One Bloody Rose

She lay her hand across his chest and watched his silent face. She had no tears to shed for him; no words of sorrow. In the quiet of this dark room, from which she would leave in only a few moments, she remembers the day they first met.

He was quiet and still, just as he was now. A young man of few words, yet could stir the hearts of the most obstinate. He had spotted her while she was working. He came over with a soft smile. What's a beautiful young lady doing working those pretty hands?.

She had been startled out of a reverie; a wet rag-cloth in one hand and the bucket of soapy water in the other. She was supposed to be cleaning the tables. I enjoy working, she replied. It gives me a sense of freedom.

He raised his eyebrows. Really?

She nodded and continued to wash the top of the table.

Are you still in school?

She shook her head. I've already finished school.

His eyebrows went higher. Did you graduate early?

She had laughed at this. I'm not that young, she replied.

He shrugged. I would've thought otherwise. What's your name?

She had just smiled and moved onto the next table.

Over the next two weeks he had visited her every day. Sometimes they talked. Mostly they worked in silence: she on cleaning; he on his constant multitude of papers. He was a writer - fledgling, but still. She never asked to read his work. He never offered. They exchanged little information. Yet he continued to visit.

He always had a strange stillness to him when he was working. Lying on the bed now, he retained that eerie aura of being untouchable by anything or anyone. He had been a contrast to her sing-song playfulness; not too serious, but not reckless. Their opposite personalities were the reason they were drawn together. It had been an odd companionship. She knew it was a relationship that could never really be. She had a future planned for herself as did he, but their paths separated and moved onwards. Again, for the moment, it did not stop them at all. She came to enjoy his presence.

And then it happened. She hadn't gone to work that day. Family concerns had pulled her away. He must have gone to the restaurant at his usual time - the afternoon. No. He had gone at early evening. They found him inside, his briefcase - a tattered, leather thing - tossed to one side. He was surrounded by his papers; they were paintings now, streaked and splattered; coloured unintentionally. No one knew what had happened. She wondered only briefly.

She stared down at him. His hands were folded across his stomach. He seemed peaceful. the light continued to fade from the room, casting ethereal shadows across the walls. She remembered the words they had said and the things they had given her: his briefcase, freshly cleaned; copies of the papers that had been destroyed; and one other item. She sighed, her breath hissing out into the silence. What he had wanted that night was almost clear; symbolised by the universal.

It would be pressed and preserved; preserved for the future. She would keep it with her possessions along with the bound portfolio of his writings as a lasting tribute to his companionship and dreams. And years from now she would open the portfolio and view the very first page: the object laminated and preserved with plastic and his spirit.

She would once again hold his final and only gift: one bloody rose.