The Wall and The Lighthouse

The Wall and The Lighthouse is a surrealistic short story, somewhat dreamlike in its telling, and was originally written as a warm-up exercise before a larger project.

The Wall and The Lighthouse

A Short Story

By Eastin DeVerna

The waves were vast and without end. Gray and sparkling and crystal. A towering wall, climbing twenty stories toward the sky, separated the tide from the shore. Though, in defiance, the shore was somehow completely submerged -- an ocean in and of itself.

The voices were all still there on the beach, amid towels, drink, and sun umbrellas. I climbed through the water and up the wall and upon reaching its summit, dove across and into the other sea. There was a chill and a shock before the water absorbed me into it and as I swam, clawed sea creatures pinched and tore at my feet and hands. I twitched and shrugged them away and could think nothing more of them. I wore a pair of swimmer’s goggles, foggy and scratched. The sun shone brightly through and my eyes swelled at the salt and light. 

Before I came upon the shore, I went through a dim shop. Items littered the ground -- out of place, but also as though they had always been, and will always be -- a small music box home to a small ballerina, a toothbrush, a child’s robot, yellow and red, with a wire skeleton beneath its rubber flesh. I drank beer from a plastic bottle as I stepped over the debris and then went to the bathroom. 

There were people inside and their clothes were scattered about the floor. I left them there and outside, saw two priests, tall and short, both with beady black eyes and without the rest of their faces. I tried to hide my beer, but they saw me and though I offered to pour it out on the ground, they demanded I put it in the freezer, there on the floor. I drank it anyway and they shrieked before they were wisps of smoke swirling up into the ceiling vents.

Back on the other side of the wall I swam like a dolphin, shooting out of the water, flipping high in the air. I was flying. I heard their applause from below the other ocean. How could they see what I was doing this high up past the wall? I suppose it did not matter, they loved me. I stopped and stood at the top of the wall and waved before clambering back down to them. 

I slipped on seaweed and starfish strewn across the shore-side of the wall as I descended and cut my hand and knee on the sharp rocks. I thought I remembered this side of the wall as ordinary, but it was still drowned by water. The voices lay resting, drinking and eating on the sandy bottom. 

And how could we breathe?

I went to them. “Let’s go back to the other side,” I said, “It is wonderful there and you can swim like a fish.” But they did not respond. I then knelt down and begged, but they shoved me away and frowned.

“We do not like you anymore. We will not come with you. And now we are separate,” came the cold voices. But they were right and I seemed to have forgotten. I suppose it is fine. 

I am far too old for love, anyway.

I watched them as they sprung up from the beach and swam to the surface to fill their lungs with fresh air and then swim back down. Cumbersome, I thought. 

I turned around and there was a lighthouse behind me, tall and white with great black stripes. I walked to it and opened the door. The water that should have rushed in did not, but instead trickled in slowly, and only at the floor. I stepped inside and shut the door behind me. I did not understand it before, beneath the ocean and on the shore side of the wall, but it was a wonderful thing to breathe again.

One of the voices must have seen me enter the lighthouse because a moment later there was a knock at the door. I opened it and more water trickled in onto the stone floor. It began to puddle. “You can not come in,” I said. “It will flood before long.”

“Please,” the voice said.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and more of them approached. “No, No. You will all have to swim to the top. You know, like you’ve been doing. Not enough room.” I closed the door and put a bar up behind it to keep them from entering the lighthouse. 

There was a spiral staircase leading to a window. I ascended the steps and looked out at the crowd of voices clustered around the door and they were not the same. Some were lumbering back to their towels, some swam to the surface for air, some lingered at the door. Go away, I thought. I turned around and behind there was another door. What’s this? 

There was a knock.

“Can I come in and take pictures?” It was a different voice, one I had not heard before.

“No, it will surely flood.”

“It will not,” said the voice. “Open it.”

I opened to see who this voice was. It was a small child, but I could not tell who.

The child was holding a camera, and behind the child, snow was falling. White pines all around. The child was below me and had to climb up a few steps to enter the lighthouse. As the door remained open, snowflakes sank into the puddle, but they did not melt and the puddle became cold. I saw no water leaking in and thought that it would be okay if the child entered. “I suppose,” I said. “But be quick about it.”

“I will take pictures by which to remember the voices.”

The child then placed a tiny foot onto the threshold of the lighthouse.

And all of the voices were gone.

The End.