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Chapter 6. Lighthouse

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TWELVE by Chris

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She loved to watch how the lighthouse spread its rays, and to imagine how the sea drops, runaway from the wave, played hide-and-seek with it, believing naively that the light couldn’t find them. But today it wasn’t so. The lighthouse didn’t wake up by night as it usually did. She didn’t remember how many hours she walked to this lighthouse, she was not tired, only one question troubled her: why there was no light. From distance it seemed like a toy to her. But approaching the lighthouse, she had to tilt her head back to see it completely. The sky was a solid dark blue abyss. For a second, she thought she was looking into the depths of the ocean. The lighthouse was enormous. The cracks in the solid masonry looked like scars on the body of a fighter who had heroically withstood the blows of storms. She touched the wall, as if stroking the shoulder of a close friend, to dispel his dreary loneliness over the ocean. She went inside and saw an endless staircase. As her feet climbed step by step in unison, she wondered what mysteries these walls might hold. At what point does a person decide to become a lighthouse keeper? Could it just be a desire to be alone with yourself, listen to the inner voice, or was it a real desperate escape from people? In any case, she thought, a person must have a good reason to open the door and step into the echoing room of loneliness. The last step was under her foot. The traces of oil around the burner looked like a lake of tears. The fuse, desperate to ignite again, seemed so fragile that she was afraid to even breathe in its direction. The decrepit wooden floor, greedily absorbing spilled oil, did not inspire trust in her. She glanced ahead and tried to see something important through the murky window. The forces she had spilled on the steps of the stairs filled her body again, it seemed, there were a hundred times more of them. She straightened her shoulders, took a deep breath and looked ahead, trying to find the horizon line. But the sea and the sky merged into a single dark haze. The only thing that allowed her to distinguish objects was the moonlight, desperately trying to give the appearance of life being present here. She saw something flash in the corner, and went up to this moon beam. In her hands was a dog collar with a steel dog tag engraved with Neptune.