Double Doors and Double Entendres of Regret
“When the Candle Melts”
Time doesn’t tick—it drips.
Slow, soft, like wax from a candle left too close to the windowpane.
You thought you had plenty left. Solid. Like life. Like youth. Like breath.
But then morning comes, and something’s wrong.
Your chest tightens.
You try to sit up but can’t.
The candle’s melted down to a sputtering flame, flickering against the edge of forever.
And then—
Like a ghost from a Baptist tent revival,
a Scripture you hated as a kid floats up from the graveyard of memory.
You buried it back when life was loud and sin was sweet.
“What is your life? It is even a vapor…”
You mocked it once.
Now it mocks you.
Because the ache isn’t just in your chest—
It’s in your soul.
And the fire climbing your ribs isn’t fever or heartburn.
It’s judgment.
And you know it.
Your thoughts race.
Your courage cracks.
Your peace has packed up and left the room.
And your breath?
It’s bargaining.
“Just one more day...”
“Just a little more time...”
“Just one more chance to get it right...”
But mercy’s hourglass is empty, and you were too busy building sandcastles on the shore to notice the tide coming in.
You see them now—those two towering doors.
They rise like monuments to every warning you ever ignored.
And just above them, carved in fire:
“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
Your heart begs, “This can’t be real.”
But it is.
Because sin doesn’t come dressed like the devil.
It wears perfume.
It sings sweet lullabies.
And just before the doors slam shut behind you,
you hear it:
“Pleased to meet you... hope you guess my name...”
Then—
darkness.
But not the kind that sleeps.
No, this darkness breathes.
It wraps around your ankles like chains dipped in tar.
It moves.
It hisses.
It welcomes you.
“Jesus save me!”
Your scream cuts through the abyss, pure as it was when you were eight years old and trembling in your seat at Vacation Bible School,
back when you still believed.
But He’s not here.
He’s outside those doors—
The ones you slammed a thousand times
for every party,
every hookup,
every “I’ll do it later,”
every “I’m not ready yet.”
He called.
You declined.
And now…
the flames rise.
But they don’t give light.
Only pain.
Only black.
And the darkness whispers what you never wanted to hear:
“Welcome home.”
And that’s when you know.
This isn't just a nightmare.
This isn’t just a metaphor.
This is forever.
And you scream again.
But it’s too late.
Not because Jesus didn’t want to save you…
But because you never let Him.