A Candle for Lucy by Sarah O’Connor
2021 Flash Fiction Winner
Honourable Mention
She likes the smell of sulfur that comes when she strikes the match. Lucy bought them for her at a corner store. The deep red box claims they’re long lasting but the matchsticks never last more than a few seconds before going out. Even now the match she holds goes out before burning anywhere close to her finger tips, a line of smoke trailing up to the ceiling. She takes a deep breath in, she holds it, she lets it out imagining it following the smoke up.
“What Lucy did was right, things will be easier for you now.”
She watches the match and then pushes it upside down into the dirt of the succulent she killed. Lucy had laughed when she discovered she’d killed the easiest of plants. She should toss the whole thing, meant to toss it weeks ago but then it became useful again. This is where she keeps her used matches, heads buried in the dirt.
“I know how upsetting this must be for you.”
It reminds her of the churches she visited as a kid, of the candles she lit for her nana, her cousin, her mom and burying the long match stick in the sand while she watched the flames dance in the red and yellow holders at the church. She remembered that you were supposed to pray after lighting the candle, that they were supposed to go up to Heaven the same way the smoke from the match stick went up.
She hasn’t prayed in a long time.
“Please…”
She takes another match out, strikes it against the side of the box to see if this one will last longer. It doesn’t, snuffing out almost the moment it catches.
“Sister.”
She wonders if the matches are old or if the box was just designed to look that way. She thinks she might get in trouble for having it with the gold-foil moth on the front. Not that moths are evil but there are better, more appropriate symbols the convent would prefer.
“Dana…”
Her eyes burn from watching it; she doesn’t know how long she’s been staring at the burnt out match only that it’s longer than a normal person should. Her breathing deepens and slows as she becomes hypnotized by the smoke. She watches it dance in the air, how it fades and sputters until it dies completely.
“You should have seen it coming-”
“No.”
Sister Dana turns to where she thinks Sister Celia stands but comes face to face with her reflection, her hair loose and unkempt around her shoulders, herself still in her bathrobe and she wonders who the stranger is. She hasn’t seen herself this way in a long time, this is the only mirror in her room and she hardly looks at herself, hasn’t admired herself in so long. Vanity is a sin.
Most love is too.
“No,” she shakes her head at Celia and then, finally, Dana weeps.
Sarah is a writer and playwright whose work has been published in the Hamilton Spectator and Incite Magazine. Her story "What Happened to Natalie?" was an honourable mention for gritLIT's 2020 Short Story contest. She is a member of the Hamilton-based Feminista playwriting unit and her plays have been performed at the Mind Play Theatre Festival and at HamilTEN. Most recently her play The End of July was performed in Emerson Arts Fright Night Festival in Fall 2020. You can read more of her work on her website: www.notsarahconnorwrites.com.