The Girl of Wax

My name is Sophie. My hobby? Well, I have quite a strange hobby, I'll admit. But it started so long ago, when I was younger. Let me take you back to that innocent time, that time when nothing mattered and all the small things were important. That time of blissful ignorance is where it all started, just weeks after my seventh birthday.
"Sophie!"Uncle Jaime shouted down the basement steps. The basement was really his candle making workshop, and I knew of a special hiding place where he would not find me.
I hid there.
His heavy footsteps thudded down the old wooden steps, some of the steps creaking and groaning in protest, until he hit the basement floor. Uncle Jaime's work boots made less noise on the concrete floor."Sophie, are you down here? Your mother called."
Still I waited behind the big silver can, carefully avoiding the surface of the thing. It was very hot, powered by cables plugged into the wall. I avoided those too.
"Well I'll be. Guess she's somewhere upstairs," he muttered. I pictured him scratching his head. His footsteps moved farther away and I finally heard them moving up the stairs. When he got to the top, he shut the door and all the light was gone.
Hands out in front of my body, I felt my way around the workshop, hoping I was in the right direction for the light switch. But no such luck. After a few minutes of shuffling around in the dark, I knew it was futile. The lights would not be coming on any time soon.
Uncle Jaime always locked the basement door when he left the workshop. Which meant I was stuck down here until he realized I wasn't in the mansion of a house upstairs or in the woods playing beside the house. With the lights out. And no idea what part of the basement I was even in.
I sighed. "I wanted to play with my Barbie car," I said to no one in particular.
I knew I was just out of luck. So, even in the dark –which, unlike normal seven year olds, I was not afraid of – I decided to play a game by myself. I was used to playing by myself, so it's not like it was some foreign concept. I knew how to explore and, in essence, get myself in trouble by doing so.
I bumped into something, though, and feeling my hand across the top, it felt dusty and cluttered, familiarly like my uncle's desk. I felt around for a drawer, and I opened the first one I found, searching blindly through it.
My search was rewarded with a flashlight. Flipping the switch, the flashlight came on, shining dimly through the darkness. I smiled, only for the stupid thing to die and turn off.
I turned around, frowning, and started walking back the way I came, a little surge of courage hitting me in the chest and leaving my hands at my sides. The way I saw it, I wouldn't bump into anything because I was too awesome.
Pfft, no such luck.
It hadn't even been half a minute when I crashed into a big wooden crate, knocking me back on my butt. I shielded my head with my arms when I heard the other crates stacked on top fall over and knock something over that fell with a metallic clang.
I let out a sigh of relief when things stopped falling. That is, until I felt something hot and liquidy seeping onto my hand.
At first it was just hot and burned, and I pulled my hand away, not knowing what it was. But then the flashlight flickered on. It was lying on the floor after I'd dropped it, and the drop must have knocked some life back into it.
Looking at my hand, I saw that the substance covering my fingers was hot wax. Curious, I allowed it to harden over them, feeling the wax make a protective layer over my hand.
I hardly noticed the rest of the vat of wax spilling over, covering the bottom halves of my legs, unprotected in a pair of shorts. It burned, but I liked the feeling. It was like a tingling sensation, the hardening of the wax almost numbing my skin to the warm basement air. I lay back on the floor, allowing the liquid to seep around me, encasing me in the sweet smelling aroma of candle wax.
I closed my eyes as the wax formed around my long blonde hair, reaching my scalp in a strangely relaxing burning sensation.
Then there was another metallic crash, and I realized the first vat hadn't completely fallen over the first time. It had now, though, as it fell over into the vat in front of it. This one crashed to the floor, quickly pouring out more hot candle wax, this time over my torso rather than onto the concrete.
I almost shrieked, but I forced myself to stay silent. This time it was very hot, almost like liquid flames covering my body, reheating the already dried wax on my limbs.
The flashlight was aimed at me, and I could look down at my body and see the layers of the liquid candle starting to harden, first the bottom layers, then the top. The burning began to recede, and I was relieved yet somewhat disappointed.
In only a few minutes, the wax had completely hardened. I was covered in the stuff from my neck down. And I enjoyed it. It was like a full body cast, the kind my friend, Bobby, had gotten to wear when he had a bad bicycle accident. I could hardly move, but that was alright.
I wasn't sure how much time had passed when I decided to try and get out of my cast of wax. It had actually encased me in it, keeping me glued to the floor. I easily freed my arms, but I couldn't sit up. Too much wax had poured over my body, and I was stuck.
"What now?" I asked myself stupidly.
The only thing I could do was pick at the wax with my fingernails. Luckily I didn't bite and gnaw on mine like Victoria Blaze in my second grade class. That girl had nubs for fingernails. Mine were long and eventually freed me from my wax prison.
Once I could sit up, I felt that the wax had stiffened my hair so that it didn't fall like a golden cascade down my back. Rather it held its shape it had taken when I laid down on the floor so that my hair stuck in all different directions. I broke it apart with my hands, watching the candle pieces fall to the floor.
It was even easier to free my legs than it had been to free my arms, and soon I was nearly wax free. Most of the stuff was out of my hair, and it had easily come off of my skin, which was stinging and probably red.
Just in time, too, because the basement door flew open and light flooded in, footsteps pounding down the stairs. "Sophie?"
It was my mother.
"Hi, Mommy," I said, coming around the corner.
Uncle Jaime was right behind her, and his face scrunched up. "What happened?" He was staring at the vats behind me.
"It spilled," I said, fidgeting. "You're not mad, are you?"
My mother looked at the floor, at the obvious evidence that I had left behind. There was a me-shaped hole in the puddle of dry wax. She took me in her arms and hugged me like she hadn't seen me in ages and I realized how bad my skin actually stung.
After that, my mother had taken me to the doctor to get my burns checked out. They were very minor first degree burns, thankfully, so my skin wasn't damaged and they went away quickly. They hurt, of course, but I didn't mind much.
I still couldn't forget the strange sensation of being a human candle.
Mommy never let me back in Uncle Jaime's mansion house again, not unless I was supervised or the basement door was locked. I never understood what she had been so worried about. It was just candle wax.
I remember one day I'd asked her what the big deal was about it. I didn't think it mattered.
"Mommy, why is it a bad thing that the wax spilled?"
She pursed her lips. "Sophie, it's dangerous. You could have been badly burned. I still don't understand how you weren't burned worse than that."
"But it was an accident, Mommy. Accidents happen. That's what you always say," I reminded her.
"And accidents make changes."
I frowned. "But it felt okay. Once it cooled down, it wasn't so bad. And I like candles."
She looked at me like I was crazy. "No more candles for you, Sophie."
"But– why? Can't I play with the wax? I promise to be extra careful," I pleaded.
Mom shook her head. "No. You don't play with candles."
Even after that conversation with my mother I couldn't seem to stay away from candles. I found the flame mesmerizing, yes, but the melted wax was what held my attention. More than once, Mother would find me sitting in a corner with a candle, watching candle wax harden on my fingertips.
And every time she would become angry, snatching the candle away and blowing the flame out. Often she even placed the candle in the freezer so that the wax would harden more quickly, disabling the ability to play with it.
Eventually Mother got to the point where she locked the candles up in a closet in her room. It was months before I was able to find more wax to melt and let harden just to melt again.
It was impossible to be fascinated with the stuff at home. But when I went to friends' houses we would find the candles and light them, and we would play with the wax when we got the chance. It quickly bored my friends as we got older, and so I would wait until they fell asleep to dig out the candles to feed my wonder.
And that brings me to the present, where my story picks up…