#theplottery

It was Teresa’s favorite.

Her daughters brought her new ones, aromatic ones. Those that you put flames to and the room would smell like a sunny day at the beach. Teresa’s catholic beliefs ensured she had various other candles dedicated to different saints. Some she preferred to others, but the blue candle was Teresa’s favorite above those saints anyways.

She never put a flame to it, though. No, the blue candle was not for burning.

It sat still by the TV stand. Observant.

It watched as Teresa rocked herself in the chair, staring blankly at the screen. Her trembling fingers pressed on the keys of the remote, changing the channels on the TV behind the blue candle.

Whenever someone asked, Teresa simply shook her head. “No. No.”

“But mama,” Simone would insist, “are you really never turning that one on? Why do you keep it then?” If it could, the candle would bristle loudly.

Instead, it kept silent to hear the old woman’s response: “It means the world to me.” At that, the candle would fill with pride. It was important. And knowing that gave the candle something to be happy for. It was much too plain, you see? It was nothing more than wax and a wick inside a crystal vase. No design or scent made it stand out from the others. Except, perhaps, that it was blue. It was bluer in some places than others, where it was bordering white. But it was important to Teresa and that meant enough.

The other candles didn’t have much of a personality. In fact, they did nothing but burn and smoke. Which meant the blue candle got bored when Teresa wasn’t in the house. Seeing her uplifted the candle’s mood greatly.

The old woman stood now. “Come, Sara,” she said, picking the candle up. “Let’s go take a nap.”

Thats right. The candle had a name. At least, that’s what Teresa always called it when she addressed it.

The candle pleasantly accompanied the woman as she took her slow and shaky steps down the hall. She used her free hand against the wall for support. Dark winkled skin against cream-colored walls.

“Soon I won’t be able to walk anymore,” the lady said with laughter in her voice. “I don’t remember where I left my glasses.” She stopped in the hall and turned back. But she didn’t move. Her thin hair moved with the breeze coming in through the living room’s window. “I’ll look for them later,” she concluded, taking up walking to her room again.

It was a good five minutes before the woman reached her bedroom door. She was very gentle in placing down the candle in the table next to her bed.

“You know, Ignacio passed away the other day.” The bed groaned as the woman sat down first, with every intention of lying down completely. “He had always been so good to us.” The candle had no idea who Ignacio was, but if he was good to Teresa, then it liked him. “What a good husband he would have been to you.”

Sometimes Teresa said things like that. Spoke to herself in the second person. The candle was used to it.

By the corner of a room, a young girl leaned against the wall and smiled. The candle didn’t know her name, but she was a regular. She accompanied Teresa on her shores some days, and some times she wiped the candle clean. She didn’t speak at all, so the candle assumed she was mute. But her face was very expressive, showing pearly teeth when happy, and a scowl when sad or hurt.

“He came to me a few years ago,” continued the woman, her head falling on the pillow, “said he had been married and had four kids. Nine grandkids.” Teresa looked at the candle. “One of his daughters has your name, Sara.”

The candle preened.

“We all go when our time arrives.” She frowned. “I’m so tired lately. Always forgetting things.” She shook her head. “It’s such a bother, being old.”

The candle understood. Lately, any speck of dirt angered it more than when it was young and bright. In fact, the blue in its wax was much less vibrant now than it originally was.

“I wish I were still a kid. Still twelve and running around the house. Picking up worms to scare mama.” She laughed. Then she coughed, shaking whole-bodily. “You remember that, don’t you?”

The girl had come closer to the bed, eyes shining with secret laughter, and a mischievous smile on her face. The candle wished it could join in. Laugh with them.

“I’m tired now to play such pranks.” The woman closed her eyes. “I’m too tired lately…”

Both girl and candle stayed there in the room while the woman slept. Her belly rose and fell and rose and fell and rose and fell and…

It was dark outside by the time her belly stopped rising, and the girl, who the candle had never seen past sundown, had begun to glow. She regarded Teresa with anticipation, eyes scanning her belly and then her face.

Now that the candle was really looking at her, she looked familiar. It recognized some of the factions in the girl’s face. She couldn’t be more than seventeen. Well, what did a candle know of age? Perhaps she was twelve. Perhaps she was thirty. But the candle leaned to think she was seventeen. Eighteen at most.

Its attention was drawn back to Teresa, because a light had begun to emanate from her.

Teresa sat in bed, hands raised for her own inspection.

But wait. She was glowing completely, too. But her body was still asleep on the mattress. The one that did not glow. That looked normal.

The candle did not understand such things.

The glowing Teresa looked up and froze. Her eyes began to shine with tears. The girl was beaming, watery roads already paved down her cheeks.

Sara, Teresa’s lips mouthed. For some reason the candle did not hear them.

The girl nodded.

Tears leaked down the old woman’s glowing form, snaking down her wrinkles like tiny rivers. I kept it, she mouthed. The candle, I kept it. When you died, I kept it. It was sacred to me.

I know, the girl said. I know.

The candle understood then. It had heard conversations about a sister. Young when a vehicle accident had taken her life. Teresa was younger still, but already collecting candles.

“That one’s special, because her sister handmade it for and gifted her it the day before the tragedy,” Teresa’s older daughter Jennifer had told Simone once.

The candle had not known she had been talking about it. It assumed it was something or someone else. Or, quite frankly, the candle barely paid attention unless it was Teresa speaking.

Let’s go, Tery, the girl said, extending her hand for Teresa to take. And the woman did, shaking. And, though the candle was just a candle, it could tell the shaking was not brought on by Teresa’s age and strength. As soon as she stood before the girl, she sobbed, throwing herself on the girl. The girl cried, too, a brilliant grin on her face.

They were both speaking, but the candle could not see their lips as well with their new position.

It stared as they finally pulled away and wiped at each other’s tears. Then, grabbing hands with beautiful smiles on their lips, the pair walked across the room to the door.

Neither of them looked back.

Alex wiped down the counter in lousy circular motions, nose crinkled as the vomit was mostly absorbed by the fabric. He looked to the side and reached for the empty bucket by the floor. He threw the rag inside before taking up the last clean one Mitchell had left for him. The lazy asshole never could do his job right.

Indeed, there against the wall was the makeshift hamper with a week’s worth of dirty rags.

“I have to do everything around here,” muttered Alex as he took up spraying the bar with a multi-purpose cleaner.

Two taps against the counter were the only warning a man gave before calling, “A whiskey on the rocks over here, buddy!”

Alex debated between answering or pretending not to hear him over the tacky music playing through the bar. In the end, he judged that if he just ignored the man, he would only bother him again. That would not do.

He finished up with the rag, deeming the counter clean enough, and made his way over to the left end of the counter. “A whiskey on the rocks, you said?” Alex placed his forearms on the bar. “Would you like something else to go with that? An appetizer, perhaps? Maybe some caviar, hors d’oeuvres?”

The man, dressed in a long-sleeved button-down shirt, pants and a tie, raised his eyebrows in consideration.

Alex smirked. “Take a look around you, buddy. We have no whiskey here.”

The man frowned. “But… this is a bar.”

“Yeah. It tries to be.” Alex straightened, head turning, already scanning for an actual task to do. “The best thing I can offer you is beer.”

The man tapped his finger in exasperation. A sigh escaped his mouth, and Alex could make out perfect white teeth. The polished fella didn’t say anything as he turned to leave. Alex was already making his way to the other end of the counter when the bell over the door announced his departure.

“Hey, handsome.”

Alex looked up. “Estella.”

She looked as lovely as always, a crooked smile lighting up her face. Her black hair framed her face in waves. Her brown eyes reflected the flickering light above. She was a welcome sight in this hellhole. “I’ll have some of that caviar, if you’re still offering,” she whispered, her accent thick and beautiful.

“For you, I’d go to the end of the world to get it.”

She beamed, gifting him his favorite kind of laugh. He would get it tattooed, if that was possible. Though he doubted his skin had any available space for one more.

“What are you doing this Friday?”

“Hmm.” Estella’s lips pouted. “I’m busy all day. Hospital working me hard.”

Alex’s shoulders dropped. “They should let you rest.” Even now, she was wearing her nurse uniform, a dark blue that accentuated her tanned skin.

“No luck, I’m afraid.” She shrugged. “At least I love my job.” Unlike you, was what she left unsaid.

“As soon as I can, I’m getting out.”

“Where would you go?”

Alex shook his head. “Where they’ll have me.” It was bound to be better than here. Anything. Anywhere.

Estella reached across the counter and placed her hand on his stubbled cheek. Her thumb caressed where he knew an inked snake should be. “You’ll find something.”

His chest was near bursting. His heart a wild drum that would only get like this with her. The only woman who had never feared him. Even after learning his story. Never seen him as a spectacle. She was older than him. Maybe fifty. He was forty-three. But he loved her. She had to know. She had to. It was obvious.

Her hand was gone too soon.

“I have to go. A shift.” She waved around the room, a frown furrowing her brows. “This place could use some lightening up.”

“Then you should stay,” he said. Even he could tell the longing in his voice.

A crash of a bottle rang out somewhere to Alex’s right and he could make out the yelling of a fight.

“No chance.“ Estella laughed. “If I stay any longer, I’d start nursing these people, and I have a job to get to. I just came by to say hello.”

“I never heard you come in.”

“I came in behind that fancy dude.” She smiled. “I wanted to surprise you.”

Some times, when Alex allowed himself to, he wondered whether she felt it, too. That pull. That desire. Did it mean anything—that she wanted to surprise him? Or was she just saying hi as a friend? As the only friend he’d made in the last six months.

“I have to go,” she said, glancing at her smartwatch. Alex nodded, disappointment a common feeling he was used to. “See you!” Her hips swayed as she left. A man with missing teeth whistled after Alex’s girl, and Alex shook his head. Estella turned to him one last time before disappearing out the door.

He would never deserve her. She, a nurse with a PhD in whatever it was nurses studied, and him—an ex-convict who would never get hired anywhere decent with his criminal record.

He made his way to where the fight had broken out, boots stumping over wooden floorboards with stains long-ago sustained. “Okay, break it up, you two.” He reached in between the two drunks, and easily pushed their faces away from each other. One of them slumped over the chair before stumbling to the floor. Passed out.

The other threw weak punches at Alex, but Alex just pushed him away until the man burped and forgot what he was doing, laughing instead at his new hilarious ability to dispel gas.

This was what Alex put up with daily.

“You’d think they’d get tired by now.” A man around Alex’s age said. Alex knew him very well.

“Hey, old man,” he greeted.

“Sleep. Wake. Drink. Fight. That’s all these men do. That’s all they’ll ever do. It’s an endless cycle, and they seem satisfied. They don’t even care that it’s not living.”

“What do you know about living?” Alex laughed. “ And you, too, are here constantly. A pest I have to put up with.”

The man smiled. “At least I don’t puke all over your counter.”

“I appreciate that.” Speaking of, Alex saw another drunk doubling over in the corner of room, retching.

The man leaned back on the chair, enough that Alex could see the hole on his undershirt, and a wound underneath. He was bleeding. But Alex knew better than to ask if he was okay. “You going nowhere with that Stella chick.”

“Es-tella.” Alex corrected. “She gets pissed off when people don’t say her name correctly.”

“Sorry. Estella.” The man nodded, his beard twitching as he smiled. “She’s a beautiful woman.”

“She’s too good for me,” Alex admitted, turning his back on the man and leaning against the bar. “She’ll never have me.”

“Aren’t you at least gonna try?”

“Nah.” A fly buzzed over to the wall. “She deserves better.”

There was silence for a while. Or, at least—silence from the man. That damn music kept blaring out of the speakers. It would never allow for a second of peace.

“Your mother deserved better.”

Alex stilled. “She did.”

The man grunted. “I should have been better.”

Alex did not reply to this as quickly. The man was right. “You’re better now,” he settled with truthfully.

The man laughed an ironic kind of laugh. Alex did not join in.

“You’re a good man, Alexander.” The chair scratched the floor as the man stood. “You proved to be twenty-two years ago. And you can still finish what you started in college.”

Alex turned in time to watch the man pressing his hand against the knife wound. It was worse, blood soaking his white undershirt, and leaking on the floor.

“You’re alive. And that woman makes you want to live even more. Do what you have to do to deserve her, but don’t give up so easily. You have a chance. Some of us don’t.”

Alex did not flinch. “Thanks, pops.”

The man nodded, face paling fast with the loss of blood. He opened his mouth as if to say something else, but in the end he just nodded again and turned, slowly making his way out. Alex watched as his father reached the door, opening it. No bell sounded as it shut.

The father Alex had killed was not the same one his mind conjured up. The father Alex talked to daily was kinder, softer. A better father than he ever was when alive.

When Alex looked to the floor on the other side of the bar, the blood was no longer there.

His phone vibrated inside his pocket.