Encounters Anthology

White Candle

My mother once told me how as a child, her father used to come back home with his knees bleeding. She always tended to his wounds without a single word spoken. She knew better not to ask, but she was curious. After her father went to sleep she'd sneak into his room and go through his briefcase. She never found anything but one thing did stick to her mind. The smell.

She said that when her father came home, when she opened the briefcase a particular smell exploded in her brain, "A holy burning," she said. The smell of a pipe organ playing dramatic tunes to the sky. She didn't like the smell; it felt overwhelming and secretive. She thought that the smell weighted her down and sometimes caused her to have nightmares. My mother had a repetitive dream where she was in an ever-changing maze that whispered horrible things to her. She said that it was as if sins were being confessed, sins that they would do to her. She'd wake up crying in fear and as she grew older she learned to hold her breath every time there was a smell similar to her father's briefcase. Later, my mother found out that her father spent his evenings praying for forgiveness. She never found out why.

After my grandfather's death we had to clean out his house. I kept one of the boxes with hope of finding a clue to the knee bleeding sins. The box was filled with red candles, some were used and some were new but all of them where the same type. Except for one. It was a white candle that had dripped onto a jewellery box covering its lid and surface, protecting a sacred secret.

It took a while to melt off the wax, but when I finally did, I uncovered the most beautiful box I had ever seen. The gold was embroidered into the wine dark wood forming an elegant swirl of roots embracing the lid. The few jewels it had were a flicker of forbidden fruit tempting the beholder to reach beyond them and taste their juice. When I opened the box, its insides were engulfed by a rotten dark that swallowed its outside beauty. It smelled like an old crypt that was never used or opened.

The only object in the box was a light pink ribbon in perfect conditions. I was marvelled by the innocence of such treasure. I took it out of the box and gently tied it around my hair. I closed the box, wrapped it in newspaper, and placed it in a drawer. The ribbon embraced my hair in such a loving way that it was hard to believe that such life had been able to live in darkness for such a long time. I wondered why my grandfather had kept this object for so long and why he'd made it into something to revere. I felt guilty for wearing it but thought that it would be a shame to leave the object engulfed in darkness.

I sent a picture to my mother and showed her the pink ribbon, she was ecstatic that I had found it, it had belonged to my grandmother who disappeared a few years after my mother was born; the police couldn't find her. Everyone cried her disappearance as if it had been her death. My mother says that after that incident my grandfather changed, he used to be a man full of love and wisdom, but after my grandmother's disappearance, even though he still had the strength to provide for his only daughter, he became emotionally sick. My mother had to care for him as if she was his mother; the pain never left him.

My mom asked me if I could look again through the box where I had found the ribbon in, I told her it was now empty but she insisted that her father became very secretive after her mother's death and that it wouldn't surprise her if the box had its own secrets too. She still wanted to know if there was something that could tell her why her father became emotionally numb but desperate for some kind of redemption. She was right. The bottom of the box came off unravelling a folded piece of paper. It had a date, my grandfather had written it just before my grandma's disappearance.

God lied to us. That is if he even exists. I look at my wife and her ignorance scares me. I look at my daughter and her innocence comforts me. I wish I had stayed a child forever. The only way to save ourselves is in death. Who knew that the abyss was better?

Confused, I put the paper back in the box and looked for a knife. I opened the kitchen drawer and reached in, I could see my reflection in the perfect steel picturing how my grandma probably saw herself in it when she cooked. I grabbed the knife with the words of my grandfather coursing through my mind again and again, thinking how his death was a relief from the uncertainty of our minds. My pink ribbon slid from my hair and landed into the hand that held the knife. I think if you squinted your eyes, the ribbon turned the knife into a gift.