Salt & Rust

Immortality takes a toll.

I wrote this for Bradley’s Power-Up Prompt #25, and boy, did it have me typing like a person possessed. I hope you enjoy this Gothic tale.

Collage made in Canva

I hear the slow thump of your heart with every step I take across the rotting floorboards, a sound as familiar to me as my own breath. The damp and salt-warped stairs moan in protest as I climb to put distance between us. Still, the sound never really fades. It’s there in every crash of the waves upon the craggy shore, in every gull’s shrill squawk.

Thump-thump-thump.

A shiver rolls down my spine, and I quicken my pace, eager to put whatever space between us that I can. It’s never enough. Still, my tension melts like candle wax down my twisted form the second I reach the top of the ancient lighthouse. I sink into the door and sigh, as alone as I can be, at last. The air is stale and briny and familiar. I run my tongue along my cracked lips and taste the salt of this forsaken place. It, too, reminds me of you, your kiss desperate and tear-soaked. The tang of blood when your teeth grazed the plumpness of my youthful lips.

If only you could see me now. I can hear in the shallow whisper of breath that you feel the centuries as keenly as I do. The weight of isolation on a damned soul has warped us both into something altogether more monstrous. You’d not find me beautiful the way you once did. I have become a creature untouched by light. This damp and dusty prison has warped my bones like it has warped the wood. My once-beautiful hair is now matted and coarse with brine. It no longer matters, though, because my only purpose for so long has been to keep you contained.

The small room turns sepia in the fading evening light, and I force my body up and toward the lighthouse’s beacon. It takes me several tries to strike the flint, and I shield the fragile flame with one shaking hand as I light the wick of the oil lamp. With a sputter, the lamp bursts into light. The need for a lighthouse had long since passed. No one has visited this forsaken place in centuries. Even so, there is something in the ritual of turning the crank and casting light out over the water that soothes me. Sleep never comes, but maybe…

In this ritual, I pay penance for what I’ve done. There’s no hope in these machinations, only devotion.

---

As it always does when I descend from my towering nest, I feel your heartbeat stutter. I wonder, is it love or fear that makes your pulse quiver? For I know you hear me draw closer to you each day, circling the iron hatch above your head as I descend the spiral stairs. I try not to wonder what it’s like down there, a fate worse than even my own. Today, there are no whispers, and I thank the stars for small mercies. The days blur together, but the most excruciating ones are those when you become desperate, calling for me. Pleading. In the early years, I almost succumbed many times. Now, when you plead for me, it’s only the familiar twist of a dull knife slicing open a wound scarred over many times before.

Though sleep is a siren I do not know intimately, I long for the oblivion of rest, and fall gratefully into the moldering cot in the corner. The thin mattress sags in the middle, and a spring digs into my back as I struggle to get comfortable. My eyelids are heavy and begging for rest, but all I can do is stare at the ceiling.

Thump-thump-thump.

Your face, as I last remember it, is seared into my memory. Alabaster skin and piercing golden eyes distract from those dangerous canines. I think about them skimming my neck; piercing my skin like the blade of a knife popping open a plump, juicy tomato.

Thump-thump-thump.

I miss you, even though you’re there beneath my feet. That’s my deepest secret: I love you when I should hate you. You’re my jailer as much as I am yours. And still, there is very little that keeps me from prying open the hatch that separates us and unleashing you upon the world. I am weak, and you are the very thing that undoes me.

Thump-thump-thump.

When the cot refuses to give way to comfort, I let my feet take me where they want to be. The rusted iron hatch looks as though it might crumble, but I know better. It’s sealed with more than human engineering. I think about what I might say to you, and sink to my knees as though I pray at the altar of you. It’s there, curled upon the hard floor, that sleep takes me at last.

Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump.

---

For the first time in some unfathomable amount of time, I dream. It’s not of you, for you haunt my waking hours enough. Instead, my mind fills with crashing waves of deep navy and a little boat bobbing in and out of the stormy sea. The captain of this sad vessel is nothing but a shadow. Even so, I felt the spark of recognition.

My first thought upon waking is that the boat was sailing on our waters. I feel this in my bones. And though it was only a dream, my fingers itch to strike the flint and light the lamp, illuminating the waters beyond this crumbling coastal tower. The world has forgotten us, but perhaps I have not forgotten it after all. I feel the flicker of something I thought I had long ago snuffed out. Not longing, for that’s perhaps the only thing I still know the sting of. This is new to my immortal self—hope. It’s a fragile thing, but it carries me away from you and back up the stairs with more conviction than I’ve felt in an age.

When the lighthouse shines its beam upon the waters, they’re as calm and lonely as ever. I bury my disappointment deep where all forbidden feelings go, and settle into the night’s rhythms. I half expect I’m hallucinating when, after many hours, I spot an anomaly. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time my mind had conjured something. But when I rub and blink my eyes, it’s still there, a boat bobbing ever closer to this abandoned place. My spine straightens as I stand at full attention, and I whisper an apology to you, for I know you can hear how fast my heart beats.

I’ve mere hours until the boat scrapes the shoreline, and then what? I cannot leave this desecrated home. Will this captain come to find me? Shame fills me at the thought of someone stumbling upon this place, although it’s served me well enough in isolation. Its disrepair matches my own, for we are made for one another. But the festering rot of this prison is no place for people of the light. In truth, I stopped caring for both it and myself when I realized that we would never again see another face.

What would you think, my love, if you knew how I wished to preen myself, even now? Not for you, but for some faceless soul upon the water? I reach to touch my hair, and wonder if there’s anything to be done. The suggestion of daylight lingers on the horizon, so I extinguish the lantern and shuffle downstairs, leaving the boat behind me when it’s so close to shore. Some part of me hopes that without light to guide it, it turns around, though it seems so unlikely now.

By the hearth, I have water that I’ve collected and purified from the sea. I slosh it against my skin, and though there is no salt in it, the salt that’s crusted to my skin stings my eyes as I scrub my face. I run my fingers through my hair, though it’s futile. This is as good as it’s likely to get, I think, as I take in my surroundings.

Thump-thump-thump.

I turn toward the iron hatch that stands between you and the world. “I’m not sure what happens next, my love,” I say in a voice like rusty hinges. I can’t remember the last time I spoke aloud. “I wasn’t prepared for this.”

You’ve been so weak for decades now, I don’t expect you to respond. Still, I imagine you asking me, “Prepared for what?” I know you’re thinking it. And so I respond, in the barest whisper, “To want this.”

When you were imprisoned, my soul was ripped from my body for the second time. The first time was when you turned me, made me into your own flesh and blood. But by that time, you had done so many terrible things that I could not blame the world for feeling safer with you locked away. You left a trail of bodies in your wake, your hunger as endless as the skies. And I trailed behind, begging you to be more discreet.

I’ve always known I am not strong enough to leave your side; from the moment they locked you away, I threw myself at the chance to be your jailer. I gave up every last shred of my humanity for you, after all. I never dared hope there was a place for me back in that world. We’re destined to rot 6 feet apart, alone together.

When there’s a knock on the door, I freeze. So the boat had not been a hallucination after all. It takes everything I have not to flee up the rickety stairs and fling myself from the spire, but somehow I turn. Each step toward the door feels like a betrayal, and in my ears is your shallow heartbeat. Thump-thump-thump. The person at the door knocks again, and I rest my hand against the wood with a shaky breath.

When I open the door, there’s ringing in my ear, and my vision goes blurry. For the faintest of moments, I think I’m looking at you. A crown of red curls frames your perfect face, just as the day I met you. Your smile is blood-red. Then my gaze shifts, and I’m looking at myself, bent and broken with time—a shadow of the person I once was. I stumble backward, stammering and smacking at my ears. The ringing!

As I scramble away, the vision shifts again. The intruder is still me, but it’s a version of myself full of youth and vitality. My spine is straighter, my hair and skin radiant, my figure plump. “Hello?” it calls, and it’s my voice, ringing clear and bell-like. This version of me doesn’t look right in this cheerless entryway. She was meant to be adored, to be draped in diamonds and immortalized in the way of men—through paintings and sculpture. She was a thing to behold, not to be shut away.

I look down at what being shut away had done.

“Go away,” I moan. In my desperate attempt to put distance between us, I fail to intuit the bucket behind me, and I tumble to the floor in a puddle of water. “Leave me.”

An expression flashes across this other me’s face so fast I almost miss it, so strong is my own misery. Hurt? And then, she reaches out a hand to me as if to pull me back to my feet.

“What do you WANT?” I scream, and she flinches, but does not pull back. I don’t expect her to answer, for I know now that I am trapped in some hallucination, finally losing what’s left of my mind. I once wondered if immortality also granted immortal clarity, but I see now it does not.

And then, she does speak.

“Why do you punish yourself?”

I gulp for air as though I’m a fish on land. That’s not the right question. Why would she ask me that?

“You can let go now,” she says, still holding out her hand to me. I’m afraid of what will happen if I take it. Below me, I hear your heartbeat racing, as fast as an undead heart can race.

“You should have let go long ago,” Other Me says sweetly. Now she is close enough to place a gentle hand upon my face. “Her crimes are not yours.”

Before I can spit out any words, Other Me turns, and with a swiftness I can no longer manage, moves toward that iron hatch to hell.

“Don’t,” I cry, and the freshly scrubbed skin of my face stings from the salt of my tears.

She looks at me with sad eyes, then shakes her head. Somehow, she does what I could never bring myself to do, even as I longed to, and throws the hatch open. Your heart beats wildly, and every muscle in my body tenses as I wait for you to spring. I can see it just before it happens, you tearing into her throat—my throat—draining her hot blood in frenzied gulps.

But you don’t come.

There is no bloodbath. You must be so weak, I think, and I crawl toward the hatch so my eyes can drink their fill of you. But as I peer over the edge and into the depths of this Tartarus, there is only emptiness.

“I don’t understand,” I moan. My mind feels fragmented and fragile, like I’m trying to hold up a tower of sand. But when I look around me, I am alone. Truly alone.

---

I’m unsure how much time passes with me draped over the empty pit, weeping until I am drained. It could be hours or days, but it feels like several more centuries. And when I am finally dry, I look around this dismal lighthouse—this place that only felt like home when you were buried beneath it—and remaining here even one second more feels like too long.

As I stumble to the door, my surety falters. What else is there?

Then I think of you—the you that died for her crimes so long ago, and I know it’s time. Pushing open the door is like rolling away a stone; it takes the last of my strength. The sun is immediate and blinding. But when my eyes finally adjust, I look out onto the desolate beach, so different in the daytime. And there, just a little way out, is the lifeboat.

Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump.

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