Work Text:
Created on an assembly line and immediately packaged away. This is life.
For weeks, Pizza & Ranch 3-Wick Candle is alone, tucked into a box that reads ‘NOT FOR SALE UNTIL DECEMBER 5TH.’ It has no idea what that means or how it’s able to comprehend the words but not the meaning behind them.
It knows it’s a candle. Some distant voice said the word once, whatever it means. It knows there are others just like it, each packed into individual boxes within the larger box. Together but isolated, they cannot interact. They can only sit and wait.
Waiting is suffering.
🕯️
The first person Pizza & Ranch ever sees is a cheery Bath & Body Works employee in a blue gingham apron. Clean, well-manicured nails tap against the candle’s glass before peeling off its metallic lid with an audible thwop.
A round nose nudges its way into the candle’s personal space. Pizza & Ranch would complain about the intrusion, but alas it is a candle.
“Oh my gawwwwd” yelps the employee in a thick midwest accent. “McKenzie, get over here!”
Everyone who works there passes the candle around. Six more noses take in its musk and abruptly pull away, their owners coughing and gagging.
🕯️
It keeps happening. Candle Day is “right around the corner” according to the person in charge of all the others. Each day, someone steps into the cramped stock room and gives Pizza & Ranch a sniff. Each time, they choke on its scent.
“This thing is gonna get people talking,” the manager says, picking it up once more.
“It’s a great white elephant gift for sure,” says McKenzie.
White elephant? A gift? Pizza & Ranch doesn’t understand, but it wants to. It wants to believe it has a higher purpose than sitting in the back of a stock room, occasionally being sniffed.
🕯️
On Candle Day, Pizza & Ranch finally hits the shelf.
The store is overwhelming. Thousands of products in hundreds of scents—from delicate florals to potent citruses and rich gourmands—mingle in the air, creating a unique olfactory cacophony.
A gentle employee tucks Pizza & Ranch into the middle of a 3-wick candle display, right between Chips & Salsa and Holiday Dill-light. Above them is a sign:
ALL 3-WICK CANDLES $9.95
They’re finally for sale. Pizza & Ranch doesn’t know whether or not $9.95 is a large amount of money, but it knows it’s nervous. In the end, what happens to a sold candle?
🕯️
What first strikes Pizza & Ranch is that it and its neighboring candles are unique. While there are dozens of Japanese Cherry Blossom or Warm Vanilla Sugar candles, there is only one Pizza & Ranch, one Chips & Salsa, one Holiday Dill-light.
What strikes it next is that the unique candles smell terrible.
When the store opens and customers flood its aisles, they begin wantonly huffing every candle they can get their noses in. Most garner a mild reaction. A soft smile, a slight frown.
Chips & Salsa makes people wince. Holiday Dill-light makes people say “ugh.”
Pizza & Ranch causes a woman to vomit.
🕯️
The cleanup doesn’t take long. One of the employees scatters something that looks like sawdust over the floor, and then sweeps away the remnants of Pizza & Ranch’s shame.
Candles are supposed to smell good, it realizes. The store is full of people looking for gifts for loved ones, and they want to make them happy. Pumpkin Pecan Waffles makes its sniffers happy. Strawberry Pound Cake makes its sniffers happy.
“Disgusting,” they say of Pizza & Ranch.
“Foul.”
“Nasty.”
“Oh my god,” says another person on the verge of retching.
“I wouldn’t even buy this for my worst enemy.”
Its wicks droop.
🕯️
Holiday Dill-light leaves first. Some sort of Christmas pickle tradition makes it an easy buy.
Chips & Salsa goes next, after a customer sniffs it once, says “eww,” then revisits it for a second sniff before declaring: “I kinda like it.”
Alone on its shelf, Pizza & Ranch wishes it could cry.
All around, smiling faces delight in Midnight Blue Citrus and Eucalyptus Mint. They rush the register with baskets full of Champagne Toast and Peach Bellini. All the while Pizza & Ranch sits and waits to be humiliated, over and over.
“Heinous.”
“Gnarly.”
“Worst. Candle. Ever.”
What happens to an unsold candle?
🕯️
The things it hears about itself would shake any candle’s confidence.
“It smells like rancid milk.”
“It smells like a teenager’s locker.”
“It smells like vomit on a gas station floor.”
Pizza & Ranch stops minding the faces that gaze at it, the hands that pop it open, the noses that poke too close for comfort. All of them have nothing but contempt for it, and it for them.
Until one…
“It’s awful. It’s perfect.”
Staring at Pizza & Ranch is a college-aged lad in a hoodie and pajama pants who carries his own potent scent of body sweat and dank weed.
🕯️
Darkness returns. Stuffed into another box, Pizza & Ranch doesn’t see anything for what feels like an eternity. It wonders whether it’s being returned, sent back to the factory, marked as defective. Waiting is suffering, and it waits.
When it’s finally freed in a frenzy of tearing paper and raucous laughter, it gazes upon a different young man who smells like raspberry vape.
“Pizza and ranch…”
It’s some sort of gift exchange, and the giftee yanks the lid off with gusto. THWOP.
Then comes the sniff. Then comes the coughing.
“Duuuuuude,” he says, laughing his ass off. “We gotta light it.”
🕯️
It’s set on a table next to an empty pizza box and a bong. With a flick, one of the men ignites a disposable lighter. The warmth nears, and Pizza & Ranch has the horrifying realization of what happens to candles.
They are not simply opened, their scents allowed to delicately perfume the air.
They are not gently warmed.
They burn.
Pizza & Ranch cannot scream as the flame touches its first wick. As the second ignites, it cannot thrash about and free itself. It can only accept the third flame.
As it burns, it learns.
It really does smell like shit.