A Beautiful Thing- by Ben Jonjak

Mark and his girlfriend were walking through the
park. Most of the people who passed by looked at her,
but she didn’t notice. Mark did, he was always on the
lookout for danger but she existed in a world where
she didn’t have to worry about it. She was immune,
everything watched out for her.
There were a couple of nasty guys in leather coats
across the way. They locked on like guided missiles.
She always dressed so nice. Sometimes Mark thought
she craved that kind of attention. He felt as if she
were aware of them, but she waltzed on, smiling. She
could draw a crowd whenever she wanted to and never
even show strain for the effort.
“What a pretty flower.” She said out of the blue.
They were standing next to a hedge. The hedge was
lined with flowers. Not so many as to seem plentiful
but not so few as to seem sparse. They peeked up from
in between the leaves and the vines of the bush and
they looked quite lovely. They were white with a blue
center and on the bottom of each petal was a splash of
purple that stretched to the tip of the gentle oval as
if the color had been dragged there by a silkworm.
Mark was somewhat distracted, he was still scouring
the horizon in search of danger, in between a dozen
thoughts. He was half-turned around and looking at
her as she reached slowly for a particularly
distinctive flower that stood up in the exact center
of the hedge, the focal point, the one that the whole
bush seemed to be growing to highlight.
He was caught in one of those moments of limited time
when you have six things to say. She continued
reaching, reaching. She can’t be thinking of picking
the flower? But he knew she was. Don’t pick the
flower, he wanted to say. Or if you pick one, at
least don’t pick that one, pick one of the ones at the
bottom where nobody will notice it is missing. Once
you pick it, it’s dead and nobody else will be able to
see such a beautiful thing.
“Don’t pick it.” Was all he managed to say and her
hand hesitated in the air so he knew she heard him.
He held his breath, he wanted to say more in a rush of
explanation. How she could pick one of the lower
ones, how she maybe could just leave them all and
admire them from afar. He probably would have had time
to stop her if he’d wanted, but his brain froze up and
so did his body. It seemed he could only stand there
and watch. Or maybe he secretly, egotistically,
wanted to see if his command had any effect on her.
For a moment he waited and held his breath and
watched her think. But then, just like with him, she
seemed to get caught up in a flow of destiny, and she
continued her motion as if he wasn’t there. In
between the time her motion started and the time the
flower was picked he had a flash of panic, again he
sent deter signals to his mouth and limbs but it was
already too late.
“How pretty!” She squealed holding the flower,
lifting it up to her nose. If only she’d bent down to
smell it before she picked it. If only she’d taken
that split second more of time before committing the
irrevocable action he could have explained the logic
of his request. Now it was done.
“You didn’t have a right to take that, that’s the
park’s flower. There are people that work to maintain
this place you know. It’s to be shared, it’s not for
you alone.”
She looked at the flower forlornly, but not for what
she had done. She was upset because he wasn’t
delighting in the beauty of her happiness. She was
upset that her actions weren’t ignored for the
beautiful picture she was. The beautiful walking
masterpiece. She pouted with the look of the girl who
has just found out there is something she can do to
make it so that daddy doesn’t love her. She is
accountable. And he did feel a little bad. He
decided to ease up.
“Next time, at least take one from down below, down
where nobody will notice it is missing. In your hand
it will look just as beautiful.”
“Why don’t you lay off boy?” It was an old man in
overalls working on all-fours next to the hedge. “I’m
the groundskeeper here and I say that pretty flowers
belong in the hands of pretty girls.”
The old groundskeeper smiled at the girl and she
smiled back at him, then tossed her breasts forward an
her arms back in that little-girlish pose that is so
undeniably sexual, though they pretend that they don’t
realize it. She turned back to Mark with a look of
triumph.
Mark was furious but his face stayed blank. There
was nothing he could do or say now to change his
position, he would only look like a cad either way.
There was a legitimacy in what he had said, but logic
had once again been trumped by a beautiful thing. She
knew her power, and she reveled in it.
Just then two fingers reached down from the sky and
squeezed his girlfriend’s head. Her mouth opened in a
surprised “O” and, with a jerk, the head and most of
the spinal column was ripped from the body.
Mark watched, speechless, as the dangling vertebrata
was lifted high into the air, blood dripping down
behind. Her body falling to the ground with a thud.
“You know if you had just bent down to look, you
wouldn’t have killed the creature.” Came a booming
voice from high above.
But then another voice responded with a touch of ire,
“I couldn’t resist, it was such a beautiful thing.”

The End