18 February 2013
This one is a bit creepy, might not be everyone's cup of tea.
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The bay of Westvale is perilous. The iron sea is choppy, and often toys with vessels that venture near. Its accomplice, the wind, is never far away and is always willing to offer a helping hand, whipping the sea up into a fury at a moment’s notice. The rocks just wait gratefully for their prey, like a captive lion that knows it no longer needs to seek fresh meat. When they are finished devouring the bodies of ships and crew, they cast aside the bones to float down to the seabed. The lighthouse stands watch. Sometimes the man of the lighthouse goes out onto the platform and sits, watching the ships. His hair is lank and grey, and his face is wrinkled from salt and spray. He lives in the lighthouse, but he never lights the beacon anymore. If the captains do not know that this is a dangerous bay, then they deserve to sink their ships. He had felt differently before his family all joined the Gods under the sea. One by one they had given themselves to the ocean. Since then he had stopped caring. Sometimes, when he sat out here, he thought he could still see Sareitha floating face down in the bay. The waves tossed her body around playfully, and sometimes he could hear her crying out. He had run down there a few times, but when he had got down to the water’s edge, the sea was still and calm, and there was nothing to be seen. Other times, he could see her lurking just below the water's surface looking up at him, but he knew it was not her. She had not had those evil eyes. He would not fall for that. He did not run down there anymore. The voices of the lighthouse did not bother him much. He had learned to block them out. They showed him things sometimes, never nice things. Previous owners of the lighthouse had committed some terrible sins. The lighthouse man had seen them. Sometimes in his round bedroom, he saw the bloody corpses of people that had lived here before him. He could hear them wandering up and down the stairs sometimes. The sea called to him, as it had called to his family. He was tempted sometimes, but he always managed to shut it out in the end. He knew it was the lighthouse. As much as he hated the lighthouse he could not leave. Over the years it had entered his mind and started consuming his memories. It had also left something of itself there. He could not even tell which were his own thoughts anymore, his own memories. Some of the memories there scared him, especially the ones with the red water and the thrashing. The lighthouse would never let him leave. It wanted to have the pleasure of killing him so he could also wander the staircase forever, or lay sleeping in the bay.
The Lighthouse • Opuss № I