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Swirled, still gray clouds loom across the skyline. The divots and folds to their delicate shaping are like the brushstrokes on a painting, stretched across the horizon in a seemingly endless gloomy haze.
The Earth looks barren here, the smallest of rolling hills beyond the broken and jagged rocks that dot a calm ocean’s shore. Each stone stands defiant at the water's edge, jutting up from the ground like so many bits of broken glass. The waves froth between the cracks, white and bubbling as they lick over the surface of weathered, yet still unwelcoming stone. The way they cluster and disrupt the tide would make one think a wound must lay beneath, weeping and molten in the cradle of mother nature’s battered skin.
Among the rocky terrain that builds into solid ground, a single building sits, its faded red and white paint chipped and raw from the salty sea air. Here, a lighthouse, in the middle of nowhere.
The sound of a bird's call rings through the air, big and black against the clouds. It flaps its wings with insistence, coasting with the stiff breeze that seems to scrape at the building's walls so far below it, scratching the way too many desperate fingers would.
Arcade is alone, out here.
Inside the small, warmly lit kitchen, he stands with his hips against the counter. His dead-eyed stare watching the coffee pot brew as the minutes trickle on, tuned out of the moment and more into that cloying sound of wind; to the muffled, and lone bird crying out in the distance as if it too was alone, out here.
Nature would be so cruel.
It's been three and a half months since he arrived. Three and a half months of solitude, with nothing but the ocean to keep him company.
It’s exactly what he was searching for.
So much of his life has been spent with the past stepping on the backs of his heels every waking moment. For so long has he tried to run from the punishment that awaits him for merely existing at the wrong time, in the wrong way- so long has he spent hiding, pretending to be something he’s not. Every passing day a performance, and with that, always a chance to be caught. A chance to be killed for being different.
He shut himself off from others out of habit, out of fear, brushing off even the most insistent by telling them he was nothing worth paying attention to. Telling himself every day in the mirror.
The friends he could have made let him be after a time, but even the most secluded of jobs are never really alone. Playing the grouchy doctor got him stationed away as a researcher, but even that wasn’t lonely enough. His paranoia only worsened being in those clean, empty rooms reading reports; the sound of people outside made him restless, hearing their footsteps and sitting on edge, convinced that the next person would be the one to open the door.
So, he left.
He left, and he came here, but he’s been wilting ever since.
Of course, he didn’t feel that way at first. No- at first it was nice to be alone, to finally feel like he had nothing to truly worry about. It had almost felt freeing, to be paid well enough to live, and yet without sacrificing his anonymity. The most well isolated job to be had, this side of the country.
But, the novelty wore off much quicker.
Arcade would follow his daily schedule almost meticulously, caring for the lighthouse itself was easy, after all. Keeping things clean, oiling the lamps and checking the glass, monitoring the oil and water tanks, the pumps stationed deep in the building's belly-- He did it all if only to have something to do, and then he would will the rest of the day away reading, or cooking, or drumming his chilly fingers against the table. On particularly exciting days when the restlessness won out, he might even climb to the railed balcony at the very top and just stand there in the open breeze, watching the ocean for as long as his mind could stand it.
He wanted to be alone, he was prepared to be alone.
But not lonely.
No, he had not prepared to be lonely at all. Arcade spent so much of his life afraid that he shunned the people who wanted to be close to him, sure, but they had still always been there. Even at his most prickly, there had always been someone to care about him, to check on him- to just be there, if nothing else would suffice.
Out here it’s not the same. Out here there is no one to knock, no one to poke their head in and ask if he wants another coffee. No one to bring him his mail when it gets mixed up by the delivery man, no one to shake him awake after-hours when he falls asleep at his desk. It’s only him out here, and while he’s free of most of his fears, it’s come at the cost of something he didn’t realize he could hold so dear.
Whether he likes it or not, the truth is he needs people in his life. He wants people to be close to; he craves affection, attention, and love. Being out here is no better than being anywhere else if it means he’ll be miserable anyways, but it’s too little too late to change his mind.
He can look forward to another nine months of this isolation, at best. The contract he’d accepted had been for a year of his time, and yet he’s already longing for the day he can quietly slip back into society on his pile of savings, and take his time looking for something… different. Something closer to his heart.
When he thinks about the future it frightens him, worried whether he may be irrevocably changed by the time his stay is finally up. What if he grows even worse? What if he can never catch up? What if, after all is said and done, the people he wants to come back to aren't there to welcome him when he does?
What if he never wants to?
The coffee pot’s steady drip, drip, drip, has been in the background of his thoughts for as long as he’s been standing there, and only the absence of the sound startles him back into the present. He stares down at the now full pot, and the vibrance, the urgency of his thoughts dull back into the graying haze of the moment, the dim reality he’s been living in.
He pours himself a mug and sits down at the small table by the stairs. It’s an old, unpolished wood with two matching chairs. The empty one mocks him as he stares at the base of the seat, lips touching the warming ceramic of his mug while he waits for it to cool. He tries to imagine someone else sitting there, but he can’t. The farthest he gets is a wavering outline, a ghost of someone faceless and unfamiliar.
For several minutes he sits there, sipping at his coffee while the sounds of scraping wind continue. He doesn’t hear bird calls anymore, and quietly, he wonders if they too found this place desolate, and empty.
When his mug is drained he stands, still at odds with the small space against his tall stature. He stretches his neck and rolls his shoulders stiffly, moving to set the lonely cup in the sink. It looks small, swallowed up by the metal basin.
Before long he finds himself climbing the stairs after, higher and higher. Through his bedroom and up into the cold air above. It rustles his short blond locks, and the brightness of the day blurs the smudges lingering on his glasses. He settles against the railing like it’s an old friend, prepared to stare out at the vast ocean like he has been for so many days and nights.
It crashes against the shore so far beneath him, eager with the rolling tide. Arcade lingers there for too long to count, watching the horizon that stretches on and on in front of him.
The sound of scraping is louder out here, following the wind. The shapeless fingers scratching at the paint are restless, and after a long moment his brow begins to furrow. It’s too loud, too persistent. The wind isn’t howling so much as it is a cradle, and he finds his eyes turning down, towards the ground a hundred feet below.
Out there on the coast, the jagged rocks clutch at something different than the startling gray surrounding it. Something a deep, rich brown-- a boat. Small, dashed against the shore with its innards pulled out. Planks of it sit broken and littered further in the water, and his heart quickly begins to pound.
There, lying several feet away from it, is a body.