[Page One]

This is a story no one else can hear, because when the story ends, nobody else’s going to be left here. As the story goes, everyone else must go and leave, one by one, one after another, and I would be the only one reading the final chapter of this whole story.

These days, and from these days on, anyone on this earth must find someone else to hold up a candle for every other soul on the ground to find the way to heaven. Anyone has to light up and hold a candle for someone else, so that that someone will be sent to heaven.

I’m a candleholder, like everybody else, or it so seems now. But anyone should know, or shouldn’t know, because I’ll be the only one left when anyone else could know this, that I’ll be holding a candle for someone else forever, until the last one goes to heaven.

[Page Two]

The last one? You should do this simple math: when two of the last souls were left, one of them must hold up a candle for the other soul, until the service is over and the other soul can leave up in the sky, go and go higher than the mountain top to reach the end in heaven. That second last soul should be the last one to go, because the very last one can’t go without someone else holding a candle for him.

And that second last but very fortunate soul to be in the sky should be either one of you, because I’m the candleholder left in here holding the candle for your booby soul. Well, you’re the lucky one, because you got me. And that’s my story. No wonder why nobody else would hear that from me, because I’d be talking to myself while you’re already there.

[Page Three]

I don’t mind standing here, lighting up a candle by myself for my little soul to be warmed up. I see all of you up in the heavens, each one with a little heaven of own. I wouldn’t ask you to look over here, because you have to break up with me before your final day is over. Those days of final judgment, which may come to you every other moment, and from that final moment on, you really have to forget what I’ve done to you and just enjoy everything that awaits you in heaven – whatever you can only imagine while you’re still here.

Although I’m making up this story of my own, I don’t expect you to read it in print, because any one of you has no need to look for words to find out what the story is, because, over there, you can’t describe or explain anything in words that are only in here, with me, with a bunch of used candles that you left behind with those words… and me.

[Page Four]

On that last day, oh it was very cold, I lit up the last candle and was holding it up for someone I knew, or I never really knew exactly, and saw that soul leaving town. After that, a gusty wind came, and almost put out my candle, so I held on to it, trying not to lose it because that’s the only heat I’m left with…

I had a book of matches from the coffee shop I used to go, where nobody else is left by now, and continued to light up the candle. It won’t light up in flame, because the matches ain’t so good, because in those days all the coffee shops were smoke free and all the stores kept the left over matches in the storage for many years.

It’s damn cold and all of the sudden I really didn’t know what to do. All these years I thought I knew what I was doing, by holding a candle for somebody else. I thought that was one decent thing I could do with my conscience. Now I know that, nobody else is left to spare me. I sat down, looked up in the sky, and wiped out my tears.

[Page Five]

Then the voice came down, saying, “Boy, well done, I’ll take all of these good men and women to my place and let them stay here. But if anybody turns against me, I’m going to send that soul down back to you, and you, the last one on earth, must give the soul right back to me because nobody’s soul should be left down there in cold. You understand that?”

Gee I guess I’m now up to something, which I would never, ever, or could have afforded. He doesn’t consider me a soul anymore. I’m a soulless creature with a candlestick in my hand, with a mission not to burn the soul but correct it if it’s wrong and send it back to him. I thought I lived long enough to know what the hell was wrong with my life, but now I know, this is the real nightmare.

But I decided to go along with it, because there’s nothing else left to choose from, but to live up to the challenge I was just given with me, and to see how it goes. Then I realized, if I was destined to do this, I should be the only one who could really do this perfectly. I thought that’s really something that I can smile about, after all these years… thank God!

And, that’s where the story begins, just for me. Did anybody hear that?