Candle Readers Possess The Power.......

And Lilith, the first woman, did see the vision within the flickering of a candle flame that did show her Jaweh’s displeasure and how He would supplant her in Adam’s favor with Eve. And Lilth became Demon. — ancient Jewish text.





 

I’m expecting an old crone, candle-making seeming to insinuate black-magic or even witchery. I’m pleasantly surprised by Jfay, wax artisan, who is an attractive woman, late thirties, with an absolutely charming southern accent, “Y’all come on in.” Her brown hair is perfectly coiffed. Her eyes are dark chocolate. Her lips are colored with just a hint of pale red. “I thought we could have cold Coronas and jalapeño snacks while we discuss the candle in question.

Our chairs are grouped around a round coffee table upon which sits opened beer bottles punctuating a bed of ice cupped within a large punch bowl parenthesized by two smaller bowls almost overflowing with spicy home-made chips.

“You’ve a candle color definitely in mind?” she asks and drinks some of her beer straight from the bottle.

“I’m thinking black, maybe representing the dark and the unknown but, to be quite candid, I’m not quite sure why I think it should be black; just that it should be,” Kenneth says. “If you can, please, include at least some brown, since I have an unmistakable feeling that those we seek are buried in the ground. You might slip in a bit of white by way of insinuating my hoped-for enlightenment.”

“All which can certainly be done,” Jfay says and reaches for a jalapeño chip which she puts in her mouth and crunches between her white teeth. “Scent?”

“Pine scent,” Kenneth says.

Before I can stop myself, I say, “And clove.”

This is Kenneth’s candle, and I’ve inadvertently intruded; I’m supposedly there as an interested bystander soaking up pointers. “I am sorry,” I say. “That just slipped out.”

“Pine and clove?” Jfay queries for clarification.

“Just pine,” I say. “I hope there’ll be no more such uncontrollable outbursts on my part. I don’t know what got into me.”

Exerpt From BLACK CANDLE READER, by William Maltese


BLACK CANDLE READER, by William Maltese, is one of the stories in MLR Press' newly released ghostly anthology, LOVE ME DEAD, in which Kenneth Black is a Candle-Reader, one of those possessed with the power to read into a candle's flames to seek knowledge and find answers to secrets thought long hidden in the past.

He is on a quest to find

 

Gregory enters through the open window and immediately sits in the chair next to the bed. It’s becoming more and more difficult for him to fly. Being airborne takes way more time, effort, and concentration, these days; so much so, that he almost didn’t make this trip. In the end, though, he comes here, hoping to provide some normalcy to his life which is suddenly, once again, topsy-turvy.

How ironic that the normalcy he so desperately wants now isn’t one and the same with the normalcy he wanted when he first became a vampire. Back then, suddenly forced to endure entirely on blood for sustenance, he’d desperately longed for a return to regular meals. Now, however, it just seems plain weird that he’s somehow being weaned from that very blood which was his sole life-source for close to a hundred years.

He looks at the woman on the bed. Rhonda Wesmore is twenty-six, very pretty, in the very best of physical health and perfection, all from natural diet and good exercise. She teaches yoga twice a week, vascular-cardio routines three times a week, and is a personal trainer at the local Gold’s Gym.

There had been a time when Gregory had assumed that feasting on the blood of any and all athletes was the way to assure his own continued well-being. He’d been wrong, of course. In times when even well-respected athletes shot up steroids, in order to bulk-up, Gregory had found himself just as negatively effected by those drugs as the ones who took them. Like they, he became moody and sullen, short on temper and quickly to anger. In his mad determination to have more and more of tainted athletic blood, how many members of that Russian sports facility in Vladmostic had he sucked dry before he’d finished? So many had been converted by him to vampirism, they had run out of new blood and had turned on each other to feed. What a mess that had been, the local authorities having been unable to cope and needing to call in the military. The only positive thing having been Gregory’s realization that he needed more control over his life, and more stability in his life, than his addiction to steroid-laced blood provided. Oh, but his withdrawal, had been anything but pleasant.

Since then, he came to look upon Rhoda’s blood as dessert, especially since she’s taken to eating Xoçai Chocolate. If she enjoys the natural benefits of all that antioxidant-rich açai berry and cacao which keeps her blood pressure and her blood sugar under control, where pigging out on regular chocolate would never do the same, Gregory, from first suck knew her blood was something special above and beyond the blood of all the other regulars upon whom he feasts. He knows that if he isn’t tempted to drink Rhoda’s blood now — and he isn’t — that whatever strangeness is happening to him may well be irreversible.

Her Xoçai-laced blood is his, once again, for the taking. He can see just how it makes the large vein in her sexy bare throat pulse in open invitation for his canine teeth to dig in, for not the first time, and enjoy.

He gets up, goes not to the woman on the bed, with her warm, thick blood, but into the living room and, then, into the kitchen. He begins opening and shutting cabinet doors until he finds her cache of Xoçai chocolates — two boxes: XoBiotic Squares, dark chocolate with açai and blueberry; Xoçai MEGA Squares, dark chocolate with açai and orange. He begins unwrapping the small 1 x 1.8” individually wrapped squares and popping them into his mouth, one after another after another.

He can hardly believe the ecstasy of all the undiluted-by-blood flavor suddenly exploded upon his tongue and sliding sensuously the length of his throat to his belly.

He’s still tasting the wondrous aftermath of healthy dark chocolate, açai, orange, and blueberry, later that night, at home, in his own living room, in his own easy chair, when Timothy comes in carrying a package and handing it over.

“It’s a gift to you from Melissa,” Timothy says, by way of explanation. “She was inspired by a dream and hopes you’ll know the reason why.”

The quickly discarded tissue reveals a richly dark-brown candle, dribbled with brilliant red, orange, and blue wax; it all smells deliciously of chocolate.


Copyright 2009 W. Maltese


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