Melting
The slightest breath of the chilly nighttime wind caused the tiny flame of the candle to flicker, and threaten to extinguish. My bedroom window was cracked open, drifting sounds and smells from the street pushing its way into my room. I tolerated the company of the noise for the tradeoff of circulation, but clearly that was a poor choice for the flame in the middle of my room, as it struggled to survive against the wind. I was sitting at the foot of my bed, my back against the wooden frame. I didn’t close the door.
As the only light source in the room, the small fire had a considerable amount of control. My bedroom stood still, holding its breath, bending towards the flame to watch it. Barely paying attention to me. But I guess I wasn’t doing anything interesting. Were they watching the flame or the candle? Shadows of my nightstand, of my bed, of my dresser impatiently craned their forms to get a better look. When the flame flickered, my shadow almost disappeared to blend into the night, but the light came back fast enough that she was willing to stay with me, for now. While the flame was lit.
I sat on my hardwood floor, mesmerized as well, my bare legs sticking as if I had applied glue to the underside of my thighs. The candle was stuck similarly to the floor, wax melting itself into place. The shorter it became the more wax that seeped into the cracks in the wood and took root as a permanent fixture of my bedroom.
As the candle melted, the eyes inside the stick stared at me, taunting me. Where have you been? it seemed to say. Who are you now?
To avoid its gaze, I looked down at my fingernails. Very intently, I examined them for dirt. One of my thumbs was particularly dirty. I wasn’t sure why. I used a nail of the opposite hand to dig the dirt out, but as I did so, my finger nail started to feel very tender. I brought the thumb closer to my face, searching for some kind of splinter that would explain the uncomfortability. Nothing.
I continued to pick at the nail.
My nailbed started to feel hot. I touched my fingertip to the nail, and the nail shifted.
I paused.
I touched the nail again. The nail shifted again, but this time it completely slid off my finger. I gasped as the fully intact nail fell to the ground. My thumb felt bare, but it wasn’t in pain anymore.
Without the nail, the dirt remained stuck to my finger. I was able to brush it off.
I touched my fingertips to the other nails. Each finger lined up with the other one. Curious, I lightly pulled my hand back. The nailbeds followed suit, falling down onto the floor. I did the same to the other hand. With a minimum amount of effort, my bare feet were surrounded by my fully intact nailbeds.
I looked back at the flame. The eyes stared back at me. I don’t think its eyes were ever taken off of me.
“Did you do this?” I asked.
The candle remained lit, and the eyes within the stick remained unfazed.
I shook my hands to try to release the pent up energy, but my hands suddenly lost their form, melting into shapeless blobs at the end of my limbs.
I stood up. My heart started to panic, beating fast, contrasting the otherwise stillness of the room. I could feel something between my toes, and when I looked down, I saw that my toenails had completely fallen off as well. The bottoms of my feet threatened to melt into the cracks of the floorboards in the same way that the candle was earlier.
I turned my eyes back to the candle. The candle shifted its face, so that it could look up at me.
"Why are you doing this to me?”
The candle remained staring back at me.
I felt myself growing shorter and shorter, my flesh and blood and bones and hair and nails pooling into a puddle that continued to grow in size. I couldn’t resist it, and I kept sinking and sinking, and my body kept spilling around the room, and the wick of the candle was getting shorter, and the ground kept getting closer and closer, and I felt my thoughts slipping away as if they were melting too, and I became shorter and shorter until my entire body drenched the room in my flesh, and I was eye level with the candle.
The candle’s eyes had never wavered throughout this entire exchange. Now that I was face level with it, I saw that the eyes weren’t accusatory or hostile. They were curious.
The eyes blinked at me. I forgave them. A breath of wind entered the room, and finally extinguished the flame of the candle. I watched tendrils of smoke fight their way to the ceiling.
And I melted.
