The Lucifer Stick

It began with the smell of sulfur and smoke, faint but sharp, like something burning behind the walls. I checked the stove. Cold. Checked the outlets. Fine. Still, it lingered, a match just struck, not quite blown out.

That smell reminded me of my old man. He’d light matches to chase out the stench of whatever he was drinking. The smell of defeat with a whiff of denial.

He used to tell me, “Fire’s honest, kid. You know where you stand with it. Not like people.”

He wasn’t wrong.

I live alone now, on the third floor, with a peeling ceiling and a window view of a brick wall. You could measure time by the flicker of the neon sign across the alley: Lucky’s Pizza. The “L” never lit, so it just blinked ucky’s all night like a bad joke.

The landlord said no smoking, but I didn’t listen. When you pay rent on time, they leave you to your ghosts.

That night I’d just come back from the factory. Twelve hours on the line, hands black with grease and oil that never really washes off.

I cracked a beer, kicked off my boots, and there it was again, the smell of matches. It came from next door this time, Apartment 3-B.

I’d never seen the tenant, but heard the television sometimes, low voices, a laugh that sounded too careful. I knew a woman lived there. You can tell by the sound of heels clicking on tile, and how quiet the place gets after midnight.

I knocked. No answer. The smell was powerful now, like someone had lit a whole book of matches. I tried the handle. Locked.

I should’ve walked away, but something about it got under my skin. Maybe it was the quiet, or that I’d stopped caring enough to mind my own business.

I went down to the janitor’s closet, grabbed the master key. He kept it on a nail by the mop bucket and went back up.

The door opened easily.

The first thing I saw was her, sitting at the kitchen table in her slip, holding a candle. She didn’t look surprised to see me.

“You smell it too?” she asked.

I nodded.

“It’s been coming from the walls,” she said. “At night mostly. I think something’s alive in there. Something that likes an inferno.”

Her eyes were glassy, fever-bright. She had that look of someone balanced between fear and fascination.

“You should get it checked,” I said. “Could be wiring.”

She smiled, slow and strange. “Or something else.”

I didn’t know what she meant, but I felt it, that charge in the air, that thin, dangerous thread between us. It was the kind of moment where something always goes wrong afterward.

I left without another word, but the smell followed me.

That night, lying in bed, I couldn’t sleep. I kept picturing her sitting there with that candle, watching the flame like it was telling her secrets.

Around two a.m., I heard a soft pop, then crackling, then the faintest whisper of flame breathing through wood. When I opened the door, the hallway was an orange glow.

Smoke crawling low, someone screamed, maybe her. I didn’t go in. I just stood there, watching the flames eat through the walls.

By the time the fire trucks arrived, the blaze consumed the entire third floor. They said faulty wiring, which old buildings have.

I told them I smelled the matches before it started. They wrote it down, but I could tell they didn’t care. Nobody ever does when it’s about small things.

A week later, they let me in to collect what was left. The smell was still there.

Sulfur and smoke, faint yet sharp. I found a single match on my floor, unburned.

I kept it. Not as a souvenir, but more like a warning, because some things don’t burn out when they should.