Embers of Mayfair

There’s a suffocating stillness that clings to Mayfair Nursing Home, a place that feels like it’s already been forgotten before the last breath escapes. Its long corridors echo with the hushed murmurs of residents too old to leave, and too forgotten to be missed. No one ever notices how the walls seem to press in a little too tight, how the air feels too thick, too stagnant. No one ever noticed the fire waiting.

Nina, the oldest resident, felt it first. The heat. The creeping, inescapable heat that snaked under her skin like a living thing. Her frail body twitched in the chair by the window as she felt it, the first flicker, the spark that came from nowhere. The cardigan on her lap began to sizzle, catching flame in an instant. But it wasn’t just the fabric—it was in her.

She screamed, but the sound was swallowed by the inferno that had already taken root inside her chest, scorching its way through her veins. The flames tore at her skin, her body twisting in agony as the fire didn’t just consume her, it changed her. Her muscles contracted, burned away to nothing. Her bones cracked and charred like brittle wood in a bonfire. The fire was inescapable. It wasn’t just burning her—it was becoming her

In the hall, Mrs. Harper sat frozen in her chair, her expression eerily peaceful, her eyes closed. She had always been serene, the kind of woman who smiled at nothing and nobody, content to just be. But as the heat began to curl around her, she opened her eyes in panic. The flames didn’t just crawl across her, they reached her. The gown she wore disintegrated instantly, leaving her skin exposed to the terrible heat, the pain of it enough to split her mind apart. She opened her mouth to scream, but the fire drowned out the sound. Her soul was being torn apart from within, consumed by the hunger of something far more ancient than the fire that fed on it.

No one knew it yet, but the fire was not a mere accident. It had come—it had been waiting. It had been feeding off the decaying souls of Mayfair for years. The fire wasn’t just fire. It was a thing.

As the flames spread, they weren’t content with just burning. They devoured, twisted, claimed. They sought the souls of those who were too frail, too broken, to fight. The elderly, the forgotten—nothing more than fuel for something that wanted. It wanted to feed, to consume.

The staff tried to help, of course. They scrambled, pulling at the residents, but the fire was too fast. It surged forward, unstoppable. The doors slammed shut with an unnatural force, trapping everyone inside. The windows warped, melted into one solid sheet of glass. The fire had sealed them in. No one could escape.

The staff fought to the end. They pushed, pulled, screamed at the locked doors. But nothing could stop the fire that had no source. There was no explosion. No gas leak. The fire didn’t need a reason. It had found them. And it wanted them.

By the time the fire department arrived, the building was nothing but blackened rubble. It wasn’t just the destruction. It was the emptiness. The smoldering ruins that once housed so many lives were now just a graveyard—one that had claimed them all.

But that wasn’t the end. In the weeks that followed, they rebuilt, as if trying to erase the memory of what had happened, of what hadn’t happened. They thought the fire was gone. That it had been a freak accident. They thought the curse was lifted.

They were wrong.

In the dead of night, when the building was still, the staff would hear things—whispers, barely audible at first. Cold spots, strange noises, things that didn’t belong. The air felt thick again. The walls seemed to watch, to listen. And some of the new residents began to act differently, as if they too could feel the heat, the suffocating presence that lingered just beneath the surface. Some were found in the morning, their bodies burned, scorched, but with no fire. The heat, however, remained.

But the fire? The fire had never left.

It was still there. Deep in the foundation. Waiting for the next soul, the next moment, to awaken it. And when it came, it would consume again.

Because Mayfair was never truly rebuilt. It was never meant to be.

The hunger—the fire—was part of it now.

And it would never stop.

It would never stop.