The denim man’s God-given name was Paul. Paul was born in the middle of February, on the eve of a massive snowstorm that tore through his hometown of Fossil, Oregon and covered the orange mountains in fluffy white streaks. It didn’t snow very often in Fossil and Paul’s mother, Helene, said that a storm of this size must mean that Paul was going to grow into something special. When people say that, they never stop to think about how “special” can work in two varying extremes. 

Paul moved around a lot so nobody ever really knew him. In his whole life, he had one girlfriend who worked in a soup factory, like where they make Campbell’s. Paul started dating her when he was thirty-one years old and they stayed together until Paul was thirty-three and three quarters. He lost his virginity to her and they talked about getting married one day. She had wanted five children, four girls and one boy, and she was already nearly thirty-seven so they didn’t have much time to waste. They moved in together about two months into their relationship but Paul insisted on sleeping in two twin beds instead of in one queen because she made him extremely nervous and prevented him from getting a good night’s sleep. This was weird but she had her quirks too, everyone does. In the end, she left him because he showed no real motivation to get a job and spent most of his time making candles that smelled really awful. 

By the time Paul got out of that relationship, he had murdered two little girls. The first was purely by accident and he didn’t like to think back to that day at all. The second was, admittedly, for fun. Once he started dating the soup factory woman, he had a difficult time keeping that second little girl off of his mind. Paul knew it was time to leave that all behind him. Yes that was something he did once when he was young and adventurous but it was all done with now and he took no interest in it anymore. Except he really did. Paul picked up candle making as a way to shorten the days. He experimented with all sorts of different scents, but mostly he liked using the essences of things that were once alive. Rotten mushrooms, a dried up twig, three strands of his girlfriend’s hair, the chipmunk he hit on his way home. The smell of something dead, sour, spoiled, or stale, the satisfaction of burning through a life—that really got Paul jazzed.

After his girlfriend broke up with him, Paul moved into a little house in Wallace, Idaho where he would stay until he died at the ripe age of ninety-seven. When he was forty, he started nabbing little girls again. Paul liked to think that he had a sort of internal compass inside of his nose that guided him to his next victim. He would get into his car, tilt his nostrils to the sky, and follow an invisible scent trail to some unassuming little girl who lived a few towns, or several states over. Paul’s fifth victim was his most difficult find, dragging him all the way out to Kentucky and then putting up such a big fight that Paul ended up losing vision in his left eye. But once he put a match to that candle wick and took a deep cleansing breath in, he no longer minded being half blind.

Paul kept all of his candles on a large oak bookshelf that sat in his living room. He never had company but he kept his work on display just in case someone stopped by one day to visit. Then he’d sit his guest on the couch and walk them through his collection with a glass of whiskey in one hand and perhaps a Cuban cigar in the other. Ella, Rosalie, Tanya, Laura, Pearl, Olivia, Maya, Izzy, Breanna. He would name them each one by one, then remove their glass lids and tilt them towards his guest with an eccentric flick of the wrist, the way an artist might brandish a finished clay pot. His guest would take a demure sniff, their eyes going wide with intrigue, and say something like, why Paul, you are a visionary, while visibly holding themselves back from going completely feral and taking another desperate inhale. Paul would then replace the glass lids and slide his candles back on their shelves, forbidden pots of pleasure that only he could bestow upon his audience. 

Paul relished this fantasy until the day that he died, sitting in a weathered armchair facing a burning wick. He didn’t relinquish his hold on life until all of those candles had been burned down to nothing, until his house was full of the smell of small souls and little lives.