Apartment #13

02 Candle

Her eyelids fluttered open, but what met her eyes was not reality.

Rubbing her crusted eyes, a fogged vision of an object in the distance began to form before her.

Candle. She could see a candle in the distance. 

It was flickering, exuding an air of happiness and warmth. There were people, sitting around it, clapping, singing. It felt strangely alien to her. It was... It was the feeling of family. Something that she had forgotten for so long; something that the house did not have. 

The house.

Her pupils dilated at the thought. 

Before she could react, the world around her swivelled into a frigid blur and there she was again, lying on the rickety bed. 

I need water, she thought. Water to rejuvenate herself from that dream that she could not explain, that could have potentially brought back memories. Memories that she wanted to discard, to leave behind and just pretend nothing happened at all. 

Making her way to the kitchen with small, tentative steps, she tried her best to push aside the suffocating thoughts in her mind. 

Just doesn't feel right, she thought as she picked up a cup gingerly. Nothing felt right. 

Then she caught sight of what nearly made her collapse to the floor. 

Candle. It was the same one; even flickering in an oddly similar fashion. Simply standing there, the melted wax trickling down onto the lone cupboard it was in. 

She could swear that it wasn't there yesterday, not surrounded by the sheets of cobwebs in the antique cupboard. 

But there was nobody else in the house to have placed it there. 

There she stood, her stare fixated on the flickering candle in the cupboard, the dancing inferno eating away the splintered wood on the cupboard door. 

A strange wind blew across the empty room, sending a tremor down her spine. She inhaled sharply. 

She did not know what to make out of it. The dream, the candle, the memories... All flooding back to her. 

No. No... It's not possible. Even if she convinced herself of it, it wouldn't make sense. Nothing made sense anymore. 

Lost in her thoughts, something then clicked behind her, an ominous sound that snapped her out of her thoughts. 

The latch closed.

She was shut inside the room.