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 MalteseBLACK 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 the burial spot of missing family members thought to have been killed by Nazis and buried in a mass grave somewhere in a forest long long ago.
Come take the journey with Kenneth which leads him to the doorstep of Candle Artist Jfay to commission the perfect candle to show him the way. Thus the BLACK CANDLE READER Candle is born from the pages of William Maltese's story and brought into reality by Jfay.
You can find both on Wick'd Reads at http://www.wickdreads.com/lovemedead.htm
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1 comment:
Ahhh, Jfay, I see you are still out there, busy as a bee, unlikely stopping long enough to smell the roses. That said, I'm always delighted to have you write about me, about my stories, and about your wondrous candle accompaniments to my stories. And what a pleasure it was to give you a speaking part in this story-line that wouldn't have been the same without inclusion of one of your waxy masterpieces! I can't tell you how marvelous it is for someone, with the candle fetish I have, to be able to add yet another of your phallic (not to mention beautiful) creations to my ongoing collection.
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