An Eternal Yellow Rosebud
Goran woke up from his restless
sleep, which had barely been a moment's break between ragged breaths. His mind
was full of distorted memories and timeworn stories. He knew there was little
time left until his last effort, after accumulating seventy years of
struggling. His chronic illness had been aggravated and his body no longer
responded as before.
The drowsiness and the foggy cloud
that wrapped up his mind cleared for an instant and he reminisced about Alina
as she was forty years ago, when they were happy and young, when they still had
plans for the future, before leukemia took her away in just a few months. He
focused his gaze on the picture frames on the opposite wall and recalled each little
detail in every one of the photographs with remarkable clarity even though he
could barely make out the images.
His memory was infallible.
He remembered their first trip to the
Mexican Caribbean having some mojitos in Cozumel after exploring the Mayan
ruins, their visit to the Iguazú Falls in Argentina before going down to tour
the glaciers of Patagonia, their excursion to the wonderful Lost City of Petra
in Jordan, and the first time they went to India and got their feet wet in the Ganges
River in the sacred city of Varanasi. They had always enjoyed traveling
together, until the last minute.
He reached out and found his bottle
of mineral water. He took a sip that eased his dry throat. He coughed hoarsely greenish sputum in a tissue and threw it limply into a plastic-lined
wastebasket that was already completely filled.
He felt a stitch of pain that ran from his upper back to his kidneys and remembered the day of their wedding. Alina was radiant, with her beautiful black hair that fell to her waist, her wreath of delicate yellow rosebuds and her flowing white chiffon dress. What he remembered most of all was her smile, which illuminated his life in a magical, complete and eternal manner. So eternal that now he still felt its presence.
He closed his eyes and felt that he
was going back in time. Suddenly his pain disappeared and a supernatural peace washed
over him.
Then, he opened his eyes and saw her.
There she was, by his bed, as young as the first time they had met, with her wonderful
healing smile and her wreath of rosebuds. He wanted to speak to her but not a
single sound came from his cracked throat. He wanted to tell her that he still
loved her, that he had always loved her, even before they knew each other.
Fortunately, she was the one who
spoke.
"I know you're having a bad
time, my love. It is part of the reality of life. But now everything is going
to end."
Goran could not answer her with
audible sounds, but he imagined the words.
"Stay with me, Alina. Don't
leave me again."
"I never left. I was always by
your side, accompanying you and guiding you all along the way. You, stubborn
old man, did not want to rebuild your life. I understand. It was also hard
for me to get used to not being able to touch you, not being able to caress you
or receive your caresses. Nonetheless, our hearts were always together."
Goran reached out his hand and
touched gently the smiling face of his beloved. A wave of comforting heat
washed over him and allowed him to endure a series of painful breaths. He tried
in vain to smile. He lowered his failing hand, which laid stretched out on the
cold sheet, while his eyelids became heavy tombstones that threatened to lower
permanently.
Alina began to sing in her melodious
voice an old ritual chant, a vibrant and powerful litany, which filled every
corner of the room. A chorus of heavenly angels and a multitude of triumphal
trumpets added to the reverberating mantra, in a glorious epiphany.
Goran felt invaded by that heavenly
music that invigorated him. With a last effort, he reached his hand out again
and he found Alina's. He gripped it with all his might until his fingers
turned white.
Then he moaned briefly and he became
suddenly silent with a victorious smile on his lips, in the solitude of his
bed.
In his inert hand, an eternal yellow
rosebud remained imprisoned forever.
Marcelo Medone
Marcelo Medone (1961, Buenos Aires,
Argentina) is a fiction writer, poet and screenwriter. His works have received
numerous awards and have been published more than 200 times in magazines and
books, both in digital and paper format, individually or in anthologies, in
multiple languages in more than 40 countries all over the world,
including 101 Words (USA), Friday Flash Fiction (UK), 50
Give or Take (Greece), Active Muse (India), U-Rights
Magazine (Nigeria), Antipodean Magazine (Australia), Borderless
Journal (Bangladesh, India & Singapore), The Bosphorus Review of
Books (Turkey), The Wild Word Magazine (Germany), Short Édition (France), Contos
de Terror (Brasil), El Narratorio (Argentina), Hojas en
Guarda (Mexico), Teoría Omicron (Ecuador), Kanon (Peru) and Terbi (Spain).