The Widower
27 September 2009
Dark fantasy. Words: 487.
He sat each night upon the broad shelf of the window to watch and wait. Sometimes he would nurse a candle in his hands, focusing steadily upon the flickering light or passing his finger through the flame.
He watched passersby negotiate the cobblestone street below, old and young, male and female. The ones he chose were always alone.
The room he inhabited remained bare but for a mattress of straw. Cobwebs hung in garlands. He rarely left the room, and most of the time he slept. When he awoke in the evenings, he would be hungry and restless. Lighting his candles, he watched moths dance around the guttering flames.
When lonely wanderers strayed too close, he left his seat by the window, and taking his candle, he descended the twisting staircase to unbolt the heavy, studded door.
His velvet clothes and pageboy’s curls gave him the allure of youth and wealth. The light reflecting in his eyes drew them, and they would go to him, men and women alike, their faces strangely empty as they sought to leave behind the cold and the poverty of the night.
He would lead them to his room, where they would come alive once more, bewildered by the litter of crackling leather and the white ghosts of old bones. There he would take them, drawing out all memory, all existence, leaving them as desiccated and empty as tinder. They too would be no more than husks strewn in the dust, silent as snakeskins and discarded cocoons.
Sitting in his window, sated, he would watch the moonlight shining upon the slick cobblestones. Sometimes he would weep parched, tearless tears.
Until, one night, death came upon tiny wings to take away his thirst. He lay sleeping in his bed, the whisper-dry remains of a new feast scattered on the floor. His candle sat upon the window ledge, sputtering in a pool of molten wax.
In the glow of the moon, the shadow of a moth flew in through the open crack of the window. Drawn to the flame it danced on the hot thermals, thrown back by the searing heat and forth by the instinct that propelled it towards light, an instinct that proved stronger than preservation. There the moth caught a spark of burning wax on its wing and soared away in a flight of the phoenix, plunging to its death upon the brittle tinder of a human corpse.
Dry as straw, the fragile lace of mummified flesh caught afire within a heartbeat, flames scurrying across the dust and crackling along cobwebs like tapers. The timbers of the house set alight.
Only now did the widower awake, surrounded by smoke and hellfire. Mesmerised, he studied the blaze, the orange light reflecting in his eyes for one last time. As the inferno grew higher, heat clouded his mind, until he watched his own fingers burn away, glamoured, like a moth to a flame.
Copyright © 27 September 2009
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