Rose

ROSE
         "Tragic, the accident." He shakes his head sadly.
         "Yes," the woman agrees. "It is certainly very tragic. They loved each other so much, so young and new."
         "But the good die young," he says, and she agrees, adding "And God takes as he sees fit."

         The young man doesn’t see it this way.
         As tears of rage and self loathing silently course their way down his cheeks, coating his world in a moist, salty film, he raises his hand.
         The good one. The one with the gun.
         Yeah, he can do it, because God’s not the only one who takes as he sees fit.
         He curses himself and every other living abomination, for what is life without love, when his Rose has wilted?
         He sips his whiskey with a hand twisted and deformed by a mass of scars, other hand hanging over the armrest of his chair, gun dangling limply against the wind on this empty tenth floor balcony. Tears are nothing, salt and water are nothing, the people outside in that clever, evil world are nothing.
         He recalls a rose he bought his Rose, a vibrant blood red beauty, practically throbbing. She’d been enthralled, and thrown her arms around him, whispered those three little words- he picked her up, twirling her around, and marveled at the flame in her hair as the sun caught it, the emerald chips in her azure eyes flashing…
         Convulsions wrack his body; he drops the empty glass, but clutches the gun.
         Glass shatters, and he doesn’t care. Again, as always, he is drawn back to the last rose, the final rose, not red but black as midnight.
             Black as his soul. Black as smoke.
         He’d placed it on her casket in the pouring rain, letting the drops freeze his heart forever. No, the water didn’t matter. None of those people or things mattered.
         She is all that matters.
         He raises his hand to his pounding temple again.
         The good one. The one with the gun.