Daily Flash Fiction Contest

Something Beautiful

Something Beautiful
26 June 2006

The rugged beggar counted the rain drops sliding off his plastic shelter. 182, 183, 184… He touched a drop of water and tasted it. It tasted like water fed with pollution from cars, factories and human waste.

He saw what he considered his twin. He was unwanted, despised and hated. He was polluted with corruption, anger, hurts and betrayal. Then, seeking vengeance, to the betrayals, he betrayed, to the hurtful, he hurt- returning the pain they cost him a hundred times more. When he looked around him, he realized that he has lost his family who were sacrificed in the course of vengeance. He escaped legal punishment but he was punished by his family’s absence for life.

And many years later, he finds himself housing under an open-spaced parking under a self-made plastic shelter. Each day he lay there, hoping a car would reverse into him so that he doesn’t have to face the courage of trying to commit suicide every day.

However, that day, a car almost did run over him and he jumped out of his shelter, his heart pounding. Almost immediately, he realized that he didn’t want to die and the beauty of life flashed past him one after another. He realized that although the many things in his life has turned out badly, the rain and the sun and other God-created natural beings are so beautiful- maybe… life is not about his hurts anymore.

238 words.