Matches
(formerly Strange Kind of Haunted)“You light it,” she said to me.
I took the box of matches that she slid across the table to me and removed a wooden match. I struck it against the box, but as soon as it was afire, died out immediately. I removed another match from the box and struck this one. It caught, but before I could bring it to the cigar, it withered and shrunk into nothing.
The bartender, a local asian man, was watching me from the bar. He was talking to another patron but stopped to watch me light this third one. It dies on me.
“You can’t light that in here,” he says to me.
“This is a bar, man,” I say.
“No, I mean it’s impossible to light matches in here - this place is a strange kind of haunted.”
The patron across from him looks over his shoulder.