With fog licking at my lips and haze secluding my eyes from my heart, I sit alone—the watchman of my own, isolated lighthouse. Seeking refuge from the torrential thunder within, I look to the door. 

Searching high and low, no corner left unturned, the door has become its own storm to evade. Hectic in my own haunting hurricane, a hero I am not. But, when the storm has replaced my heartbeat, hateful is not what I become.

Lost within the blurred lines of trapped and hidden, I transpose from watchman to watched man—painfully privy to the reason my hair is standing up, agonizingly aware of what secrets are esoteric no longer. Much like the door, the eyes have left no trace, and I tremble at the thought that I may suffer the same fate. 

Scaling the staircase, I sense myself slipping—my own skin sliding off my very spine. Skeletal yet surviving, I stare. Staring at the whitening knuckles gripping the railing. Staring at the miles I’ve yet to climb. Staring at my likeness reflecting on the simultaneously shiny and rusty metal encasing me.

Staring at the reflection that can’t seem to move.

Staring at the starer who has started their own ascent, trying to make me into my very own shadow. 

My only solution is to shut my eyes—shut my eyes and soar swiftly away from the starer. Step after step, the anti-silence of my escapade peals with its own paraphrased pandemonium. Getting closer and closer to an unknown safe haven, I continue, cynical of what may or may not still be behind me. 

Step after step after step after step. It’s mania. It’s madness. And, it’s my only chance.

Each step is my only chance to find the door, the window, the escape I need. Each step is the chance to be free. Each step is its own nightmare but with every step I take, I skate closer to my dream.

Each step is just one step, but it’s like they’re ambushing me, closing in on the unsuspecting prey already piloting a private pursuit. One by one turns to two by two, and, suddenly, I’m seeing success and stopping this shocking story. 

A trapdoor. A push. A hoist. A safe haven.  

Surrounded by millions of miraculous windows, I look out on the sunny beach below me. But sunshine struggles to soften the carnage onshore; boats bereft of crew lie on the beach like broken dreams, and it’s my fault—all my fault. 

And with that culminating cognizance, I hear a knock from below: the trapdoor. This thump forces me to reckon with the reckless idea that the starer was right all along.  

I open the trapdoor and welcome the starer into the light. Beckoning me to follow, I lock eyes with the definition of mystery and begin the doleful descent, ignorant of the boats I’ve doomed by giving in.