They told him it was pneumonia. Something small at first, but it crept in, insidious. Henry Marlow sat in the hospice bed, the white sheets wrapped around his shrinking frame like a shroud.
The air smelled faintly of antiseptic and lavender, the latter courtesy of the nurse who came in once a day to hum cheerful tunes and remind him to eat. He never did. Food felt unnecessary now, a weight he no longer needed to carry. The weight that mattered was elsewhere.
It was the candles that brought the realization.
His granddaughter, Emily, came by one afternoon holding a cupcake. She had a sweet, stubborn smile, and her face was streaked with the grime of playground adventures. The cupcake had a single candle, stuck crookedly into the frosting, and a matchbook dangling between her small fingers.
“Make a wish, Grandpa,” she chirped.
He stared at the candle. One solitary flame waiting to exist, waiting for him to bring it into the world. His chest tightened in a way that had nothing to do with his lungs.
The memory came, sharp and unbidden. He was five, standing at the head of the table, his father’s booming laugh filling the room as a cake covered in flickering candles was placed before him. Henry had stared at the flames, the golden points trembling slightly in the summer breeze sneaking through the open window. His mother told him to blow them out and make a wish. But he didn’t want to. The idea of extinguishing something so alive, so bright, had filled him with an unnamed dread. He refused, and his father grumbled, his mother sighed, and eventually, the candles had been pinched out by impatient fingers.
That was the first time.
Over the years, there were other birthdays. Some he remembered, others blurred together like smudged ink. Each one followed a similar pattern: the cake, the candles, the chorus of voices urging him to blow them out. Sometimes, he did. But not always.
Sometimes he made an excuse—a headache, too much fuss, no time for wishes. The candles would remain unlit, sitting like silent accusations on cakes that grew larger with age.
As Emily’s candle flickered to life in front of him, something cold curled around his spine.
“Grandpa, you’re supposed to blow it out,” Emily said, her voice pulling him back to the room.
He shook his head. “Not yet.”
That night, Henry dreamed of flames. Not bright and cheerful, but dull and sullen, burning low in a room that stretched endlessly into the dark. Each flame was perched on a cake he recognized from years past—cakes with uneven frosting, cakes from forgotten office parties, cakes baked hastily by his ex-wife when their marriage was still warm enough to make such gestures.
The flames were waiting.
Henry woke gasping, his chest heaving against the weight of something invisible and oppressive. He could feel them now, the unlit candles of his past. Not just candles but moments, choices. The times he had turned away, refused to engage, let the world’s smallest celebrations pass by unmarked.
The first real consequence came the next morning.
The nurse entered the room to find Henry’s breakfast tray untouched, as usual, but this time the coffee mug had a faint scorch mark on its handle, as if it had been briefly exposed to an open flame. She muttered about faulty machines, swapped out the mug, and thought no more of it. But Henry noticed.
By the end of the week, the scorch marks were on his sheets, the bedframe, even the walls. They spread slowly at first, little singes like the touch of an impatient match, but they grew bolder with each passing day.
When Emily visited again, she brought a photograph she had drawn in school. It was simple—a cake with candles, a figure blowing them out. Henry stared at it for a long time.
“I’ve been thinking about the candles,” he told her. Emily tilted her head. “The ones on your cake?”
“Yes. Do you think it matters if you don’t light and blow them out yourself?”
She laughed, a small, carefree sound that made him ache. “No, Grandpa. It’s just a game.”
But it wasn’t. He knew it now, knew it deep in the marrow of his brittle bones. The candles weren’t just candles. They were moments of life, connections, opportunities to make a wish, to claim something, however fleeting, for himself. Every time he had left them unlit, every time he had turned away, he had left something undone.
The scorch marks became burns. His pillow smoldered one evening, filling the room with the acrid smell of ash before he swatted it away with trembling hands. The flames were growing bolder, hungrier.
By the second week, Henry stopped sleeping. He could feel the heat at the edges of his consciousness, hear the crackling in the silence of the night. They were coming for him, all the unlit flames, all the ignored wishes.
When the nurse brought his dinner one evening, he asked her for a candle.
She frowned. “A candle? What for?”
“Just bring one,” he rasped. “Please.”
She returned with a small white taper, puzzled but obliging. Henry lit it with the trembling matchstick hands of a man desperate for absolution.
The flame flickered to life, and for a moment, the room grew unbearably bright. He stared into it, his vision swimming with shapes he couldn’t quite grasp—faces, places, fragments of things that might have been.
He blew it out. For the first time in weeks, Henry Marlow slept.
But when he woke, the scorch marks were gone, replaced by something worse.
Shadows danced on the walls, shifting and stretching like living things. Each shadow bore the faint outline of a candle, a flame unlit. They were everywhere—on the ceiling, the floor, the windows. His life etched in shades of black.
There was no escape now. The unlit and unblown by the celebrant are candles that were deprived of being a part of ones memories. And every year missed has consequences.
And they will come to collect, on your last few moments.
