Fire Under Teeth

It was on a warm summer night in 1854, that Isaac Wick sat alone at his writing desk in his bedroom poring over his stacks of inkstained papers. The gleam from the moon flooded in, and candle light decorated the floral printed walls. The young man's hand was pressed against his temple in frustration.

"Not good enough, not good enough," he muttered sharply

Deep into the night, time had started to blur together, Isaac would catch himself staring off into space then refocus, continue writing and get lost again. His whole body drooped with fatigue. Eventually his eye’s only focus fell on the white wax candle at the edge of his desk, lazily shedding drops of wax as the flame flickered. He stared at the candle, following the path of each teardrop shape sliding from the top, tediously they began to build up. In his mind only a few minutes had passed but when he shook his head of his weariness he realized that the candle was almost out. The wick’s flame was low as it tried desperately to keep from being swallowed by the liquid pool of wax it had created in the gold tin. Disoriented by what he saw, Mr.Wick rubbed his temples wondering if he had fallen asleep for a moment. He began securing his composure when he heard a slight noise behind him. A delicate drip….drip….drip. For whatever reason, the lateness of the night, or the strangeness of what had just happened, this sound struck fear into Isaac’s heart. With tremendous effort, he slowly turned his head. Dripping from the ceiling onto the floor was a thick substance, too heavy to be any sort of water. Suddenly, his hands burned with intensity. He tore himself up from his writing desk, clutching his palms into his shirt. The table before him bore two indents from where his hands had laid. He examined his fists, now a cruel red, the pain began to subside. Drops from the ceiling splashed onto his shoulders, and he instinctively jerked away from the burning sensation, wiping the substance off of himself quickly. Streams from the walls pooled on the floor, his bed and table drooped… it was as if everything around him was melting.

He panicked, rushing to the door, his boots leaving faint traces in the already softening floorboards. He seized the metal doorknob, which encased his fingers in a torrid, gooey mess. With an involuntary jerk backwards, he cradled his angry burnt skin. Turning to the window, he watched in dismay, as steaming liquid drizzled down the window plane, distorting the image of the outside beyond recognition. Now screaming, he prayed someone would hear him from inside his melting walls. Unable to touch anything, he began to sweat in the humid air. Soon his shouts were replaced by racking sobs as dread and hysteria consumed him. Then, like rain, the ceiling liquefied in hot bubbling wreck and fell in fat teardrops. Isaac’s skin blossomed in red patches that crept up everywhere as he desperately dodged the falling fire. He fell to his knees which sank halfway into the flooring. Heat sank through his trousers, and his calves grew painfully uncomfortable. His whole body shaking with fear, all he could do was scream and writhe as the calescent matter ate at him, covering him like a thick blanket, shrouding him in agony. He held his hand in front of his face, it shook and trembled. The skin had melted off, his blood corroded, so that his fingers were nothing but pale, grim bones. He writhed his barren fingers, his hand convulsed in front of him. His bones and joints were visible all the way up his arm, the muscle and tissue had been eaten away. Dreadful screams left his lungs. Everything burned with such severity, a sweltering, blistering burning that eroded him as he sat helplessly. He sat and sat until the pain devoured him, and nothing was left.