Phobos' Candle

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. This does not matter quite yet. Don’t begin by tripping over your own feet, for that is no way to start anything at all. For now, keep it in the back of your tired mind. It will surely save you later. Or it might not.

Dearest reader, I digress. I am sure that when you hear “candle”, you think “light”, and when you think “light” a part of you eases back. I am sure that when you arrive home from wherever you have been and the sun has left the sky, the first thing your hands do is feel for the switch on the foyer wall. I can almost feel your shoulders settle into their rightful place as if they were my own.

Herein lies your inherent flaw. Your precious light illuminates your entire world. Your darkness struggles to overcome the reflection of the sun on the moon. Even the skin covering the bones of your body suffers without its gifts. I believe you call it scurvy.

Nevertheless, I will return to myself. I will return to my cabin in the woods.

This is where I live. A ways past Highway 9, up and over the rolling hill, and back down into the birch trees. I have named my house Goodness’ Sake. She earned said name after a hunter in green camouflage stumbled upon it, got his foot caught under a fallen branch, and cried, “For goodness’ sake! This is a godforsaken forest!”

I assumed he was lost and tired, or tired and lost. He got himself together and walked right by me inside the cabin without stopping to wonder what that little house was doing out there all alone.

But I am not alone! I have a handful of things I call my friends. Nine, to be exact. There’s North, South, East, and West, my four walls. There’s bed. There’s bowl, fork, spoon, and cup. I prefer my inanimate objects. People exhaust me. So, I have made sure I only have to interact with one because there is one I cannot escape. Myself. I wonder if you have ever been tired of you? It is alright if you have not. We cannot all be the same.

One time, when the dire need arose, I walked to the gas station on Highway 9. On the first week of July I padded my little feet five miles to the glass front door. That summer was so hot it caused the pavement to bubble. I hadn’t yet heard a welcome bell. When I opened the door, the ringing pulsated in between my ears like barbed wire. I should have heeded my own body’s warning. Instead, I grabbed an entire box of small rolls with white icing in the middle. I think you call them “Twinkies.” Not half bad if you’re truly hungry. Which I truly was.

I walked soundlessly towards more glass doors. These were cold to the touch. Turns out you all found a temperature for liquid in between frozen and warm. I laughed out loud before I could stop myself. I heard a woman’s voice speaking to me, “You okay over there, lady?”

I stopped dead in my tracks. Barbed wire was making ribbons of my brain.

I raised my hand up in the air with my fist curled under my thumb.

“Okie dokie lady.” I heard a snort of disgust. My skin bristled. Time to wrap this up.

I found the register even with my eyes stapled to the floor. I placed my Twinkies on the counter, heaving up a gallon of water next to them. God, the tiles were exquisite.

“Five sixty-seven.”

My hands dug in my pockets for dollar bills and change. I counted inside my head, again in my hand, and again as I drug my hand to the counter. I opened my mouth to repeat the total but stopped before saying anything at all. Red droplets began to fall upon my money. And more. And more. I withdrew my hand from the counter faster than a synapse fires to a neuron. The woman spoke again, “Oh, little one. Look up at me.”

I was turning to cement but I did what was asked of me. I looked up.

The woman was no longer a woman. Or maybe she never was. Now, she was something else. Her face was dripping dark, congealed blood. Her pores were bleeding. She didn’t have irises. She only had pupils. Her mouth hung open. It smelled like a morgue. Her teeth were ripsaw blades that fissured new wounds into her gums each time she opened her jaw to breathe.

I fell from the counter, spilling my purchases far away from me. I prayed she would not hear me speaking to myself, “You’re not real. You’re not real. You’re not real.”

“Real?” She howled at me. “Real?”

“You’re not real.”

She crossed from behind the small counter and began to move towards me, ever so slowly.

“I am the only thing that is real.”

She stood over me. I had never felt my size so acutely. A drop of brown blood fell from her face and landed on my cheek. The room spun once. I found my feet. The room spun again. I found the door. I heard her howl once more at my back:

“I am not in the shadows, little one! I am only in the light!”

I’ve never returned. Not once, not ever again.

I’ve learned my lesson.



So, reader, I am implored to ask of you: where does the true terror lie? In what you cannot see? Or in what you can?

Before you answer, make sure that you are sure.

We are all cabins in the woods.

Each of us.

But, I believe, we are going about it backwards.

I believe we are afraid of the wrong thing.

Don’t take my word for it.

Go on.

Go be a cabin in the woods.

Any woods will do.

Then, light a candle.

You’ll wait for the terror to come to you.

To startle you.

But it won’t.

It will wait until you’ve burned your fingerprints away at the wick of that candle. It will wait until you’re teary eyed from squinting in your dim-lit room. It will wait until you have nine friends left. It will wait until you have allowed yourself to breathe. And you will. Once.

Then, you will feel the barbed wire snaking through your brain. In the dying luster of your candle you will see the glint of a ripsaw blade. You will smell rust. That rust will be congealed blood perforating your olfactory glands. Your body will begin to feel like it’s calcifying. That is because it is. That is because you have made a paramount, egregious error.

You, dearest reader, are afraid of the wrong thing.