short fiction · 2026-10-31

The Lighthouse Keeper's Log

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

The light sweeps. Every twelve seconds, the beam cuts the dark — one revolution, three hundred degrees of nothing, then the rocks. I count in revolutions now, not hours. Three thousand six hundred revolutions until dawn. The oil runs low. The wick chars. My hands know the rhythm: trim, fill, light, wait. The sea does not care about rhythm. It throws itself against the foundation in irregular time, a percussion with no measure. Last night the fog came down like a held breath and did not lift for eighteen hours. The foghorn's moan became my heartbeat. I stopped counting revolutions and started counting breaths. This morning the logbook shows a gap: 03:00 to 21:00, one entry. "Fog." The light sweeps. Twelve seconds. The rocks wait.