The Depths

Part 3

He limped around the rickety shack at the base of the lighthouse, peering through every unobstructed window to find any sign of an explanation for that damned stone's impossible path of flight through the shattered one. It seemed almost intentional, but surely no man alive could lift, let alone throw that stone. No life other than him, save for small crustaceans and seabirds, could be found on this tiny, rocky atoll. The occasional illuminating flashes of lightning allowed him to briefly glimpse the small landscape around the island through the ferocity of the storm. He stopped on the easternmost window, just past the bed in his quarters. He squinted, his eyes still swimming from both the pain and liquor, at the slowly writhing blackened landscape surrounding him.

A conveniently placed bolt of lighting shattered the darkness around his lonely prison for a split second, and his eyes widened in shock at the sight of the silhouetted head and shoulders of a man peeking up at him from the edge of the steep cliff that led to the water. The bottle of whiskey in the old keeper's trembling hand fell to the poorly constructed wooden floor with a deep thud. He took a subconscious step back, and, after nearly tripling in the bottle, looked back out in time for another flash of lightning to announce that the figure was gone.

He burst out laughing, and gently fell backwards, landing on his bed. His old knees ached from the sudden movement. His foot throbbed.

"How drunk am I, ter be seein' shadows n' such in the middle o' the Atlantic! Why, 't ought ter be a pretty young woman instead, so's I can have a bit o' company!" His drunkenness amplified his accent, which mixed with laughter into a nearly indecipherable mess of slurs. He reached down to the bottle, now nearly void of its contents, lifted it, and chuckled as he removed the stopper and took another swig.

The sound of his raucous laughter drowned out the crushing wall of sound emanating from the hurricane outside, until what must've been a ludicrously close bolt of lighting brightened the entire shack as though it were noontime in a desert summer, preceding a deafening thunderclap that shook the very foundation of the island. His hands instinctively jumped to protect his ears, and all noise was drowned out by the sheer ringing of his concussed eardrums.

He lay sprawled on his bed, head in his withered hands for what seemed like an eternity until the ringing subsided and his hearing, along with his reason, returned to him. He let out a dry chuckle, as though trying to prove to an absent person that the sudden, overwhelming terror that had just overtaken him had not effected him in the least. What kind of man was he, lying close to tears on his bed from a single lighting bolt? He gathered himself, and stood, with all the confidence he could muster. He took a step towards the kitchen and struggled not to faint from the pain emanating from his foot. He sat back down on the bed, took another swig from the bottle, which, during the course of the recent events, had spilt half of its nearly depleted contents all over his bed, and downed the remainder in one gulp.

He frustratedly raised the bottle over his head, prepared to release his anger with a single throw, but slowly lowered it, not wanting to find himself injured yet again by a stray shard of glass. He gingerly limped to the kitchen, the floorboards damp from the soaking rain, set the bottle inside a cupboard, and retrieved another, fuller one. He returned to his bed, and sat once again. He removed the stopper and raised it to his lips.

The window next to him exploded in a massive shower of glass and wood. The bottle shattered in his hand, and dozens of tiny shards embedded themselves into his face, neck, and right arm, shearing through flesh and clothing. The vision in his right eye was suddenly dyed a deep red, as a minuscule shard perforated it and stuck into the bone of his eye socket. A sizeable shard had sliced directly through his right hand, leaving a wound approximately an inch long that ran between his middle and ring finger metacarpals. The blood began to ooze slowly through the wounds, in stark contrast to the explosion in which they had been inflicted.

He sat for a second, unable to react. The pain slowly revealed itself as his nerves awoke from their shock, and after a shuddering breath, he began to scream. He writhed in agony, cradling his wounded arm. The whiskey from the broken bottle had rained down into his open wounds, exacerbating his already incredible pain to a point well beyond that which any man could tolerate. His terrible screams were swallowed by the storm.