The Boy and His Candle

“I just... I feel, I FEEL like I’m going crazy. I feel like I’m slowly fading away, out of reality.” Benjamin looks away from his therapist and takes off his glasses, something he does often. The idea that there is a barricade from what is in front of his eyes bothers him, even if it IS meant to help.

“Now why do you think that is?” she asks, crossing her legs serenely.

“I don’t, I don’t know, Miss.”

“Perhaps something from your past is troubling you?”

The fear in his eyes becomes crystal clear. He sits for a minute, puts on his glasses, and focuses on the flickering candle on her desk. “I was stuck in my room most of the time. I used my imagination as a way to entertain myself. It seems my mind’s turned on me now. I constantly feel like I’m being watched.”

Silence ensues. After twenty of the longest seconds, at least it feels this way to Benjamin, his therapist replies, “Well. What are things you can do to keep your own mind from fighting itself? Are you still practicing woodworking occasionally?”

“Oh, yeah, I started making a chair when my ex left. Something to keep me from thinking about her,” he replies, shifting in his seat.

“I’m happy to hear that. Distraction is good, but don’t just use it to avoid your problems.” His therapist then looks at the clock, and smiles. “It seems we’re out of time. We’ll meet again next week, why don’t we try talking about her absence then?”

Benjamin smiles as his way of agreeing, and stands up. They shake hands and he walks out. When he gets into his car, he leans his head back and sighs. He DOES feel much better, despite his insistence that therapy won’t help. The corners of his mouth turn upward into a slight smile as he pulls out of the parking lot.

I had been watching Benjamin for a long time now, and I knew him better than most. Benjamin doesn’t always feel so lost in his own head, and when he isn’t, he’s an extraordinary young man, full to the brim of creativity and vibrancy. He has a decent enough week, even striking up a conversation with a man working on the houses being built close-by his place, earning him some extra wood planks. He shouldn’t run out of wood any time soon. He has a few meltdowns, but nothing too major. He attends his therapy and talks about.. Well, her, without breaking down. He’s feeling the best he’s felt in a very, very long time.

The last day of classes hits before spring break, and Benjamin leaves the local college he’s attending. I shall tell you that this is for the last time; he will never enter that building again. He drives to his house, the one he’d moved into with his girlfriend. He enters and a wave of loneliness washes over him. He lays on the couch and drowns in memories.

Him and his girl- well, his ex, Charli- were so happy about renting this house together. They’d been dating for a year, and while her parents thought they were moving fast, they couldn’t have been happier. Well, at least he’d thought, because three weeks ago they got into an argument. She packed her things and left that very night. He received a series of messages from her, which all said the same thing: His emotional baggage was too much and she couldn’t take it anymore. He would never see her again.

To him, the house still feels haunted by her. He can STILL smell her perfume, STILL hear her footsteps, STILL see the steam coming from under the bathroom door as if she were taking a hot shower. She’d even left, next to the bathroom door, a pair of high heels she’d never liked, which he couldn’t bear to throw out. This made it impossible for him to get her out of his mind.

Other than thinking about her, though, he’s been feeling okay enough. In fact, he’s been feeling pretty amazing. He stops taking his medication, because after all, he doesn’t need it, right? He throws the bottles of pills into a drawer in his kitchen, feeling no need for them.

Now the weekend passes by, see, and nothing worth mentioning happens, except that he works more on the chair he is making, getting all four of the legs made. He’d already brought all the wood in from the garage from that kind man a week ago, obviously, and his organization is perfect. Everything in its place.

Things seem to be going well.

Monday hits, and instead of waking up feeling refreshed like he’d been for the last handful of days, he sleeps in until 1:30, even then not wanting to get up. So he doesn’t. I mean, why would he want to? He has nothing, nothing besides himself. And because HE is his own worst enemy, he proves to be terrible company. He wrestles with negative thoughts the whole day, only getting up twice to use the restroom and once to grab leftovers for dinner.

Towards the end of the day, he sets his phone down and gets up to shower. He’s also deciding he should shave, as his peach fuzz is growing out, when he hears it. A voice. It was quiet, but it was definitely there.

He pauses completely, frozen with fear. It sounded like the voice came from his room, which was just behind him. He can’t bear to turn around and he can’t bear to walk away, until he hears it again.

“What’s up, boss?”

He then runs out of the hallway, past the living room, and into the garage. He turns on the light and sits down on the ground, and tries to catch his breath. The voice, it’s back.. Why? What’s so different about today that's different from the past week? What’s so different that he had to wake up feeling terrible? What’s so different that the voice has to come back?

He calms enough that he can breathe almost normally again, but his hands are still shaking. His thoughts are racing, racing, racing…

“Helloooo?...”

This voice.. This voice that has been haunting him forever, it’s BACK. Yelling, “What do you want from me?!” He stands up, circles for a minute, then grabs a container of nails and three wood planks. He runs inside and into the bathroom, the voice following him. He grabs one of the high heels his ex left and takes it in with him. He closes the door.

After deciding that the regular lights are too bright for his eyes at the moment and lighting one of the many giant candles he has around the house, he sets to work, nailing the boards to the door and doorframe to trap himself inside, using the heel as a hammer.

To him, enclosing himself in this space makes sense because, well, he heard the voices out there. How could they possibly be in the bathroom with him if he heard them in his bedroom and the garage?

Telling himself this, he slides to the ground, candle on the counter. He takes multiple deep breaths and, after some time, his nerves calm down. He stays on the ground a bit longer, staring at the shoe. Then in a sudden burst of anger, he picks it up and throws it at the wall farthest from him and watches it fall into the bathtub. He stands up and looks about him…….

There. In the mirror. That isn't his face staring back at him, but instead a man- no, this creature has a humanoid figure but could not be a person. His torso is long and his arms and legs are impossibly skinny, skinny as the arms of a young child. His eyes are huge and pink. His skin is nearly paper-white, and his hair is also white, though it’s also knotted and tangled. His skin looks thin, like it was stretched to fit around his skull and bones. His smile is also tight; his lips are long and thin, and when he opens his mouth, Benjamin can see the sharpness and blackness of his teeth, and when he licks his lips, his snake tongue shows.

Benjamin screams and drops to the floor, putting his hands over his ears and writhing is serious discomfort. He makes it to his knees and throws himself at the door, trying to pry the wood off of the frame.. But he can’t get it off. His fear builds as he keeps prying, until he falls over in frustration and exhaustion. He curls into a ball and lays on the floor, screaming and begging, “Please.. Please, just go away,”

Benjamin tries a few more times to get out of the bathroom, but his attempts are futile. He’s trapped. He cannot escape the prison he made for himself, neither mentally nor physically.

Over the span of the next few days, he has a few more episodes where he sees the pink-eyed man. He keeps the candle out often, though sometimes he lights it to keep him company. He strikes up multiple conversations with this candle, who is now his only friend.

He tries to drink water from the faucet, but it makes him sick. He throws up, not even having the energy to make it to the toilet, so he vomits on the floor where he sleeps.

This goes on for several days. Things will now happen which I may not go into too much detail about, for I’m a symbol of faith and hope and these things only cause heartache and agony.

What I will say is that this goes on for quite some time. Benjamin isn’t exactly sure how long. And after one last episode where he sees the pink-haired man again, he breaks his glasses in frustration. This is where I will not go into detail, I wouldn’t want to upset anyone. So.. as the candle flickers out, he then takes his last breath and his soul disappears from the world. Free at last.

A week after spring break, the school staff is beginning to worry. They contact Charli, who goes to the same college, but she shuts them down and refuses to check on him, thinking it's nothing serious. Some time later, they finally contact Benjamin’s dad. This father, sure, was abusive. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that he doesn’t care about his own child. People have their own reasons for doing bad things, and his dad truly thought he was in the right doing what he did. But that is part of his own story, not Benjamins, so I won’t let him hog the spotlight, especially because he’s in the opposite world from us.

The father pulls up to his son’s house and knocks on the door. “Benjamin?” He knocks harder. “Benjamin, are you in there? I know you are, your car’s out here! Open up!”

He keeps banging on the door, louder and louder, his concern turning to fear and rage. Benjamin never ignored his dad when he came to visit. So what is this?

He becomes frantic, shouting and pounding on the door, tears streaming down his face. “Benjamin, PLEASE!!”

He pulls out his phone and calls the cops, panic-stricken.

When they manage to get into the bathroom, the scene isn’t a good one.

Benjamin is gone, and the candle has burned out.

I told you this story wasn’t happy. It crushes me that this boy was created only to suffer his whole life. Everyone told him things would get better, but nothing did.

This isn’t simply a story of sorrow. There are greater things for this boy after death. Many of my kind think that taking one’s own life is still murder, and wish for them to be cast down. But Benjamin was never in the right state of mind. He didn’t know any better, he just wanted the pain to end. That’s why I granted him wings. Now he may fly up here with the rest of us, finally at peace.