The Reflection

This pier was not one I recognized. It jutted out into a black sea I had no memory of, yet I stood there as if summoned. The boards beneath my boots groaned with age. The air, slick with cold mist that never settled, clung to everything. Wetness shimmered on everything – the air, the railing, even the sky. The salt stuck in my lungs like regret.

I fished. I held the rod like it would anchor me to something more real, more tangible. On the horizon, leviathan shadows breached in slow, impossible arcs – fish too massive to belong to the human world. Overhead, the sky warped and flickered: red sun, grey moon, red again. Time swelled and shrank with the rhythm.

Still, I caught nothing.

I leaned over the railing, stared into the water, but there was no reflection – no shimmer of myself on the surface. Only eyes. A pair. Human eyes. Massive and blinking just beneath the living skin of the ocean, unblinking when I looked away.

A crash echoed in the distance. I turned. Beyond the rise of a sparsely-covered hill stood a lighthouse, crooked against the sky like a splinter. Just then, I saw a figure leap from its crown, arms wide, embracing the air.

I ran.

The hill pulled me like a tide. I climbed, feet slipping in wet mud. When I reached the lighthouse’s base, I expected a body. But there was only seaweed and the trail of wet footprints leading up the tower’s steps.

At the top, someone was watching me.

I entered the tower. The stone walls wept a translucent mold, slick and weeping like skin. As I climbed, the rooms would shift. No longer a lighthouse, it became something else: narrow corridors, the air thick with mildew and brine. I passed cramped cabins, the wallpaper peeling in damp curls. Windows showed nothing but water outside, yet the tower never swayed like a ship.

I passed through memories I had never lived. A sailor’s journal sat open on a desk, soaked in saltwater: “He stares from the waves,” it read. “He always was me.”

The air grew colder the higher I climbed. My breath fogged before me. At the final stair, the hatch above hung open, light spilling down in a long, red beam.

I stepped through.

The wind roared. The sea screamed far below.

And whether I fell or leapt, I still don’t know. But below, the eyes didn’t blink.