Flames

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. Slowly, the small lick of flame expanded. The flame bloomed into a large ball. A chest, arms, pelvis, and legs flowed out of this ball. Once fully formed, the flame being lifted its hand up to its sunken eyes. Its head plumed out, plump and oversized like a pumpkin. When a grandfather clock in the corner of the cabin struck 11:30, the flame person looked out the window.

Outside of the cabin’s entrance lay a long winding path that slithered deep into the woods. A mile down this path, a needle of white light pierced the black night. This needle beamed its way into the cabin through the window. The flame being turned its flickering head. A woman wearing a long green dress sat on the loveseat in front of the fireplace. She smirked from under her clumps of messy hair and snapped her fingers. A cluster of logs appeared in the fireplace, accompanied by a bright flickering fire.

“Thought you could use some warming up, hon,” she said.

“On a summer night. You think you’re funny, don’t you?” said the flame being. It walked to the center of the cabin and stood in front of the woman. “Why did you summon me?”

“Simple,” she said. “So I could tell you a story.”

“What story could you possibly tell me that I would want to hear?”

“Oh, come on. Live a little. Have a seat.” She snapped her fingers again. More flames snaked into existence out of thin air. The fire morphed into a comfy chair. The flame being looked at the chair, shrugged, and sat down. “Alright,” it said.

The women grinned, revealing a full squad of discolored teeth specked with black. “Excellent…”

***

There was once a boy named Marvin who loved to read. He frequented the local library and plucked books from their shelves on a regular basis. A fast reader, the boy could inhale five books a day. He read with intense curiosity, often re-reading the same books several times.

One day after school, Marvin found a particularly interesting book entitled The Book of Chaos. A five-pointed star with a half-open eye ensconced in the middle adorned the front cover. The star was gold while the eye was a light glittery green.

“Neato!” Marvin whispered, adjusting his glasses. He sat down at the nearest table. He immediately poured into the book’s contents, absorbing every word of the 500 pages within 90 minutes. Instantly was his head filled with the principles, history, and practices of some strange sort of magic.

So in love was he with this subject that he read the book again. After another 2 hours of re-reading, he felt sure that he could confidently practice the steps outlined in the book. Smiling, he shifted his glasses closer to his freckled face and checked out the book, stuffing it into his backpack. He walked home with a spring in his step.

On Marvin’s way home, another boy named David passed by on a big red bike. David, a little oversized for his bike, didn’t like a lot of things. He didn’t like that he was fourteen and still in sixth grade. He didn’t like that girls made fun of him for being “a big dumby.” And he certainly didn’t like the spring in Marvin’s step, thought it was sissy. Sissy things aggravated David the most.

“Hey ginger!” called David. “You should really take a shower.”

“What are you talking about?” said Marvin. “I’m perfectly clean.”

David whirled his bike around and sped over a huge puddle next to Marvin, showering the latter with muddy water.

“Not anymore,” laughed David as he rode away.

Marvin clenched his fists over the shoulder straps of his backpack and kept them clenched for the rest of his walk home. “These are my favorite pants,” he muttered bitterly as he stepped into the house.

“Marv,” said his mother. “What happened to your pants?”

“I… I fell,” said Marvin.

The tired mother looked the boy up and down. “Well, go on upstairs and get cleaned up,” she said. “Dinner’s almost ready.”

After he showered and ate dinner, Marvin returned to his room quickly and wrenched the book from his backpack. He flipped it open to a passage about sigils.

One can make a sigil from anything, the page read. When one imbues a sigil with one’s will, one will be able to bend the laws of the universe according to that will.

Marvin sat back and thought for a moment. He saw a piece of cardboard in the corner by his bed. As if in a trance, he took this piece of cardboard and fashioned it into a small pyramid. On the sides of this pyramid, he drew three concentric circles. On the bottom, he drew a cross. He wasn’t sure why he drew those things, but they seemed right to him. He held the pyramid out in front of him. After a moment of thought he said, following the book’s instructions:

“I… ahem… I imbue this with my WILL.”

He cleared his throat and patted his chest. Blinking a few times, he thought, Did my voice change just now? He shook his head and looked back at his new sigil. It glowed with a bright green hue that shined even in the light of his lamp. The radiance didn’t create a shadow, though. It was as if the pyramid, the base of which spanned across Marvin’s palm, stood in relief to the 3-dimensional world, the green glow carving it out of space. Then, the glow faded and disappeared. The pyramid, just a normal little cardboard shape, stood inert in Marvin’s palm.

“That was weird,” he said. He looked back at the book and saw an incantation.

lliw ym fo rewop eht yb neppah siht ekaM

“Hmmm,” he said. He mouthed the words a few times, unsure if he was pronouncing them correctly. Then, he repeated them aloud. They hung in the air for a few seconds. The walls in his room bent back slightly, then snapped back to their original position. Blinking, Marvin suddenly had an urge to throw the sigil in the trash and run out of the room screaming.

Then, a thought popped into his head. The thought of David splashing muddy water on him. Another image soon followed that. One of David’s underwear stretching out from the seat of his pants, the elastic catching on his nose and pulling his face back. That thought made Marvin smile.

Suddenly, his pyramid sigil glowed again. His mouth was open. He hadn’t even realized his lips were moving. He looked back up and saw the walls of his room bend outward once more. As the glow from the sigil faded and died, Marvin shook with fright. He tucked the sigil into an empty desk drawer and closed the book, tossing it under his bed. He went to bed without brushing his teeth. As he drifted to sleep, a small pair of yellow eyes opened and stared at him from the far corner of his dark room. They closed as his eyes closed.

***

Marvin hopped into the last day school feeling good. Having wiped the memory of the previous night from his mind, he whisked his way from his locker through the halls without worry. Then, after he sat down in class, his teacher announced an unexpected absence. David.

Marvin’s eyes popped open as he listened to the teacher’s vague explanation of how David had to go to the hospital the previous night. Marvin’s friend, Tabby, filled him in more after tugging his ear. Doctors said David had been playing with his underwear and the elastic ripped into him in a very nasty way. David tried to tell them that he wasn’t playing with his underwear, that the elastic somehow wrapped him up on its own.

“That wasn’t the weirdest part, though,” said Tabby. “He said the underwear glowed green.”

Sweat beaded from Marvin’s forehead. “Yeah,” he whispered. “That’s… that is weird.”

As soon as Marvin got home that afternoon, he tossed the pyramid into the trash can. He sat down at his desk and started to draw on a random piece of computer paper, trying to take his mind off the book under his bed, off the sigil in the trash. He drew for 10 minutes without thinking. After those ten minutes, he sat back, looked at his drawing and screamed. Dark, black graphite eyes stared back at him from the white paper. A green glow slowly outlined the eyes and lifted them from the page, holding them in mid-air.

“Hello,” echoed a voice from nowhere. A grinning mouth appeared below the eyes. Slowly but steadily, the room descended into darkness. Blackness enveloped everything except for Marvin, the pyramidal sigil that now floated in mid-air, and the grinning face that then became the head of an old woman. Black wiry hair cascaded from the woman’s scalp. A mole protruded from her big nose. The rest of her slim body materialized within a green dress.

“Hmmm, you’ve made quite a powerful sigil,” she said, taking hold of the cardboard pyramid.

Marvin was on the floor, his eyes popping out. Warmth flowed down his leg in a hot stream and puddled the floor below his kaki shorts. Dirty pants again, he thought absently. He wanted to get up and run but his body wouldn’t respond. It was as though the witch - Yeah, she’s definitely a witch, he thought – held him in an invisible vice.

He swallowed and said, “What do you want?”

A loud cackle shredded the air, ripping from the witch’s gaping mouth. “Isn’t it obvious, you silly boy?” she said. “I want you to use your power, hon. You are quite powerful.”

“M-me?”

“Yes, you.”

Marvin’s fear abated. He looked down at his thin 12-year-old arms and legs. One word stuck out of the witch’s speech to him. Power.

“I’m… p-powerful?”

“Yes, of course, you are, boy. With this sigil, you have the power to bend reality to your will.” She smiled wide, blackness polka-dotting her grimy teeth. “Be careful, though. What is bent must eventually bend back.” She laughed again as her body disappeared. The glowing eyes receded back to the page on which they were drawn.

Marvin blinked and looked around. His room was back to normal. His glasses had fallen to the floor. Trembling, he picked them up, stood up and went back to his desk. The eyes that he drew, now idle, stared back at him. He looked at his trashcan. The cardboard pyramid sat atop a mound of balled-up papers and used tissues. The boy felt his lips curl into a smile. He moved his trembling fingers toward the pyramid. It started to glow with life as his fingers approached it. The glow poked through his curled fingers as he picked up the sigil.

“Marvin, honey?” called his mother. She knocked on his bedroom door, making him jump.

“Y-yeah, mom?”

“Are you ok?”

“I’m fine, mom.”

“Ok… well, come downstairs. Dinner’s almost ready.”

“Ok.” Shaking his head, Marvin laid the pyramid down on his chair and walked to the door. He glanced back at the sigil and watching its glow fade before closing the door and walking downstairs.

***

“So, son,” said Marvin’s father at the dinner table. “When you goin’ to football camp?”

“John,” his mother began.

“No, Sue. I asked the boy a question.”

Marvin clenched his fist around his beef encrusted fork. “I’m not going, dad.”

The clink of his father’s fork against the dinner plate echoed in the dining room.

“You’re goin’, boy,” he said. He pointed his fork at Marvin. “You’re goin’ if I have to drag you by your toes.”

“I told you I don’t wanna play football, dad. I wanna be an artist.”

“John, he doesn’t have to go if he doesn’t-” said his mother.

“Damn that! Ain’t no son of mine gonna be a weak little welp! He’s goin’ to play football and that’s final!”

The family ate the rest of the meal in silence. “May I be excused,” said Marvin after cleaning his plate.

“Yes, you may,” said his mother.

Marvin walked upstairs with clenched fists, leaving a argument between his parents in his wake. It took all his restraint not to slam the door shut. He walked to his desk chair and stopped. His sigil was glowing. He pushed up his glasses, picked up the sigil and examined its five sides, studying the small symbols he drew on each face. He stopped at one set of concentric circles. These circles glowed brighter than the symbols on any other face. They held Marvin’s gaze.

As he stared at these circles, images flashed through his mind. He saw his frail, bony limbs. He saw David speeding his bicycle past him and splashing him with muddy water. Finally, he saw his father’s angry face yelling at him to quit being weak. Quit being a welp. Then, he saw the witch. The witch in the green dress. She told him he was powerful. He smiled as he thought to himself, Yes, I am powerful.

And maybe I could be more powerful.

The green glow from the pyramid surged, pulsing with life. The green light felt like it pulsed in and out of him. Letting the green energy fill him with heat, Marvin spoke the incantation from the book again.

lliw ym fo rewop eht yb neppah siht ekaM

He looked up and saw his room go dark. A shriek escaped his quivering lips. A vague outline of the witch’s grinning face flickered in front of him. When the light returned to his room, he watched all four walls bend as they had the night before, but much farther. Then, when they returned to normal, he looked down at the pyramid. The glow faded and disappeared.

Fatigue suddenly gripped Marvin so hard that he could barely keep his eyes open. Dropping the sigil on the floor, he collapsed on his bed and fell into a deep sleep.

***

The next morning, Marvin awoke feeling the best he had ever felt in his entire life. He rose from bed feeling as though he had the strength of ten men. Upon a single look in the mirror, he popped his eyes open. His young, sinewy muscles bulged and bristled. His arms and legs had dilated to twice their previous size overnight. He didn’t even need glasses anymore. He couldn’t believe his eyes. He now had the size and strength of a strong, muscular 12-year-old boy. Breathing hard, he hopped shirtless out of his room and down the stairs by twos.

“Mom!” he shouted. “Mom, look at-”

He stopped at the dining room doorway. From there, the nightmare unfolded.

Blood. It drenched the dining room, the table, the walls, and the chairs in big splashes. Trembling, Marvin stepped forward. The source of the blood came into view with each step. His father lay over the table in a pool of his own blood. The other body, his mother, lay on the floor in another pool of blood.

In the distance, someone screamed creating a ringing in Marvin’s ears. The scream sounded vaguely like Marvin’s own. By the time he realized his mouth was yawned open as far as it would go, a loud laugh overlapped the scream. The witch’s laugh. She materialized out of thin air behind the dining room table.

“What… what did you do to my parents!” screamed Marvin.

The witch laughed again. “You silly boy,” she said. “You mean what did you do?”

“I… I didn’t do anything!”

“Yes, you did. Remember the spell you cast last night?”

“S-spell…” Dread pulled Marvin’s heart down like a lead anchor, twisted his stomach. The incantation he whispered came to his mind.

“Don’t you remember what I told you?” laughed the witch. “What is bent must eventually bend back. Hahahahaha!” The witch’s cackle died in the air slowly as she faded away.

“No…” Marvin clutched the sides of his head. “No, no, no, no, NO!”

Tears leaked from his eyes. He fell to his knees. He took hands away from his face and looked at them. Panting, he stood up and ran back up to his room. Once inside, he took up the sigil, which glowed again. “Take it back!” he screamed. “Take it back, take it back, take it back!” He kept screaming at the glowing pyramid. Then, a lick of flame appeared on the back of one of his hands.

“W-what?”

“It doesn’t work like that, hon,” echoed the witch’s voice.

“Wait! Wait!”

The flame on the boy’s hand spread quickly through his entire body. Warmth, then heat, filled Marvin inside and out. He screamed with intense pain. The flames consumed him whole. The fire raged and burned with intense passion. Soon Marvin rose reborn. He became the fire. Crying out with anger and despair, the fire being shrunk to a small ball of flame that blasted out of the bedroom window. It soared through the air, flying past everything in sight until it stopped at a cabin in a forest. It lighted a candle for a brief moment, then burned out.

***

The grandfather clock struck midnight. Its bell rang out into the dead, empty summer night.

“That murder case baffled the local police, didn’t it?” said the flame person.

“Why yes, of course,” said the witch. “You wouldn’t care about that anymore, though, would you Marvin?”

“No… I guess not.” The being that was once Marvin stood up and paced the cabin. “Now all I care about is you.”

“You don’t seriously blame me, do you?” said the witch, laughing. “You were the one who cast the spell. And I warned you.”

“Yes,” the flame being whispered. “You probably never noticed when I cast the next one, though.”

The witch’s smile faded. “What are you talking about?” Smoke rose from the bottom of her dress. She looked down. Green flames sparked and began to consume her dress.

“What?! What have you done?!” she shrieked.

The flame being turned and looked back at her. A dark smile creased its big, flickering face. Grimacing, the witch flared her hand out at him and whispered something. When she did, the green flames roared and consumed her faster. She screamed.

“What is bent must eventually bend back,” said the flame being. “You taught me that.”

“NOOOOOOO!”

The green flames raged and engulfed the witch, lighting everything in the cabin in a warm green glow. Soon, the green fire swallowed the witch whole, reducing her to ashes. Her screams of pain cracked the night air as the fire consumed her. The flames roared with dark life, then shrunk to nothingness. The witch was gone

The being made of fire looked down, then out the window. Slowly, his flames began to extinguish as well. They shrunk down to the small flicker of flame that had lighted the candle before. This candle, now melted to half its original length, stayed lit until morning. Then, the small wick of light disappeared, a thin tendril of smoke wisping out of the window and into the woods.