by the fire

A Story by Lexi

short scary story.

It was one of those perfect fall nights cuddled up by the fire with a warm cup of tea, and a great book written by the one and only Stephen King. I was in the middle of reading Doctor Sleep when I started to hear branches cracking, I chalked it up to be the wood in the fire pit.

As I returned to my book trying my best to put my focus back to the words on the page I kept getting distracted, I felt as if someone was watching me. I became increasingly paranoid, I felt like someone or something was breathing down my neck. I took my paranoia and the fact that my fire was slowly dying down as my cue to turn in for the night.

After my shower, I put on another pot of tea but I still couldn't shake the eerie feeling left from my time by the fire. I forgot my mug outside so I had to go grab it. The smell of burning wood and fall was lingering in the air but there was another indistinct smell underlying it all. It almost smelled like death. Maybe it was a rat or an animal that had gotten hit nearby. I couldn't put my finger on it but it only added to the uneasiness in the night so I grab my cup and head back to the kitchen being called by the whistling of the pot. I pour my tea and head to the window to check on the fire, I swear I saw the outline of a man but when within a blink of the eye he was gone. I got halfway through my tea and I became paralyzed I could hear and see everything but I couldn't do anything about it. There was a man, I wasn't crazy he must have been the figure by the fire. He stood over me with the gasoline can from my shed in his hand and a smirk on his face. Why can't I move or react, anything? Did he drug me? But how? I left my cup out there. He pours the gasoline in a circle around my limp body and pulls out a book of matches. He leans down and tells me " To bad we didn't meet in another lifetime you were beautiful "

He runs the tip of the match across the strip and it lights into a beautiful flame, suddenly my whole world is aflame it was an intense sensation I was caught up in the beautiful flames dancing across my body. That was shortly overturned by the smell of burning flesh. It only took a second for the panic to set in followed by the realization it was my flesh that was burning. Why wasn't I feeling this? It was getting harder and harder to breathe, then I was just gone.