A Sample of Beauty

In the night, betwixt thine ears, lay a beautiful specimen. A noodle, a dome, a brain. The brain is special. Her's is even more than anyone else's could ever be. She was gifted at birth.

For Rose possessed the genius of a goddess, one deeply hidden and even omitted from her outward personality. Her beauty was her brain, misunderstood and unseen. Her apparent beauty was equally misunderstood. Taking the appearance of a griever, those never really gave her a chance between ten. By that age, her brain had already acquired the knowledge of those twice her age, but with her advanced knowledge came the realization of the true world. A world of pain lay beyond her walls.

While she slept, her brain truly felt free. It could wander the depths of maths and literature while simultaneously encoding the sounds of a mosquito that had precariously perched itself upon her window sill. With it's flight came violence well known to her life. Smack! The insect went down like Frazier, its body lifeless on the pillow.

Shocked and disoriented, Rose sprung up not totally disappointed by her interrupted slumber. She stared around at the dark, black walls, illuminated only by streams of light through her single window. It took only a minute for her to remember how badly her arm hurt. She slowly peeled back the ace bandages with a grimace and peered at the cigarette burns her father left to intermingle with her own battle scars just below the elbow. The old scars barely faded, the wide jagged lines left after a bout with a pair of scissors, but the new swelling caught her attention along with the thought of infection. Her thighs were much more wounded though she had never had an infection in that area. Rose replaced the bandages at her bedside table, being careful not to open the cuts above her bed.

Stiff from an hour erect, Rose rose from the bed in the darkness and moved to her desk in front of the window. It was her most prized possession. The only thing her mother had left her before eloping when Rose was three, it was pockmarked with the carvings and stories left by the equally reclusive Sofie Sørenson. Her husband blamed Rose for causing her to leave, often beating and burning each other them in drunken stupors.

Rose's fingertips glided across the cryptic message carved into the side of the desk. She was only able to decipher bits and pieces of the code; the deepest and most apparent marks were at the near edge, written just before her mother left. In Danish it read: i tid, vil du finde nøglen til mig. It means 'in time, you will find the key to me'. The language on the desk was often written in foreign alphabets beyond Rose's knowledge. Even though she could read Danish fluently, she struggled with a deathly stutter at the thought of speaking the language.

With a graceful precision, Rose reached across the desk and found her pack of Newport's, a habit she'd inherited from her father. Her best friend Mary Jane was hard to find at times like this. Dragging a match across the strike strip taped to the desk, she lit the cigarette and puffed with the appearance of a seasoned smoker. The match tossed from the window landed in the spot familiar to both her father and herself. His window was below hers and she saw smoke rising from the ground level even at this late hour.

'Must be the full moon,' she thought. Once finished, Rose returned to bed. Sleep was a fleeting moment away when smoke began to enter through the window, pushed by the Autumn breeze which cooled all of Pittsburgh. The sound of swearing came next, usual when her father woke from an intoxicated dream. But the smoke was new.

Sitting up again, she walked to the window to investigate. Sliding her hand under the cracked window, the rising air felt warmer than the wind which teased her small fingers.

"What the hell is he doing down there?" she asked herself. She didn't dare open her door and allow her father to catch her awake at such a late hour. Pushing the window open about a foot, Rose's head popped out and investigated the glow now coming from the office below her. A fire! Quickly she ran to the closet and pulled out the thickest quilts to drape over the desk. She knew this was her chance to leave.

Grabbing her large school bag and dumping it's contents onto the bed, she began running through a rehearsed list of supplies. Jeans, hoodie, bra, panties, Newport's, zippo, knife, stash. Each item was meticulously packed into the bag, taking care to leave extra room for whatever she may need. Her stash box held maps of the entire country, flight schedules, her passport, maps of Denmark, $5000 in cash, and the phone number left to her for emergencies.

She would not miss this room. As she stared at the dark, black walls, her mind strayed to her mother. The desk would burn. The beautiful maple desk would feed the flames higher into the old house, only aiding in its inevitable collapse. The decrepit structure was always hated by her mother, perhaps this was the final 'screw you' to her ex-husband.

Rose's mind raced, remembering all she could about the plans she had. The flames began to crackle audibly downstairs and the swearing had stopped.

"At least he'll die drunk and in peace."

Always waiting for her moment to leave, she opened the window to it's widest and sat on the sill with her world possessions on her back. A tear fell for her mother, another fell for her father. Her eyes red, her nose running, her hair crazed and disheveled, Rose leaped from the window into the oak near the sidewalk.

Scratched, cut, bruised, but still living, the beautiful mind ran to the train station in search of the hope she searched for.