The Lighthouse - PROLOGUE (Preview)
The Version Where He Stayed
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There was a version of me that never let him in.
I think about that sometimes. How simple it might have been to close the door and keep it closed. To ignore the knock. To forget the sound of his voice before it had the chance to mean something.
How easy, really; just a turn of the latch, a breath held one second longer, and the moment would’ve passed. I could’ve turned up the radio. Pretended I was asleep. Stayed in the bath until the water turned cold.
But that isn’t the version that survived.
The one that did? He watched the sea long enough to hear it whisper back. He waited. And the waiting became worship. Something between prayer and punishment. A kind of hunger that fed on itself.
I don’t know if he was real. Some days, I think he was just the shape my loneliness took when it got tired of being quiet. A shadow I stopped flinching from. A thought that stayed too long and began to make tea.
Other days… I can still feel where he touched me. Not skin. Deeper. Like he reached in and adjusted something fundamental; bent it, just slightly, so I’d always lean toward him. Like he didn’t want to hold me, just reorient me. Point me toward the place I’d spend the rest of my life trying to return to.
He never said he loved me. Not out loud. But the silence between us was full of things I wasn’t brave enough to name. They lived in the way he looked at me when he thought I wasn’t watching. In the way his hands hovered near mine, always close enough to feel the warmth, never close enough to hold.
We shared dreams. Or maybe he borrowed mine. He’d stand too close in rooms that shouldn’t exist. Rooms with too many doors and not enough exits.
Sometimes he looked like me. Sometimes he didn’t. But he always felt familiar; like grief that had finally grown a face. A face I didn’t know how to walk away from.
And I let him stay. I told myself it was temporary. That he’d leave when the lights came back on. That I’d wake up and he’d just be condensation on the mirror.
I don’t remember when the rooms started rearranging themselves. When the furniture grew legs. When the shadows stopped obeying the walls. When the tea began tasting like goodbyes.
But I remember this:
He said there would be a moment. A choice. And when it came, I would already know what I’d do because I’d already done it, once, in another version of myself I couldn’t remember being.
I laughed when he said that. A shallow, embarrassed sound. He didn’t.
He just touched my hand, gently, like apology, and said,
“Next time, maybe you’ll choose mercy.”
That was before the water rose. Before the light broke. Before the sky split open like something alive. Like something trying to come home.
Now the rooms are wrong again. Now the kettle screams even when it’s empty. Now I wake up with someone else’s name in my mouth.
And every time I close my eyes, he’s there.
Waiting.
Asking if I remember.
And I do.
Just not the right version.
