The Flameless

"The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window."

His pulse quickened when he saw the flame. “This cabin shouldn’t exist.”, he thought to himself. The stories he heard as a kid about an abandoned cabin in the woods with a burning candle was just urban legend. He’s lost in the woods with one, and only one, path that leads to this cabin. His perspiration has completely engulfed his shirt. The burning candle flame has a mesmerizing quality to it. Sudddenly, as he concentrates on the flame, he feels himself walking towards the cabin. His mind is thinking two seperate thoughts at once, “What are we doing?!” and “It’s not as scary as I had once imagined.” As he approaches the door, he can feel and energy that is pure fear mixed with dread. As he is concious of putting his hand on the door, he looks at the candle flame in the window. Again, mesmerized by the flame, he opens the creaky door. At this very moment, he feels as if he would rather die than be in this very place at this exact moment. His heart is racing, his veins are pumping boiling hot but ice cold blood and he’s aware his shirt is plastered to his body from sweat. His legs feel like they weigh three hundred pounds and his arms feel like they are moving through a wall of gelatinous goo. What he hears next will haunt him for the rest of his life.

The sound of ten thousand souls being skinned alive with the familiar crackling of flames providing a backdrop to this hellscape. His eyes dart around the inside of this abandoned cabin only to find nothing but darkness. This is not ordinary darkness, this is a pitch black that doesn’t allow anything past it. As he’s searching for the burning flame of the candle, he cannot find such a thing. “Where is this hellish sound coming from and why can’t I see anything?!”, are his thoughts while trying to back away. His legs propel him forward as his mind is screaming for him to turn around. As he enters the black void of the doorway, he feels heat.

“Welcome.” A voice says from the far corner of the room. Suddenly, he can make out shapes of furniture in a dark room with the light of a single flickering flame from the window. He looks into the darkness of the corner where the voice had come. He can make out a silhouette of a person but no discernible features. “Where am I?” He asks as if it were only a thought. He could feel his lips move but as if he was not in control. The voice responds with..”you are in a place where time and space simply do not exist.” As he tries to back away, he feels cemented to the cabin floor. “Why am I here?” The voice responds and simply says, “you have asked to come here in your deepest and darkest thoughts.” Suddenly, he hears laughter that slowly turns to the screaming and crying of souls being skinned alive. He feels the most excruciating heat and sees a large flame engulf his whole body. His scream blends with the macabre melody of the ten thousand. Somehow, he can see outside of his body and he can see he has become a single flame for what should be a cold, dark flameless candle sitting in the window of an abandoned cabin in the woods. He see the scared expression of a person on the woods on that very path leading to the cabin. As he screams, “No, turn around! It’s a trap!” He realizes his voice is drowned out by the screams of the ten thousand souls. The person looks to be walking towards the cabin against their will.

They, too, will become another one of the flameless.