Vanessa Debella
High tide sets in as a final sun ray bids the shore a good night, the thick fog clinging to the last hint of sunset afforded to the abandoned sands. Still air, ripe with stagnation, is a gentle reminder to the old lighthouse keeper of his own mortality, the bones of fish adorning the coast a far better utility than a pocket watch or calendar. Time is either nothing or everything to an old man, and this one much prefers to count down his days watching the waves, greedy and lapping at the beach like a begging whore. Besides, the palpitant tick-tick-tick of the broken clock inside gives him a headache.
The heavy chill hasn’t been kind to his joints this season; even sitting, his right knee aches now more than ever, and – when did his lungs get so tight? A sigh, cut short and punctuated with a cough, passes his chapped lips in a thin cloud. He pulls a flask from the inner pocket of his coat, the sudden absence of the metal against his chest sending a chill down his arms. He sips the whiskey, viscous and warm from his body’s heat, and the delicate sweetness of the honey lingers more strongly than the sting of the whiskey.
One more sip.
For a time, he’d been married to a woman that hated the water. He found her to be ugly in that way, amongst others. He’d say she was his Siren, and she hated that too. His name she deemed profane, and it was sharp on her tongue back then, slicing him open, navel to sternum, teeth barred behind gently pursed lips. Her eyes were always dark, rage-filled irises rivaling hurricanes and daring any sailor – every sailor – come closer. With her last breath, she told him there was nothing good left in him. They had had a daughter. When she was young, he’d sit on the edge of the deck of the lighthouse and watch her wiry frame dangle on the whale bones she treated as a playground. Sometimes when he feels his mind a little fuzzier than usual and the hazy light from the moon elongates the shadows of the broken ribcage on the shore, he fights against wishing they were hers.
One more sip.
The light in the lighthouse hasn’t worked for some years now, but sometimes he swears he can still see the beam. He imagines proudly being the last man to have seen the blinding spotlight, to remember it before the base had eroded or the windows shattered out, the structure now slumped like a displaced passer-by, either begging for forgiveness or hoping to be laid to rest, neither a responsibility the old keeper could shoulder anymore. He feels like an apparition more days than not, and could almost convince himself he was if not for the boot prints in the sand every morning, still untouched from his walks the nights before. He wonders if the lighthouse, too, feels like a ghost.
One more sip.
He slips the flask back into his pocket, stands, and his joints whine; another reason he’s fairly certain he’s alive. A dense gust makes him hold his hat in place, the breeze just strong enough to chill the damp exposed skin of the old man’s neck, but not loud enough to veil the disconsolate groan of the swaying lighthouse across the sand.
His desperate walk back to the empty lighthouse is a piercing limp, every misty exhale broken up by swallowed sobs.