Thunderstorms and blackouts - growing up in Southeast Asia, these two events happened frequently together. As would be expected, most families do not have generators to keep their houses lit throughout the night in the case of power outages. Having a stock of candles is the unsurprising norm, and it all came to play one stormy August night two years ago.

That night, on August 22, 2021, came to a sudden end on my side. At 11:59 PM, the power went out. It came as an unexpected surprise; and yet, I had already known it would happen.

It started weeks ago. Whenever I drifted off to sleep I would wake up in a dream where there was nothing. Well, almost nothing. Perhaps it is weird to say, but pinching myself in dreams never worked because I could often feel the sensations in it. I could feel, smell, and taste things in dreams. In my dream, I was lying down with my eyes open. If it were a simple case of sleep paralysis, I would understand. However, I slept with my lights switched on on those nights, and my dreams were always me, lying in my room in the dark, sweating from the heat even if I woke up shivering from the cold.

It was always dark in the dream, until one night it was not.

One night, I woke up in the dream. But it was different, it was cooler than usual, and it was not as dark. My ceiling was lit by a soft and eerie orange light. The light constantly flickered.

I raised my head and looked around. I saw a candle. It was on top of a blue-ish table pressed up against a black wall that did not light up despite how close the candle was to it.

Before I could sit up and get to the candle, I woke up. Since then, I had not had that dream. However, I could not shake this weird feeling that I had.

In the weeks that followed, I began to hoard candles, flashlights, and matches. I really could not begin to explain the dread I had felt; and so I just tried to rationalize it in my head, saying that they were all for emergency purposes.

Then, as the rain began to pour and charge on that fateful August night, all the warning signs sounded off in my mind, telling me I needed to prepare. Towards the end of the horror movie I was watching with my online friends, I rushed to the bathroom to take my bath. I had just sat back down on my chair when I messaged to the chat that the lights had started blinking on and off.

I joked about it with my friends, trying to wash away the dread I felt. The last message that I saw was my friend replying that they had thought I had dipped because I had gotten scared.

Then, the lights went out and the messages stopped coming. All the dread I had felt had been realized.

I messaged the chat, knowing that my messages would not go through until the network came back.

I grabbed the flashlight I had stashed and switched off my phone screen. I rummaged through my closet looking for the candles and matches I had stowed the weeks before. I had to place the candle somewhere that would not pose a fire hazard, so I grabbed my mug, flipped it upside down, waited until melted wax would drip on it, and put the candle on it to make it stand. Then I grabbed a large, blue gallon of water, put it in the middle of my room (away from any wires and flammable materials), and then placed the mug on top of it.

I sat on my chair and just stared at the fire while I fanned myself. It was raining intensely outside, but it was still stuffy inside my room.

(re-worded)
After half of the candle had melted down, I determined that the power was not coming back anytime soon. So, I decided to go to sleep. I drew close to the candle, and snuffed it out when it was half-melted.

It was hot and stifling in my room. I fanned myself in bed focusing on sleep in order to forget the heat; and ignore the sweat trickling down my back. I stripped down to my underwear and fanned myself for what must've been thirty minutes. Soon, I fell asleep.

(re-worded)
I did not dream that night. However, what happened next could only be described as something that came straight out of an all too familiar nightmare.

(re-worded)
I woke up in the middle of the night, shivering from the unnatural cold. I opened my eyes, staring at the ceiling. An eerie orange light illuminated it. I thought for a moment that I was having the same dream I had been having for the past few weeks, but no, I was not. I was wide awake.

Hazily, I lifted my head and looked. Everything was as it was in the dream.

The candle on a blue-ish stand, which I now figured was the gallon, the illuminated ceiling; and worst of all, the candle against a looming black wall.

However, it was not a wall.

I put the candle on its stand in the middle of my room, meters away from my cream-colored walls. Only then did I realize that the looming darkness which my candle was against was not a wall, but a figure clad in black.

I tried to speak, but I could not. A sudden wave of drowsiness attacked me, and as my head hit the pillow all I could hear was a faint whisper shushing me to sleep. I remember resisting the sleepiness, especially since I feared the possibility of going to sleep while a candle was lit in my room, no matter how far away it was from anything that might have caught on fire.

Then morning broke and I woke up a little past 8 AM. I immediately looked towards my door, checking to see if anyone had gone inside my room last night. I knew it would have been impossible, considering my door had a lock that could only be used from the inside. I got up and sat on my chair, trying to forget the events of the night before. However, there was one thing I could neither ignore nor explain.

The entire candle had completely melted.

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