#2
Today I will take out the candle I hid beneath my mattress ten years past. I will hold a flame to its charred-black wick and watch the fire take hold and breathe. Every year the wick burns for five minutes, no more, from 2:39 AM until 2:46 AM on the 17th of October. Every year, for the past ten years, without fail. I began borrowing my cellmate's lighter four years ago, and he has watched it with me every year since.Cecilia. Cecilia. Her pale, beautiful face still haunts me in every waking hour and every restless sleepless minute. A beauty that petrified more than it awed, and a coolness in the eyes that froze even the ice that danced in her glass. That's how I see her still. Lounging gracefully on our purple sofa, her long arms and legs dangling over it, her feline eyes darting between her never-empty glass of iced tea, the TV screen as scenes of death flicked across, and my face because I was watching her. I was fascinated by those eyes, eyes that held your very soul in a merciless, iron grip. But she avoided my eyes. I remember when I realized this, that she never truly looked at me, I realized, too, that I hated her. With all my being, as pitiful as it was, I hated her.
