Heirloom

My father’s shabby fishing boat quivers, causing my legs to shift against the cream leather. He fiddles and prods a few buttons beside the wheel. I could not begin to name what each one is doing - I was never good with all that mechanical stuff, no matter how desperately he tried to teach me. He shouts for my mother, who I know stands outside. I hear her boots click against rock as she hops onto land.

The first new face the island has seen in years, no doubt. My father grabs his baseball cap from the identical couch opposite me. He releases a long sigh.

‘Well, why don’t you step out?’ he says. ‘She’s already taken spot as first to step up on ya island - can’t be letting her be first inside ya home too.’

His eyes fail to meet mine.

He doesn’t actually want me to step out, I think - and I find myself almost agreeing; this couch is soft as fresh snow.

“Jim, c’mon love - you must see this!”

I force my body to depart from the lush leather before I sink entirely into it. As I pass through the door, the ocean air’s feisty chill swallows any trace of the cabin’s comforting warmth, whipping my bare skin.

“My father would be proud of you. I know it.” He takes a deep breath, causing the front screen to steam up. “Don’t let this place get you stuck in ya head too much, okay?”

I nod. He sees it in the reflection.

Standing on the boat’s rear, I face the vast abyss of blue. I observe no jumping fish, or blowhole fountains - just the water infinitely disposing itself again and again. I wonder if my father watches me leave, but he’s fixated on the front window.

I don’t blame him.

The rock is small, dwarfed by the open waters. However, jagged edges jut out from every angle, making it appear immense, in a way that surpasses its physical limits.

Wedged in the centre of it like a brick bullseye is my new home.

The thought sends water trickling down my forehead - and it's not raining.

I trace the rocky slope. My mother picks at her fingernails as she waits for me by the lighthouse’s dome door. Against the backdrop of ominous stone, the frills of her lime summer dress are like vandalism—a ladybug in a web of spiders.

The base of the lighthouse juts from the island like a limb. Its stained exterior bears scars painted by nature’s wrath. The muck crawls up the pale walls like a cruel tan line.

As I step off the boat, I swallow my heart, hard and fast. My legs fly, victim of a stray pebble. I prepare myself to greet a forest of jagged edges and sliced skin. My mother catches me in her sweet embrace.

“Hey, careful now,” she says, a stern concern eroding her features. “You’d make a poor lookout if you had no eyes, yeah?”

Across the entire island, similar vicious rocks coat the surface in hordes. The sun hovers above, yet its rays fail to penetrate the island.

“Did Grandpa…” I search for the words, “…enjoy his life here?”

“Can’t say I’m too sure. He was never the one to reach out all that much, and in the rare case when he did, it was always your father as his first point of contact. The man loved anything to do with water, though. It was his calling to be here, you could say.”

“Right, and if I’m not mistaken, I’m essentially the heir to this scabby castle of his.”

“Bright one, aren’t you? C’mon, enough chat, let’s finally get to opening this door.”

She sticks a hand inside her leather satchel and performs a brief forage. She presents a cluster of silver keys, held together by a mucky penguin keychain. I take it and scan the keys. Each one is marked by the scrappy ink of a marker. I sift through them.

Toilet.

Drawers.

Balcony.

B

Front door.

My mother claps my hand and looks at me with a careful, yet warm smile.

“Don’t use the one with the pink writing, yeah? Emergency only, ya Grandpa said.”

It’s barely legible, as if a high tide had swept the pigment away, leaving the word an inky skeleton.

“Gotcha,” I say as she releases her hold.

I grip the latter key, stabbing its crooked stem into the keyhole and twisting. I nudge the door ajar. The place is void of light, the dust filling my nostrils as I step inside. The old planks creak under the pressure of my boots. I swab my hand across the wall until I locate a small box - the light switch. A timid bulb flickers its amber hue in the centre.

A lone table reveals itself to me. It looks as if the decorator ripped it from a dollhouse. It is circular, and two solid-looking chairs flank it. There is an unlit candle in the centre. I avert my eyes to the quaint trap door wedged into the floor, beneath the floral curtains of the room’s sole window.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out which key opens it.

A narrow ladder is tucked at the room’s perimeter, suspended and lined with thin rails. The white paint is chipped and crumbling, flakes pooling below it like snow. We climb it, each step threatening to cave in under us. A rather lonesome bed with a cold metal frame, a polka-dot rug, and a bare nightstand is all. My mother walks over to the bed and lifts the flimsy sheet.

“Dear oh dear me.”

I shiver, walking over to her. She reveals a canvas of splotches - mossy, burgundy, bronze. I run my hand over them. Thankfully, all is dry.

On the third floor is my toilet. It takes a few yanks of the brass knob before I realise I’ve forgotten to use the key. Well, that would be putting it nicely. It’s a means to an end - a bowl with a hole, and whatever I dispense into it likely ends up swimming somewhere in the magnificent ocean.

The fourth floor is composed of miscellaneous junk: old records and all that. Grandpa’s, we presume.

We then clamber our way up to the fifth level. The level with the huge amber light, marking the centre like its own capital city. The beating heart of the lighthouse.

I perch on the quaint wooden chair slumped beside the door and inhale the sight of my new garden. I spot my parents’ boat, bobbing up and down, dancing to a silent song.

I turn to the person.

“I’ll miss you,” I admit.

“Next week, love. Next week.” Her curls disappear, then reappear, smaller and distant. She turns around and waves. I raise a hand in return, throat heavy.

His neck is craned down, face obscured by the cap. He knows I am here, staring. Wishing.

I don’t burden him with a sign of goodbye.

Soon enough, my mother sprawls on the cream couch. Their lips move, and tongues flutter, but their cadence does not reach my ears. My father fiddles with the various contraptions surrounding the wheel before the vehicle jolts.

The boat is a vessel transporting people, then it is stray debris, and then it is gone.

Then it is just me.

Me and my lighthouse.

———

I count the lines on the wall again. Then check once more. It’s been a week.

A week and a day.

I check my miniature clock. Five A.M., I rip my bedroom curtains open.

At first, the only light is from the stars, but if I squint, there is more—the fractured floodlights of a gliding container ship, obscured by fog, distant yet strong. I spin away from the window, take my wind-up torch, and aim its beam at my bedroom. I flick the light switch.

Nothing.

I scramble past the various kitchen items I’ve sprinkled amongst the planks and various scribblings I’ve made, attempting to entertain myself.

I pass the puddle of paint flakes, now a mountain, and make my way to the cluttered floor at the top.

I could swear I’ve seen it somewhere.

I forage through a fort of empty cardboard boxes, almost losing myself in the mess when I find my foot wedged beneath a bright yellow toy truck. It could be my childhood toy for all I know.

Wedged between two shattered acrylic paintings of the lighthouse back in its prime, there it is, like a breath of fresh air in space. I snatch the dark rectangle and press some buttons, feeling like my father at the control panel of the boat. The things I’d do to see that ramshackle of a boat again.

Feel the caress of that cream couch against my jeans.

A few fiddles, and harsh static fill my ears - the ambience of hope. I step onto the balcony, which snakes around the top of the lighthouse. My torch feels brighter than ever without the hue of the central light to support it.

I pace the balcony’s perimeter, gazing into the void before me—the container ship’s light still fights.

From here, the island seems minuscule. The ocean has slithered its way up the shore, swallowing what I used to call dry land, picking it clean with salty teeth. I feel myself shrinking in the rain, too.

My radio is soggy, and the cries of desperate static persist through a drenched misery. My bones feel glacial, waiting for the voice of a stranger. I stare at the ship until I cannot anymore, as it is swallowed by the cloud. Even as the sun begins to greet the day, I see it no longer.

I had never broken a promise to myself until now.

I thrust my hand into the pocket of my coat, reaching for the familiar fluff of a penguin. I feel like smiling at its poorly sewn, beady eyes. Then I feel like frowning at the absence of the fishing boat—the various ‘whys’ of why I have been here eight days instead of a mere seven. None I think of are good.

There it is, announced in sharp magenta ink.

B for basement.

I notice how much cleaner this key is than the others. The zig-zagged edges appear fine and delicate, instead of battered from experience like the others. I grab a can of tuna from the pantry and tear it open, shovelling the fish down my gullet. Saliva sloshing against the walls of my throat feels like acid.

I crouch atop the trapdoor, shoving the key inside its hole, and twisting until the lock resigns with a metallic clack. I slip a hand through the metal handle and the wood lets out a groan as I pull.

Unlike the rest of the lighthouse, which is littered with ladders, a thick concrete staircase guards the entrance of the basement. Its angles are stark and direct. Once inside, it’s the thick layer of must I smell before I see anything. The trapdoor swings shut behind me with a soft thud, trapping me with the suffocating stench.

I sweep my torch. His etchings of time stain the walls like a cursed mural. It may well have been years. I’m sure I’ll have time to count.

Slumped against a frozen grandfather clock, there lies the creator of the marks. His body is shrivelled and devoid of hue. Bones protrude from the wilted skin like twigs.

Nobody offered him to the ocean. I imagine how nobody will deliver me to the ocean, either, and how I will share a house with the shell of a grandpa forever until I become a shell too.

The tuna from earlier bubbles in my gut. I dart back up the stairs, clinging to the delusion that the little boat will be rocking on the shore like my personal angel.

Firming my palm on the wood, I shove against the trapdoor. It doesn’t budge. I heave my weight against it until my arms throb with desperation. It’s like the lid of a coffin, one that thankfully opens when I dedicate a bruising shoulder barge. I almost collapse on the cold stairs, gasping for stuffy air.

I notice a strange detail of this side of the trapdoor: the lack of a keyhole.

Then it hits me.

Who locked him in here?

Arms numb, blood fizzing in the bitter chill, I scramble for every pebble the island is home to, collecting in an organised heap like a magpie would with diamonds—my version of a paint bucket, my hands a brush. With the ocean as my witness, I begin to craft my message stone by stone. I am forced to cram the rocks close on my tiny canvas, else the tide threatens to deform my work.

The rhythmic clack of the rocks is like a bubble of tranquillity within the storm.

It doesn’t take me long to complete my piece. I return to my shelter and clamber up each rotting ladder, and when I reach the balcony, I cling to the railing and assess my creation. It’s a sloppy assortment of beads, arranged as one does with the mouth of a snowman.

It is a simple message, and the only one I feel matters right now.

Help.