Off in the distant sea, an octopus had begun to levitate. Out of the rough, all eight tentacles were pulled one by one; as though it had been transformed into a marionette. Oddly enough, the octopus didn’t seem to mind the intrusion. It swayed with a calm sense of nonchalance, as though the wind and the strings were it’s only driving influence. Each string pulled at a rate out of sync from one another, leaving the octopus splayed out like some aquatic take on a pinned up insect. For the moment, this display seemed beautiful, but in another moment the octopus would be jettisoned into the skyward blue.
James noticed the intrusion just as the octopus had reached the midpoint of sky and sea. From the lighthouse, he was gifted the perfect view for experiencing the once in a lifetime performance. Along the coast, the sound of surf crashing against smoothened rocks offered up an oddly calming ambience to the otherworldly play. As James sat up from the bench nestled next to the lighthouse’s mighty lantern, he brought his coffee with him. Caught in a trance, he took a sip of the sour, poorly brewed, mud. Perhaps, if someone were to have been out hiking the far removed trail that led to the lighthouse, they might have seen James and assumed that this were an every day occurrence. Perhaps they might’ve gone home, and unlike James, been afforded the chance to tell others about this interesting sight.
In the moments that followed, James continued to gaze at the octopus as it made it’s slow crawl. Had he brought a camera on this trip to the lighthouse, he might have left to go grab it. Instead he watched, and as the octopus rose finally to the threshold where it could be thrust away, he saw it disappear. Startled, James dropped his mug, and the otherwise calming chorus was interrupted with a sudden crash. Perplexed, but ultimately unenthused, James went into the muggy stairwell that reached up to the lighthouse’s summit.
Within it’s sheltering stones, the crashing of waves become muffled and obsolete. Each step on the way down let out an echoing creak to fill the silence. The sight of the octopus was more of an annoyance to James, as was any distraction to his routine of sitting atop the lighthouse. To see something strange at sea, was just a matter of life to the lighthouse keeper. Being alone so long, made illusions of the like inevitable. However, in the coming moments James would soon realize that truth adorned this odd sighting.
Nonetheless, as James reached the bottom of the lighthouse, and stepped outside into the cool morning air, he moved with a relaxed tempo. There was a small stone path that led from the entrance of the lighthouse to the entrance of the small, attached keeper’s house. To the east of the lighthouse, there was an outcropping of rocks that gave way to a cliff and, further down, the sea. On the other side, there was a small clearing of grasses and brush which later gave way to the thick, evergreen forest. As James walked the small path, the stones clanked and clacked beneath his feet. He briefly looked out at the path which led away from the lighthouse and into the dense forest. Beside this fork in the road was a small pile of firewood, kept dry in what resembled a miniature house.
Following the path, which moved clockwise around the base of the lighthouse, James came upon the humble keeper’s house. It’s warm exterior, made up of rugged wood siding stacked upon a light stone foundation, was in stark contrast to the heavy cobblestone which stacked up to create the whole of the lighthouse. The two, attached at the sides, looked like a pair of mismatched siblings. Opening the heavy, hardwood door into the keeper’s house only revealed more differences. The interior was light and airy, a result of it’s large, normally open, windows. Inside there was a small bed in the far right corner, a bare-bones kitchen on the left, and a small ornate table in the close right corner. Jame’s moved to the kitchen and walked between the small moveable island and stone counter top, before arriving next to the fridge. He picked up the broom that sat at it’s side and turned to walk back to the lighthouse. However, before he could make it out the door, the ground started to shake.
All around the house, items once adorned with dust began to shake and clatter. James, who had never lived anywhere with earthquakes, stood perplexed by this sudden seismological phenomena. Even more shocking, the roof began to move upwards into the sky. Suddenly, light flooded the panicked room as the walls, too, began to rise, plank by plank, with the roof. As the new gaps began to show, it became apparent that the stones of the lighthouse, too, were beginning to float into the air. James, never the type to respond to an emergency, remained transfixed by the events unfolding around him. His only movement would come when he too began to be pulled up into the air.
It was an odd feeling, floating into the air; unsurprisingly unlike anything James had ever experienced before this moment. Only childhood dreams of becoming and astronaut could compare. James tried to moving his arms or legs, but no amount of effort caused any movement. It wasn’t as though he was restricted, but more that he was no longer in control of his own bodily movements. As he continued to move with the lighthouse, he soon neared the threshold the octopus had once dared cross. Without any further warning, James was hurled upwards into the heavens.
The aftermath of the events was ultimately nonexistent; where there was once a lighthouse, now there was nothing. The waves continued to crash, the birds continued their morning calls, and the trees continued to sway in the wind. Further beyond the horizon, a container ship continued to move along it’s preplanned path and a storm continued to move closer to where the lighthouse had once been.