The match burnt my already scarred fingertips as I led us down a path I'd been praying was right since we stopped finding signposts and worn letters addressed to my missing sister that looked centuries old but were dated to last week. You barely glanced at me as you handed me the last match, both of us knowing that when this one went out, we'd end up losing each other in the dark.
I'd suggested many burnt matches before this that we should tie ourselves together so we don't end up wandering this purgatory alone but you were too worried about one of us falling and dragging the other into a pitch black death to even remotely consider so much as holding hands. You'd always been the cautious type so I hardly thought anything of it but alarm bells had been sounding in my head ever since we went looking for my sister.
My first thoughts were to blame the way my mind screeched that Everything Is Wrong Must Leave was due to our location - some sub-basement that only seemed to extend itself downwards - rather than attribute any fear to my companion. To you. To how odd your behaviour was becoming the further away from the surface we got. To how you tried to keep yourself half tucked in the shadows when I know you're scared of the dark.
Your eyes have a strange glint to them that I'm only just starting to realise you've had ever since the gap between me burning myself on the first match and you fumbling in the dark for a new one. Did you really drop the matchbox or was the real you dragged into the shadows and replaced by this new one who can hardly wait the sixty-something seconds this match will last before we're both thrown into the darkness again?
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