The Cinder Man

The first time I saw him, I was drowning in a lake of fire. The dream had the clarity of a wound—the heat, the smell of scorched pine, the way the embers hissed like serpents. He stood on the shore, a figure of ash and coal, his smile a crack in a burnt mask. He didn’t speak, but I understood him: I was his to burn, and he would take his time.

For weeks, he came to me in sleep. Not always as fire—sometimes as a shadow in the corner of my apartment, a faint smell of smoke in the elevator. I told myself it was stress, the anxiety of my new job at the port, the sleepless nights from the night shifts. I even Googled ‘sleep paralysis’ and ‘hypnagogic hallucinations’ and convinced myself I was fine. But then I started finding things. A matchstick on my kitchen counter that I never lit. A small, perfectly round burn on my bedsheet. And on February 7th, at 9:25 PM, I woke to the smell of burning wool.

He was in my bedroom. Not a dream. He stood at the foot of my bed, a man-shaped void of charred flesh and drifting cinders. His eyes were two glowing coals, and when he spoke, his voice was the crackle of a dying fire. ‘You’ve been avoiding me,’ he said. ‘But I like the chase.’ I tried to scream, but my throat was raw, as if I’d already been breathing smoke. He reached out a hand, and where his fingers touched my skin, it felt like they were leaving permanent marks—not burns, but something deeper, like he was carving his name into my soul.

I don’t remember how I survived that night, only that I woke on the floor, my arm bearing a pattern of blisters that spelled the date: 02/07/2009. I called in sick, refused to leave my apartment. But he came back every night, always at 9:25 PM, always standing a little closer. I tried sleeping in my bathtub, in my car, in a motel across town. The moment I closed my eyes, the scent of smoke would seep through the walls, and there he would be, waiting. I started to think he wasn’t following me—he was already inside me, a burning hollow in my chest.

Finally, I sought help from a priest, who only crossed himself and told me to pray. I tried a psychic, who fainted. I even tried to fight back, to burn my own apartment down, hoping to destroy whatever ground he held. But when the flames rose, I saw him inside them, laughing. ‘You can’t burn me,’ he said. ‘I am the fire.’

Now, it’s been three months. I’ve moved to a new city, changed my name, stopped answering the phone. But every night at 9:25, I feel a warmth on my skin, and I see the silhouette of a man in the corner of my eye. Last night, I looked in the mirror and saw that my pupils were no longer black—they were glowing embers. I know now that he was never an incubus from the dreams. He was a promise, and I was the fuel.

I write this from a hospital bed, my hands bandaged, the nurses muttering about a patient who tried to set himself on fire. They don’t know that I wasn’t trying to die. I was trying to become him, to finally put out the fire on my own skin. But the funny thing is, now that the night comes, and the clock ticks closer to 9:25, I’m not afraid. I’m waiting. Because maybe, if I let him take me completely, I’ll finally be free. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll learn to burn him first.