Lighthouses 3

22/10/19

Dawn brought a buttery sky and a wet, sighing creak. The plastic-faced man rowed in silence, dribbles of black pus leaking from the rivets on his cheeks. Stuart watched the waves sift in panels and exhale in rising humps.

You think you can't get a job, the plastic-faced man breathed.

'I did,' said Stuart, twisting back into his jacket-pillow. 'I did think that.'

Did you see other people working, he coughed, hawking up a ball of black goo.

Stuart shivered. 'I thought I did. I can't remember actually seeing anyone now. I suppose - I suppose I just always assumed.'

Like you assumed your wife left you.

Stuart stared at the winking lights of the ships in the distance. The plastic-faced man's oar rose and dregs of black oil unspooled from it in clotty slevers.

'She did leave me,' he muttered. He tried to think of phone calls, of angry words.

She did not.

'There - she was angry, she rang -'

She did not. She left with everyone else.

Stuart clutched the wooden board beneath him as the boat wavered on a crest. 'You're a prick,' he spat.

The plastic-faced man wiped leaking black trails from under his nose.

I am not a prick, he said.

*

20/10/19

In the wrap of night Stuart watched the single bulb above his bed. Its spread cast a yellowish puddle over the ceiling, punctured by thin white lines. When he closed his eyes, the lines remained, warped and whiplashing across a black field. His head rolled to the side and, through shifting blocks, he saw himself in a tiny, bare version of the room. The bulb dangled in front of him, sparking, rattling and emitting spangle-shock fits of pristine white. 

Concerned, Stuart reached for a steel box and held it under the bulb. He had to force it up until it clamped over the web of light. Within its cocoon, he felt the bulb banging and spitting. The box grew red hot and slipped from his grasp. His fingers burned. As if its point was made, the bulb hung dull and inert now. 

Scrabbling across to a miniscule window, Stuart squinted out at the spread of high-rises, billboards and roads, lit like a pinball machine. He watched as one by one the buildings puffed into nothingness, an explosive whisper passing through everything until all that was left was the roads underneath. In turn, they unfurled, snapped and slipped into oblivion and only a great, glistening black ocean remained, swelling up from the emptiness far below. Pressing his nose against the glass, Stuart made out the dull twinkle of vessels littered far apart, bobbing silently on soft oil waves. Then he turned again and was awake, flapping at his bedside table for the cigarettes.

I can't go on like this, he thought. 

Miles across town, a man in a tiny room dropped his steel box, shook his fried fingers and crawled over to the window. He watched the first building puff out of existence and murmured 'shit'.

*

21/10/19

Amongst a torturous nexus of good-communication-and-interpersonal-skills-required-interface-with-customers-and-colleagues-previous-experience-advantageous-permanent-contracts-available lurked a bold:

'SECURITY/MAINTENANCE. RELIABLE AND PATIENT. START ASAP.'

Stuart jotted down the address and phone number, shrugged on his suit jacket and padded out into the crisp afternoon air. A punchy wind announced itself, leaves flip-flopped and further ahead, a wheelie bin swayed drunkenly before face-planting into the kerb. He made it to the street in twenty minutes, and loitered around a number of flacky-paint, dingy doorways before backing up to settle on what appeared to be 12A. The windows of the concrete building were boarded up, and a beetle was negotiating a treacherous pathway over a crisp packet at the foot of the door. Stuart thought of David Icke, MI5 adverts, and, frowning, knocked.

Muted huffing, shuffling, scrape, click and a shabby, be-bearded face was wedged between a gap in the doorway.

'Yes?'

Stuart paused. The man had pitted red marks around both eyes. 'I'm - I was here about the job. The advert, er, security and maintenance.'

The floating doorway head dipped a solemn nod. 'Take this,' he said, proferring an ear bud. Stuart took the bud and stood holding it, uselessly.

'Put it in your ear,' the man hissed, scratching at his puff of grey-flecked beard. 

'Oh.' Stuart looked down at the thin white rod in his hands. Past it, he saw the bug teetering on a silver crisp-packet summit. The wind whipped up a fresh round, stinging his cheeks. 'Why?' 

'Nothing sinister, just health and safety,' croaked the man. Then, seeing Stuart's blank stare: 'You can tell a lot about a man by the cleanliness of his... ears.'

Stuart shivered in his suit jacket. He exhaled, thought of the boredom, the sleeping all day, the terrible dreams, and jabbed the bud into his ear.

'Excellent, excellent,' clapped his interviewer. Stuart grimaced as the man received the bud back in his hand. 'Do come in, please, and apologies for the somewhat bizarre protocol. If you'll just step through to the lounge area - '.

Stuart ducked into a cramped hallway. Ahead of him the man sidestepped into a room for the briefest of moments. Coming up behind and pausing at the doorway, Stuart saw him surreptitiously prod the ear bud into his own auditory canal. His head twitched with frenetic spasms for a beat before he froze, nodded, and turned to march back into the hall.

'Sorry, just checking the heating. Awfully gusty out there. So, Stuart, if you'd follow me through to the operations room.'

Stuart opened his mouth. He couldn't remember having introduced himself, and the weirdometer had ratcheted up to bleurgh-levels. He was swithering on the thought of leaving when he saw the operations room. A single bulb hung in a tiny, low-ceilinged boxroom. Beneath a small square of window sat a lonely steel box.

*

18/10/19

The First Mate watched the last body flump through the air and land with a percussive slap. The texture of the rolling waves seemed to blend with that of the sinking face, crack marks splitting and bleeding dark pus. Tough, plastic-black sections of face broke away. He touched his own forehead, the hard patch of black sheen underneath his hairline, and rubbed a greyish smear that came away in his hands. 

Looking up again, he saw six lights blinking in the far distance.

*

The Captain stood beside him, peering through binoculars.

It's not a city, he said. His voice sounded like a separate thing now, thrown from under the layers of disease that coated his face. He lowered the binoculars and wiped at a dark leak under his eyes.

It's a sustained residue, he said. There are a few of them. They will have core lights.

The First Mate leaned over the side and watched the gloop beneath them slicking up towards the skirt of the flickering, grainy buildings sliding into view.

'Are they well, though? The people in there?'

They are, nodded the Captain. In a sense. But it's a lie, a memory, and whatever light they have will not sustain them forever.

The First Mate bit his lip. A trickle of black juice slid out and he looked away.

'Will they let us in, though?'

They will not, breathed the Captain.

*