Flowers for Man

This story is a comment on beauty. I know it doesn't look like it at first, but it is.

The smell of sulfur in the air was poignant. But sulfur wasn’t the worst of everything that was floating about in the air of the year 2114. Human waste, rotting flesh, naked, red, and exposed. A glaring evidence of barbarism. A little far off, though, lay a young girl, waiting for a boyfriend who would never show up. She nodded sheepishly at the corpse. “He’s coming for me, you know”. She waited till sundown.

As the sun sank into the cruel horizon, the girl-her name was Rhodora- looked about her with growing interest. Her boyfriend hadn’t shown up yet, she might have to wait. Rising from the horizon, were a clutter of square office buildings, destroyed now due to climate change, which resulted in natural disasters that ravaged a once powerful civilization. “We’ve gone too far, we must stop”, the greens had said, if only they had listened. Food and water had gone scarce- there were less than ten water sources now, a few more supermarkets, but not many. The wealthy had gone straight to the banks. The poor that had bank accounts did the same. It was too late.

Rhodora pressed her head against her outstretched legs. How she wanted to be a cacoon now. Press tight against her own body and sleep. She did not like to think about what had happened next. Slowly, she found muscles loosening with caution as she raised her eyes to the body of what had been Rose. She closed her eyes and remembered what had been the forests, the oceans, the lakes, the mountains, even something as frivolous as the stones beneath her feet. They had once been below a majestic lake which had been home to life. She pondered over how their rotting corpses would turn to skeletons and the skeletons to dust. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, that’s how it was, how it is, how it always would be. That’s what nature told them everyday. That’s what nature showed them everyday. That’s what nature proved to them everyday. Yet they wouldn’t listen. Humanity elevated it’s growing bulk of fat high above all: above the animals and  plants that fed it in it’s infancy, above the higher power that gave it it’s morals and the comfort of another life. Above nature they fancied themselves, sneaking around it, pretending to be all big and important, that they did not need nature.

“You know Rose, they thought they were gods” she exclaimed out loud “and they were. But not the gods of nature they thought themselves to be. They were the gods of electricity and machines. They were the iron men, but all know that iron rusts”.

Rose would have turned the whole issue around, Rhodora knew. Rose would have gone on about how flowery language gets you nowhere. After all, human beings were smart. Yes, smart enough to know that a Rose was the most beautiful of flowers. Rhodora would have snapped right back that just because Rose was the most popular did not mean that Rose was the most beautiful. Whereas Rose was rosy in complexion and lovely indeed, Rhodora possessed an air of mysterious elegance that Rose could only imitate.

Now Rose was torn to shreds, by her own admirers.

Man had gone to such lengths to protect himself that he had forgotten the value of a flower.

And with that he forgot how to live.

Rhodora found herself looking at the office buildings, the skyscrapers, the houses- all part of one abominable war effort. The sky had turned pitch-black. Pitch black as it had been before the Big Bang. Pitch black, the color of ashes. She laid down again, not expecting a boyfriend this time. That time was past.

Man had waged war against nature and beauty. What was the use of a flower now?

She lay down and slept.