The Death-Watch

2

By the word of the church, none shall work on a Sunday, our lords’ day.

Time was a precious commodity, never knowing when you might drop dead really made you appreciate the beauty abound in the world.

The changing of the leaves, when streets turn into a multitude of dark colours in a hypnotic pattern of sheer randomness. The Way the light can reflect of a puddle on the dreariest of days in such a way as to cause a burst of life, a rainbow to engulf those around it in a natural purity.

Even we, in our sinful mortal forms, have a natural beauty abound within us. The way ones hair could flair out, catching the light and for a brief moment in time surround even the most hideous person with the holy beauty of a golden halo. The way an eye can change colours in an unnoticed instant creating a whole new person with them.

Because I never knew when I might be shut off from all the beauty in the world I tried to spend all my free time immersing myself in it.

That Sunday I went to the gardens. An idyllic spot in the centre of the smoke stained metropolis awash with the songs of the birds and engulfed in a multitude of dazzling colours. It was my favourite place in the city because of this.

But oh how I hated it.

Yes, denying its beauty would be like trying to hold back the rain or to hasten the rising of the sun, but despite all the beauty I loathed it.

I loathed it because it was a lie.

It was a fabricated beauty, painted and built to please the eye. Designers had congregated and shared ideas to create the masterpiece of oppression, a spot for us to forget our troubles.

To me the reflected light was blinding and cold, the plants unmoving and inanimate, the colours washed out and gaudy. Oh how I hated the place. But let me ask you, if I hated it so much, why could I not stay away?

Beauty surrounds us everywhere and can be found in everything.

But all the beauty in the world was eclipsed by the girl over the fence.

I had wandered off the track once, believing myself too intelligent to get lost. I was proved false in the most wonderful way.

I spent hours that day amidst the cold metal trees, swimming in the sea of colours around me.

I stumbled around trying to find the path when I ran into something much more real. A hard, black steel fence that enclosed the park.

I decided that I could follow the fence around until I found a path or an exit and so, off I went. I had never noticed before how large the park actually was but that day, as I attempted to walk the entire perimeter of it I realised the scale of it.

I was watching the buildings outside the bars more than the lies within as I walked around. Everywhere there were people walking briskly, never stopping to talk for more than a moment, fearful of making a connection with another human being. There dark clothes making them all look like one another, like mindless clones produced in a factory and programmed to obey.

They all looked the same, all of them that is, except one.

At first I thought that a star had fallen out of the heavens until I realised that I was looking at something far more beautiful. Her face, framed by the murk and the dirt of the city shone like a beacon calling, beckoning.

The star trailed fire like a comet as it tore open the heavens, her fiery locks blowing in the wind, dancing like the tips of a flame.

Her lips were the colour of roses. Not the fake cold metal roses that I had left behind but a real rose, sweet, luscious and warm, inviting you in and making you watch as they moved.