The Lighthouse on Little Maid
I used to live. I lived. I once had a life. That's
not the case anymore and it doesn't matter that I'm writing about
it right no. That life was sad and lonely.
The life I lead now is very much different from
that fragile prototype of a life. Who decides what a life is? Who
thinks up the definition for what a life should or shouldn't be?
I am Kurt Stracton and I used to live in a
lighthouse on a small island far out in the Atlantic Ocean. The
lighthouse was my castle, the island- Little Maid- my kingdom.
I had but one subject in my kingdom. He was called
Frederick Doppler and was the best man I ever knew. I don't care
that my life was lonely because with Fred by my side, I could face
the whole of the Atlantic without shaking.
Fred always wore jeans that were crusted with sea
salt and a blue t-shirt that was the same. Somehow, he never washed
them, but he never smelt bad either. It must have been my aging nose.
He had straggly red hair that seemed forever dripping with water from
the rain, the sea or the shower. He had these fraying fingerless
gloves that he never took off, ever, and his fingernails were always
chewed down to the base, his hands callous and as worn as his face.
Fred must have been as old as I was when the storm
first began. A ripe old age of forty-four, give or take a few years.
Life was slow on Little Maid and we lost count of our birthdays long
ago. Seeing as how neither of us had anyone else to remember them for
us, we just thought it best to forget trivial things like birthdays
as we both shared almost all we had.
I did have one place to myself. The solitary
throne room. It lay just below the great all-seeing eye of the
lighthouse. The view showed almost as much as if you were standing on
the balcony one floor above- just without the insistent onslaught of
the wind and rain.
The weather was the worst thing ever on Little
Maid. Fred and I had enough land for a small garden and an even
smaller vegetable patch. The infinite rain constantly killed any
chance we had of growing our own food. That meant one of us had to
sail off and get it. Online shopping doesn't really work when your
doorbell is closer to Atlantis than Tesco's.
The trek to collect our six months' supply of
food usually took around a fortnight if we were lucky with the
weather, which we never were.
I never actually went to fetch the food, only Fred
did. I stayed and kept watch over my kingdom.
It was at one of these times that the storm hit.
Fred had left two days before to restock out pantry and then the
clouds descended.
Now, I say clouds, but these weren't like the
normal fluffy clouds you get on a calm summer's day or were they
the almost black clouds you tremble from in a thunder storm. These
clouds made thunder clouds seem insignificant and non-existent.
Honestly, I know, as there were already thunder clouds circling the
lighthouse. These clouds were thicker than the sky and blacker than
the night. Anything that had remained from the thunderstorm to
signify daytime was instantly wiped off the surface of the Atlantic.
After the 'night-clouds'; came the waves,
crashing down on Little Maid, obliterating our vegetable patch and
destroying our table and chairs in the garden.
As I watched the devastation increase outside,
from my quiet contemplative throne room, I noticed that it had begun
to rain. Slowly, at first, the rain tapped on the glass. The n the
wind picked up and started to viciously whip the raindrops into the
tough glass lookout.
My kingdom was being invaded by Mother Nature.
The wind and rain circled the lighthouse, drawn to
it. The black clouds became only a dark grey as they centred above
the swinging beacon of light.
In my room, it was silent. The eye of the storm. I
could see everything. Everything except Fred. I remember wondering if
I would ever see him again, talk to him. If I could survive this one
storm.
Well, I thought about that for the few seconds it
took a stray brick from the base of the lighthouse to be grabbed by
the wind and shot through the air at my solitary window.
The glass shattered for what seemed like hours on
end, although it was only for a second. The shards and I, as well as
anything not bolted down in the room, were yanked roughly through the
hole in the window and into the raging storm around my kingdom.
I was pulled into the air and spiralled above the
lighthouse like a ragdoll in a washing machine before shooting back
down to have a friendly reunion with gravity, In fact, gravity was so
eager to reacquaint itself with me that I broke every bone in my body
on impact. Shattered, like the window, as I said my goodbye to Little
Maid for the final, quiet time. The Atlantic then reached out to
claim my body and I was pulled under. The underside of the waves was
the last thing I saw.
My new life, as I said at
the beginning, is much better than the boring half-life that was when
I was alive. Now I am dead, I am free.
The storm may have killed me, but I have never
been more alive.
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