hated it. I wanted to defy it.

I cocked my head at this notion. The steeple seemed to be mocking me. Compared to it, I was useless and fragile. I wanted some of its strength. I began down the dirt path towards the church. Again I smelled a flower; again it was gone in an instant.

The feel of the path was much different than the feel of the sidewalk. The path was wild and untamed, beaten down only by years of steps before me. The sidewalk was poured in day; it looked the same now as it did on the day of its construction. The path was ever changing. The path was an adventure in every step, never quite knowing what it was going to throw at you next. It meandered down to the church taking several odd turns here and there, much like a river slithering down a mountainside or a plume of smoke drifting away. I thoroughly enjoyed every step. Strangely, I felt warmer, although it wasn’t any warmer outside. I could still feel the ever encroaching chill against my stinging cheek, but yet I felt warmer.

I arrived at the doors to the sanctuary, the steeple giving me its final warning before I opened the heavy mahogany doors. I pulled them open. The night’s silence was broken by the hinges’ screams. I walked into the darkness as the doors shut behind me.

I could not see much in the gloom of the narthex except for a lone shard of light shining down on the apostle Paul’s face from a window above the doors. The light came from the now distant streetlamp that I had passed earlier, its light fighting against the night’s darkness and somehow holding its ground, a gallant general fighting until his last remaining round and he, the last man, fell among his fallen comrades.

I walked up to Paul’s statue. It was marble, hard and cold but yet strangely human, but it was very much unlike the hardness and coldness of the sidewalk. I could see that he was holding something in his hands. I strained to see what it was. It was so hard to see in the- impossible! My heart fell from me when I saw what he held in his hands. It was a rose.

Redder than blood it was, and greener than the greenest forest. It was the most perfect rose I had ever seen. Its petals bloomed like it was a bright spring morning, but it wasn’t. It was a frigid November night where no flower bloomed. The smell of it filled the air around me and I was warm. I could almost hear the angels playing their trumpets and their harps and their horns, almost.

Then I noticed something I hadn’t before. Paul’s hands were not merely holding the perfect flower, but they were holding it out to me. I stepped even closer to the statue and the flower became even more beautiful as I did so. My hand reached out in front of me without ever telling me it was going to do this, let alone asking for permission. It picked up the flower and I had control over my hand once again.

I wanted to smell the flower. I put it to my nose and tenderly sniffed the flawless flower, but I could not smell it. I looked my hand, but it was no longer holding the flower. The rose had vanished, and with it went all of the room’s warmth and glow. I was forced back into the cold and darkness.

I began to cry. Just a few tears at first, but then they escalated to Niagara Falls in each eye, and, as God as my only witness, I fell to my knees and then began to laugh. I laughed until it hurt, and then I laughed some more. I didn’t know why I was laughing, but I was sure that it wasn’t because I was happy.

As quickly as my rushing laughter came, it went. I Stopped laughing and looked around at the empty narthex. The statues were mere statues, gray representations of those who once were—but curious it was to notice that my hands in the dim light were the same lifeless color.

“May I help you son?” I heard a soft, quiet voice behind me.

Turning around, I saw that it was the priest of the church.

“Are you alright?” he asked, leaning his head in.

I stood up, and brushing myself off I said, “Yes, father. I’m… fine.”

“Oh,” he didn’t believe me, “I thought I heard you crying.”

“No,” I lied, “I was but laughing.”

Still unconvinced, the priest sighed, “I could have sworn… Well, anyway, it’s late; you should really be at home with your family.”

I smiled, “And what about you? Where’s your family?”

“I am married to the church, dear boy. I have an obligation only to God.”

I nodded.

“You should get home. Do you need a ride? I could drive you.”

“No. I can walk.”

“No! I insist!”

I shrugged my shoulders, “Alright.”

He smiled and led the way the way out the doors.
Again the hinges broke the burdening silence with a macabre shriek, but the door itself did not even whisper, for it was made of mahogany. It was as strong as the day it was carved from a magnificent living bulwark in the depths of the dark jungle some two hundred years prior. Its exterior was beaten and weathered, but it was beautiful even in its old age, perhaps even more so than when it was carved. A new thing has beauty, but an old thing has timeless beauty. Timeless beauty is a rare treasure in an impatient world.

We walked back up the pleasantly circumlocutory path to the sidewalk. I was surprised by the hardness of the sidewalk. I daresay that I was even repulsed by it. Maybe I was jaded from having walked on the path.

The priest’s car was parked just a few feet from the mouth of the path. It was an older car, paid for obviously on a meager salary. The exterior was littered with dents and scratches. The rear bumper seemed to be clinging on to the car’s rear only by a heaping of duct tape—and, perhaps, God himself. The hood had seen better days. Three hubcaps were missing from the wheels, and the one that was left looked like it wanted to be put out of its misery. I was honestly not surprised when the door moaned as I opened it. It was not like the shrieking of the hinged of the mahogany door, mind you, but like a tired old man whose only wish is to go home.

The priest started up the car, “So where do you live, my boy?”

He called me boy. I hated that. “Just over yonder. If you just turn around, I’ll be happy to direct you.”

“Sure… Boy, would you look at the fog!”

And yes, it was quite foggy, but I was more concerned about how he called me boy. It was inadvertent, I suppose, on the priest’s part, but I still hated it. It was as if he was denying my maturity. In actuality, I was not mature, but I did not need reassurance of that.

We came to the point in the road where we needed to turn, so I said, “Turn here. Turn right.”
He did. Suddenly, I saw a bright flash of lights not unlike lightning. Tires screeched and it all dissolved into darkness.

It seemed like the darkness only lasted for a mere moment, a small clipping of time snatched away, but when I opened my eyes again, I was laying down nowhere near the car. In fact, I was in a very white room. It was well lit and my eyes had to adjust to the brightness. It is strange how one cannot see in moments of brightness or darkness. Humans seem to see the best in times of a median line between the two.