Siete Cerillos Apagados

The first time I saw her again, the heat was already splitting my skull.

West Hollywood at noon felt like standing under a blowtorch — the kind of heat that makes the air hum, where palm trees look plastic and the asphalt ripples like it’s trying to swallow itself whole. I’d just finished a double shift at the treatment center, three admissions back-to-back, and my scrubs smelled like bleach and stale withdrawal. My body was buzzing, hollow and electric, like I’d been poured out and left behind.

I stopped at the self-serve car wash on Fairfax just to breathe under the shade of the aluminum awning. The smell of wet concrete, soap, and burning brakes hit me all at once, dizzying in the heat.

That’s when I saw her.

She was leaning against the vending machine that sold tiny blue packets of Armor All wipes and cheap plastic air fresheners shaped like palm trees. Same boots. Same frayed hem on her jeans. Same chipped nail polish the color of dried blood.

She was supposed to be dead.

Seven years ago, the fire at Luna y Muerte tore through that dive bar like the city had been waiting for an excuse to swallow it. Two people gone. No survivors. One of their names still lives somewhere in my ribs, like a splinter I can’t dig out.

I froze, hose dripping onto my shoes, water pooling around the drain.

She smiled like we were old friends. Like no time had passed.

“Siete cerillos apagados,” she said softly, like it was a greeting. Seven unlit matches.

The words caught in my throat, bitter and metallic.

“What?” I managed, stepping closer.

Her smile sharpened, just slightly. “You still have yours.”

And then she was gone.

One blink, and the space where she stood was empty except for a single wet footprint on the concrete — small, sharp, boot-shaped — already blurring in the runoff.

I didn’t even remember turning the hose off.

Two days later, I tried to walk it off — the exhaustion, the unease, the feeling that my shadow wasn’t lining up with my feet.

Runyon Canyon at dawn was pure contradiction, like everything else in LA. Dust and diamonds. Sagebrush tangled with bougainvillea. A shirtless guy jogged past carrying a chihuahua in a designer sling, and somewhere behind me, a girl in rhinestone-studded yoga pants whispered affirmations into her Stanley cup.

I kept climbing anyway, lungs burning, hoping sweat would rinse me clean.

And then I saw her.

Halfway up the trail, standing against the rising sun like she’d been painted there. Same boots. Same frayed hem. Same chipped nails glinting when she brushed hair from her face.

Except — this time, her hair was longer. Blonder. And the curve of her jaw was softer, like whoever built her from memory switched reference photos halfway through.

“Hey,” I called, trying to sound casual. “Weird running into you again.”

She turned, squinting at me, eyes sharp as glass — but there was no recognition.

“You’ve mistaken me for someone else,” she said, voice like smoke curling up from a blown-out candle.

I almost believed her. Almost.

Until I caught the flash of silver in her back pocket.

A matchbook.

Luna y Muerte.

My chest went tight. “You dropped something,” I said, pointing at it, but she only tilted her head like I was speaking another language.

“Not yet,” she said. “But you will.”

Then she stepped off the trail, boots crunching gravel, disappearing into a wall of eucalyptus like she’d never been there at all.

I scrambled after her, breath ragged, but there was nothing. Just cicadas buzzing in the heat and the faint, metallic taste of salt in the air.

That night, I couldn’t stop turning the matchbook over in my pocket, the foil peeling under my nails.

Seven years ago, the fire at Luna y Muerte killed two people.

No survivors.

Or so I thought.

The next morning, back at the treatment center, one of my patients — Carla, a rail-thin girl with jailhouse tattoos and the kind of hollow-eyed intuition you can’t teach — cornered me in the hallway.

“I saw her,” she whispered, clutching the hem of her sweatshirt. “The girl in the boots.”

My mouth went dry.

“Where?”

“In my dream,” she said simply, like it was an answer that mattered. “She said you’re not done burning yet.”

After that, I started seeing her everywhere.

Behind the glass at a coffee shop in Echo Park.

Crossing the street outside the Laugh Factory.

On a bus barreling down Sunset at 3 a.m., face lit electric blue by a phone that didn’t exist.

Every version of her was slightly off — shorter, taller, softer, sharper — but always the boots. Always the frayed hem. Always the matchbook flashing like a dare.

I stopped sleeping. Started walking West Hollywood at night like the city might cough up an explanation if I asked nicely enough. But LA under streetlights is its own kind of fever dream — heat radiating off pavement, broken glass catching neon, wild sage tangled with exhaust, laughter leaking out of bars where strangers kiss like saints.

The whole city smelled like gasoline.

Two weeks later, I broke.

I dug through old fire reports, hospital records, newspaper clippings.

Luna y Muerte Fire — Casualty List.

Eight names. Two confirmed dead. Five injured. One missing.

The missing one was me.

Not my name, but my jacket. My boots. My Claddagh ring.

Someone had pulled me out of there and never told me. Or maybe I never left.

That night, I dreamed of the matchbook again.

Not the one in my pocket. The real one.

The one scorched into my palm the night it all burned, back when the velvet booths went up like kindling and someone screamed my name through the smoke.

I woke gasping, bare feet on the cool kitchen tile, the city pressing against the windows like it was breathing.

I opened the matchbook on the counter.

Inside, the single burnt match was gone.

All seven were whole. Fresh. Unstruck.

And scrawled beneath them, where there hadn’t been writing before:

Come back…

Outside, Santa Monica Boulevard simmered under heat mirage, and across the street, she was waiting.

Boots. Frayed hem. A matchbook dangling from her hand, silver glinting like a blade.

She smiled when our eyes met, like we’d finally made it back to where we were always supposed to burn.