Candlelight

The gentle ticks of the mantelpiece clock reverberated throughout the room and rubbed against Bernard’s eardrums. It was 2 a.m. He sat alone, with candle held in trembling hand, and stared at the naked flame that faintly lit up the room. The flame danced and flickered, glimmered and gleamed: a bright orange centre surrounded by a sprightly covering of white light which tapered towards an irascible end. A blue glow emanated from the wick. Small globules of melted wax ran free from their molten source underneath the flame and descended towards an ever-growing white, ceraceous tumour that rose above the metal candleholder at the base of the candlestick. Each pellucid globule – hot, fluid, vivacious – solidified as it reached the ill-formed mass of wax; their energy spent, their life dispersed.



Bernard sat in silence and let the seconds pass: the gradual erosion of the future creating the faint, distant dusts of the past. He knew it was time to act – the promise must be fulfilled, the deed completed – but a paralytic fear had overcome him. A potent inertia had grown within his trepid mind, applying its steely breaks to his mental fabric and preventing clear and consistent thought. This maelstrom of emotion forced his hands to shiver, the candlelight flickering dynamically in response. The flame wavered and diminished with each involuntary quiver, thus inducing the malevolent shadows that lurked behind the furniture to stretch out and caress him with their caliginous touch. A lone tear squeezed past his eye, rolled gently down his cheek and entered the edge of his mouth. Its salty taste caressed the tip of his tongue, above which huffs of condensed breath pushed forth from retiring lungs – the heavy sighs of hopelessness pushing against the cold, still air. Bernard could wait no longer. He stood up – slowly, awkwardly – and, with candle in hand, walked out of the room.



He began to ascend the old, wooden staircase that led to his father’s bedroom. Each careful step produced a mournful orchestra of creaks and croaks as the wood stretched underneath his shoes. The candlelight flickered and swayed in front of him, its effulgence intermittently dimmed by the rise and fall of molten wax that surrounded the wick. He noticed his own ghoulish shadow imprinted on the white-painted wall adjacent to the stairs: dark, obscure, threatening. It accompanied him up the stairs like Death itself. He reached the final step and ceased his morbid ascension. He stood in silence as the ubiquitous shadow of his own doubt crept into his anguished mind once more. Was there any other way of rectifying this execrable situation? Could he break this ghastly promise? No, he decided. It was time to act – the promise must be fulfilled, the deed completed.



The bedroom door creaked open – slowly, menacingly - and the candlelight irradiated the room. A flurry of shadows crept back inside the recesses of the room and Bernard was confronted by the perturbing image of his ailing father, who lay asleep on his bed. He stood ghostly still and glared through tear-bloated eyes at the body of the man he loved most. Compassion filled his quivering heart. The man he loved had all but gone: the mind had faltered, the flesh atrophied, the skin sallowed. All that remained was a bland and ailing physicality – a pitiful reminder of what used to be. But still love him he did, and it was this love that had forced him to agree to his father’s tragic request. The unflinching pain had become unbearable, the breathlessness beyond respite. It was time.



Bernard edged closer towards the pillow-end of the bed and placed the candleholder upon the bedside table next to the head of the body. The candle had nearly melted away – its robust cylindrical form absorbed by the ceraceous mass lying at its base. He leaned over the face of his undead father. A recurrence of faint croaks pushed their way past the old man’s throat. He pressed his fingers gently against the cheek and caressed the flesh –cold, withered, sagging - that he had kissed so dearly as a child all those decades ago. The eyelids arose slightly and the faint glimmer of candlelight flickered and wavered upon the narrow arc of the eyes revealed. In an instant, Bernard saw the entirety of the old man’s despair unfold before him – the constant anguish, the unbearable pains – all were condensed within the lambency of the candlelight. He had been with his father when the doctors had shown him the chest X-ray. An ominous shadow had been found in the left lung field. There was nothing they could do. He knew there was no return.



He reached underneath the bedside table and pulled out a pillow – heavy and dense – which would act as the tool towards the ultimate panacea. He placed it carefully at the foot of the bed, opened the drawer next to the doorway and took out a brown glass bottle filled with chloroform. He gently shook the contents of the bottle, unscrewed the top and pressed the opening against the pillow. The fluid spread throughout the cotton fabric and a pungent medicinal smell diffused across the room. The dwindling glow of the candle flame reflected upon the glass bottle: an image solemn and mournful. The shadows were gradually creeping back into the room to reclaim lost territory, seizing upon the diminished boundaries set by the tapering light.



Bernard lifted the chloroform-soaked pillow from the bed and moved back towards the old man’s head. He glanced back and forth across the longitudinal axis of the moribund body – limp, cachexic, and wasted - and shook his head with the utmost despair: this life was so weakened that it could no longer release itself unassisted. He reached down to kiss the cheek one last time. A tear fell from his eye and splashed delicately upon the face of the ailing body, rolling down the side of one of the sallow cheeks. He was crying for his father: his tears were his father’s tears, their pain was shared.



Bernard pressed the pillow firmly against the old man’s face with both arms outstretched. The body shook and shivered momentarily, before elapsing into tranquillity. The croaks stopped, the heart dulled. Behind him, the candlelight flickered and swayed towards an inevitable extinction. The yellow glow receded to orange, then red, then blue. He let go of the pillow, stepped away from the bed and leant in exhaustion against the bedroom wall. The candlelight was about to go out. He stared at the dwindling illumination with tears in his eyes. The large ill-formed mass of wax at the base of the candle had grown at the expense of the candle’s original form. It was that horrifying image – the transfiguration of physicality, the cylindrical form of the candle being slowly consumed by its ghastly end-product – which instilled the greatest of fear in Bernard’s soul, for he knew now, above all else, that being was a means to its own end.