The Story
Wax - By Paige Newman
The thick, black cobbled streets and the dull metallic buzzing of the street lamps carved into my brain. The air was cold, freezing inside my fiery lungs. It rushed past my face and through my unbound hair, sticky and thick with smog. The yellowed gas lamps atop those awful, towering (BLANKS) seemed to pass me like tiny holes in the blanket of the night, blurring at the corners of my vision and blinking out into the abyss above. My legs ached, stinging from the freezing air and the acid piling in my bones. The blaze behind me was beginning to stir now, consuming the street to my left. The embers that floated into my skin filled me with a wholeness unlike anything else. A brilliant red seemed to warm my back, heating my body through. It flared inside me, pushing the warmth of whiskey, so golden and bitter, through my veins. As the world reddened and my body filled with a fervent brilliance, he began to whisper to me. He ran with me, down those bleak little streets slowly engulfing in flame. And as the sirens blared behind us, I breathed him in. He sat in my lungs and festered there, an overwhelming ecstasy flowing through me.
He never stayed long. The bleakness of the night would consume him, pulling him into the liquor-filled taverns and the dingy purple brothels. Sometimes, when the bars closed for the night, he would stumble back to me. He smelled of malted liquors and ash, filling my squat house with his aroma. He would slosh his way around in the dark until he found me, his skin burning into mine and his palms stinging my cheeks. He would often leave the house like that, in a drunken stupor, palms red and mind numb. I was left in shades of purple and black, high on the feeling of his rough hands. The more of a wastrel he became, the more infatuated I was with him. He needed me. He was alone without me, and I, him.
He needed money. No doubt to pay back an endless stream of loan sharks or to buy a bottle of his favorite poison. I was in short supply these days and, upon learning this, he threatened to leave me. But I needed him. I took to the streets, first selling off my heirlooms and such, though there were not many left now. I then took to trinket and candle making, much like my mother. My luck, however, was not quite as strong as my mother’s had once been. Weeks went by with nothing to show, I had long since run out of heirloom money and my meager earnings from the factory were split among bills, food, and his habits. I began to call to people, desperately trying to sell bracelets with smooth amber beads and candles, white and gleaming. One night, in the cold and dirty streets, a man happened to cross my path. With the sweetest voice I could manage, I asked if he would be interested in a candle. Upon turning to me, his face contorted in disgust and he shoved me violently, screaming something along the lines of “degenerate pig” and stalking on down the bleak street. “What a miserable life I’ve led.” I thought to myself, griping for the now smashed wax and loose beads. “I’m going to die with not a soul that would care.” I slumped in the gutter, defeated by the sudden flashes of my life thus far. I could not remember a time before pain. My father had left when I was young and my mother, and, abusive and useless as he was, she had been driven mad with grief. As I lie there, I became painfully aware of the similarities between us.
I looked up and saw the man, further down the street now. I followed him, though I did not at first know why. I watched him as he entered a home and, through a small window, I saw his family. They were bright and happy, warm against the crisp of early winter. Boiling rage filled me, screaming like the whistle of a kettle. All I’d ever wanted was staring me in the face, laughing and mocking. Jealousy filled me and, before I knew what was happening, I removed a small box from my coat, and the house was consumed by flame. The deafening screams that played from inside were as a symphony to my ears. The heat of the bonfire before me and the smell of the burning corpses inside were enough to satisfy years of rejection. An ecstasy, pure and painless, flowed through my body and crashed into me like waves across the rocky English shores. All too quickly, the feeling faded, leaving nothing but an empty fire and a memory all too unforgettable in its wake. I could hear sirens now, not too far off in the distance, closing in from the north. I sped down narrow alleys and darted through the familiar London streets, blood pumping like maple syrup. When I pulled myself into the bleak, squat house, he was there.
His amber eyes were easy to pick apart from the dark. They seemed to glow with knowledge and contempt. I stalked over to him, sure that he was following my every footstep, and feel at his knees. “How… can I help?” I managed to squeak out, breathless from the very sight of him. He stared with a hatred so deep it chilled me, and stated simply “Money.” The word dug into my stomach like a spear. I pulled the few, modest bills I had left and passed them on. Before I could react, he was towering over me, looming in front of the doorway into the silent hall. He was screaming. Insults poured from his mouth, burying themselves in my brain.The more I screamed the harder I wanted to hold onto him. I begged his forgiveness, crying “please… don’t leave… don’t leave” as he tore through the grip I had on his legs. He freed himself from my desperate pull and, upon separation, brought his knee into my crouching chest. Shooting pain erupted from the contact and I was left unable to move. As my consciousness faded, I watched him leave.
After that, I did not see him. Days turned into months without a trace. It was like he had never been there at all. The color seemed to drain from the earth itself. Everything began to freeze in the February snow. And as the world froze, so too did I. Fire after fire I lit, but nothing seemed to compare to that euphoria I had achieved so long ago. I was trying to fill something he had left in me, a pit that stretched from my lungs and into my stomach. The warmth of each fire filling me for shorter and shorter periods of time, it was becoming difficult to satisfy my hunger. The satiation of such a hunger was bordering on impossible, each light lasting me no more than a night or two now. I had become little more than an animal, darting from hole to hole, narrowly avoiding the authorities and searching for lights to consume in the blackness.
It was in this blackness that he returned to me for the final time. After enjoying the larger portion of the night with a family of three, I returned to that old squat house to find him, amber-eyed and musty. He sat against a wall, his cat-like eyes examining the soot covering my dress. He said nothing. He was… different now. An alien air seemed to press him, exhausting his patience for me. He was thinner, his eyes sinking far into his skull. He rose to meet me, amber eyes never leaving my own. When he saw my state, worn, rugged, and half starved, he tried to push past me. I stopped him with all of my strength, clinging to him. I could not let him escape me again. His glare pierced me as he began to shout. It was simple insults at first, but it quickly rose to be personal. “Filthy” he shouted, “worthless” he screamed, “useless” he shrieked. He pushed me to the floor and began kicking. I could barely feel the splintering of my bones over the panic of losing what was mine yet again. I held fast onto one leg as the other thrashed into my abdomen. I pulled myself up to meet him and with a single breath, asked him “why”. He did not respond. Instead, he pulled out a small, thin pocket knife and pushed it into my ribcage. As the blade twisted into my gut, I stared into those beautiful amber eyes. It was then that I was sure. I loved him.
////////
George did not know what to think. After months of unexplainable, unreasonably violent arson attacks, everything had stopped. It had been 3 weeks since the last reported arson and, in his near thirty years on the force, he had never seen anything so strange. It was as if the culprit had simply disappeared. The only possible evidence was the body of a woman, found dead a week earlier in Hackney, East London. Decay had already set in by the time investigators found the woman, but from the scene, it was evident that she had committed suicide. The policeman in charge of the case had sent a report stating that the woman had stabbed herself, puncturing her stomach and causing internal hemorrhaging. Stranger still than the brutal suicide method was her choice of knife. It had been a thick, sharp candle. It’s wax had been shaped to a razor-thin point, allowing for, provided enough force, a rough entry into the stomach. The woman appeared to be a candlemaker, as the house she was discovered in had very little, save for wax and matches. The woman seemed to be living off the wax, for upon autopsy, large traces of ground wax were found through her throat, stomach, and digestive tract. The strangest part of all perhaps, were the rows upon rows of candles discovered in what was believed to be her living quarters, each shaped meticulously like a man. All neighbors report that she was a solitary and quiet woman, not a single one could remember a family or lover that could explain these candles.