It was the month of yellow leaves crackling in the windswept streets. The temperature not yet frigid, but I was low anyway, trying to bundle myself against a different kind of temperature drop. The summer had heated my thoughts and made them lighter than air. Now all was heavy and uncertain. It was not merely an emotional extravagance of mine. I had lost six clients all at once. It meant a tightening of the belt I was not accustomed to or prepared for.
I walked up the steps of the house just as the rain started to spatter the windows, which I shut as fast as possible, but first, I brought in the laundry, and as if to confirm my need for haste, a flash of lightening lit up the room. The growling thunder followed shortly, and it was loud enough to feel in my stomach, or was that the fact that I had not eaten for so many hours?
I flipped on the switch, but the kitchen did not light up. I flipped it back and forth. Nothing. The flashlight was in the junk drawer. I went to the circuit box and breaker. Nothing. Just then, I noticed that no one else on the street had light either. Great. I returned to the junk draw for candles. There was only one left.
I softened its bottom with the lighter, and stogged it into the candle holder on my desk. Could I write by candlelight like George Sand? The flame was long and pointed like a stiletto. Then I heard it: a whistle coming from the candle, a sizzling sound. I sat and studied it.
“Sss-sss-sss,” it said.
My eyes narrowed.
“Sss-sss-sss, you silly woman.” The voice was very high-pitched and whispery.
I understood the sss’s as laughter. The candle was laughing at me.
“What’s so fucking funny?”
“You. With your dreams of becoming a writer.”
An auditory hallucination? Schizophrenia? Bipolar disorder? BPD? Parkinson’s? I’m too young for dementia. I don’t have encephalitis. What the hell. I kept staring at it but said nothing.
“I can help you if you want,” it said at last, wax sweat running down its side.
Another flash of lightning. The rain was really coming down now. It was pouring off the roof in streams.
“Really. You have more magic skills in you, a cheap paraffin candle from Target?”
“Careful there! Target is a very fine store. And yes, I do have my skills, particularly literary ones.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Right. Because you hold a degree in creative writing from Harvard and have spent your whole candle life reading the classics and whatnot—or you’re friends with the EIC of The New Yorker. Look at you, you’re getting shorter as we speak.
It was my turn to laugh.
"I am a magic candle, bewitched in the factory by a Wiccan wage worker.”
I had not finished laughing when this new hilarity reached my ears. I clapped my hands, convulsed.
“You obviously needed to laugh,” it remarked dryly. “It’s not that funny.”
I wiped my eyes.
“Yeah well, I live in abject misery because, hello! I am a writer.”
“Miserable no more. Blow me out, and you will see.”
I was about to protest, when I realized power had been restored all along my street. I blew out the candle and sat motionless. A thin thread of smoke embroidered the darkness.
One year later, I was thinking about the candle, what was left of it, which I had bought a special box for. I should light it again, I thought, just to thank it.
A fab stab at a modern fairy tale; fulsomely flickering to my reader's eyes delight.
'When Wax Meets Flame' sounds like the strapline to sell a while sequenced series of of fresh fairy tales.
"When I went to the drawer, lifted out the box and opened the lid..."???