Singular Sock - 1,955 Words

Everything lost will be found on its own time.

Singular sock

          I have tended the Beacon Rock lighthouse for more than two decades. Each sunrise, I climb the spiral stairs, wipe the glass of the lantern room until the sea foam reflected there looks like liquid mercury, and set the great Fresnel lens to its relentless, humming rotation. Each night I watch the beam sweep across the black horizon, a lone eye that refuses to blink. In the evenings, after the lamp has been fed oil and the beacon set to its full blaze, I retire to the keeper's quarters, a small, wooden, and stubbornly functional. There, in the humming darkness of the laundry room, one mystery persists, as absurd as it is infuriating: a single sock, always a lone, wool-gray foot soldier, lies in the dryer, its twin vanished without a trace.

          Last winter, while the sea was still thick with ice, a tattered envelope slipped through the cracked letterbox beneath the lighthouse door. Its paper was yellow, its ink a faded blue that seemed to tremble in the dim light. No return address, no postmark, only a crude sketch of the lighthouse itself, rendered in a hand that was both elegant and oddly familiar, as if the writer had known the tower's every scar. Inside, the first premonition was written in a looping script that seemed to pulse on the page:

          "Tomorrow night, the fog will roll in thicker than ever before, swallowing the coast. At exactly 02:17, a fishing boat will collide with the reef hidden beneath the mist. The crew will survive, but one will be lost at sea, his lantern falling into the water, blinking once before darkness."

          I stared at the words, feeling a cold that was not the sea wind. I could have dismissed them as a prank, a sailor's joke. Instead, I spent the day watching the weather charts, noting the fog's gathering, and I kept the lantern oil extra ready. That night, the fog indeed pressed against the rock like a woolen blanket, muffling the gulls and the low moan of the surfing. At 02:17, a scream of metal rang out, distant yet unmistakable. I scrambled to the cliff's edge and saw the faint outline of a boat hugging the reef, its hull shuddering as it struck hidden stones. The crew scrambled onto the rocks, faces pale, eyes wide, but as they pulled themselves ashore, I caught a flash of a lantern slipping into the churned water, its light flickering once before being swallowed. The fisherman who had owned the boat, an old man named Mateo, clutched his chest and whispered, "It's like the sea knows us." I later found his lantern, charred but intact, lying on the sand, proof that the letter had not been a mere imagination.

          The next envelope arrived a week later, sealed with a piece of rope frayed at the edges, as though the sender had used a knot to bind the paper. The second premonition read:

          "Tomorrow night, a storm will break over the outer reef. The wind will howl like wolves, and the sea will rise to the height of the lantern room's windows. A lone gull will be driven into the tower's glass, shattering it. In the chaos, a fire will ignite in the boiler room, fed by the oil you keep for the lamp."

          I could feel the absurdity of the warning, yet I could not shake the memory of the previous night's accuracy. I inspected the glass, repaired a loose pane, and tightened the oil drums. When night fell, the sky darkened with a sudden, violent squall. The wind rose to a howl that seemed to tear the very air apart, and waves crashed with such fury that water sprayed onto the lantern room's lower windows. A gull, caught in the vortex, slammed into the glass with a sickening crack; shards fell like rain. In the commotion, a spark leapt from a loose valve in the boiler room, igniting a thin wick of oil. The fire rose quickly, licking the iron ribs of the room. I rushed down the narrow staircase, pulling the fire hose from the wall, and doused the blaze just as the storm began to abate. The lighthouse survived, the gull's body lay still on the soot-blackened floor, and I found, tucked in the pocket of the burned oil drum, an extra charred sock, identical to the lone one that haunted my dryer. The fire, for a brief, terrifying moment, seemed to suggest that the missing sock might be more than a domestic mystery.

          Two weeks later, another letter arrived, this one written on a ship's log, the ink smeared with salt. The third premonition read:

          "Tomorrow night, a pod of whales will surface near the lighthouse, their breach so great that they will cast shadows across the beam. In that moment, a ship anchored offshore will break its moorings and drift into the rocks, but a passenger will be saved by a rope thrown from the deck of the lighthouse."

          I could not help but smile at the romantic notion of whales. Still, I found myself pulling a sturdy rope from the storeroom and coiling it near the entrance to the lantern room, just in case. That night, the sea glowed a phosphorescent blue as a massive pod of humpbacks rose from the depths, their enormous bodies silhouetted against the lighthouse beam. The water erupted in a chorus of thunderous exhalations. Simultaneously, a small cargo vessel anchored near the reef, a vessel I had never seen before, started to shudder as its lines snapped under the sudden pull of a rogue current. The ship drifted, its hull groaning, toward the jagged reefs. I shouted the rope's length to the watchman, who threw it over the rail. A sailor on the ship, his face slick with spray, clutched the rope and was hauled aboard just as the vessel's bow smashed against the reef, sending a spray of foam and debris into the night. The whales continued to breach, their shadows dancing across the lighthouse's rotating light, as if they were the guardians of the coast.

          The fourth letter arrived on a day when the sea was calm. Its paper was thin, like the hull of a dinghy, and the ink ran slightly at the edges, as though it had been exposed to the salt spray. The fourth premonition read:

          "Tomorrow night, a strange aurora will appear over the water, painting the sky in green and violet. A lone child, lost on the cliffs, will follow the light and be found at sunrise. But beware: the aurora will draw the attention of a fisherman's soul who has waited decades for a final catch."

          I laughed at the absurdity, but the notion of the aurora lingered in my mind. That night, as the moon slid low, the sky erupted in ribbons of green and violet, a spectral curtain that seemed to belong to another world. The light spilled over the water, turning the sea into a mirror of the heavens. In the cliffs below, a small figure, no more than a child, wandered, his flashlight flickering in the gloom. He was my neighbor's boy, Tomas, who had slipped from his parents' grasp while playing hide-and-seek. He stumbled toward the lighthouse, eyes wide, and I ushered him inside, wrapping him in a blanket. As dawn painted the horizon, I heard a plaintive cry from the harbor. A fisherman, old and weather-worn, stood on his boat, staring at the water where a silver fish, larger than any I had ever seen, glimmered, then vanished. He whispered, "At last, the one that got away." I realized the aurora had been a beacon for a soul that had lingered over these waters for decades, waiting for the moment his catch could finally be pulled from the deep.

          The final letter, which arrived at the cusp of a new month, was sealed not with rope or paper but with a thin strand of dried kelp, still faintly smelling of the sea. The ink had faded almost to nothing, leaving only the outline of the words, as if the future itself were trying to write itself. The fifth premonition read:

          "Tomorrow night, the lighthouse will get a new caretaker. He will arrive in a weathered coat, eyes as storm gray as the sea, and he will carry with him a box containing a single, perfect sock, one that will finally pair with the lonely sock you have guarded for years. When he steps into the lantern room, the beam will shine brighter than ever, as if the very heart of the coast has found its rhythm again."

          I stared at those words, the absurdity of a perfect sock floating like a prophecy in my mind. Over the past months, I had grown accustomed to the uncanny accuracy of the letters, each one a whisper from vessels that had long since dissolved into rust and legend. Yet this last message struck a chord deeper than any weather prediction or maritime disaster. The notion of a new caretaker implied a change I had not imagined in my twenty-plus years of solitary watch. It also offered a resolution to the most trivial, yet maddening, mystery that had plagued my domestic life: the missing sock.

          That night, the wind was still, the sea a glassy expanse reflecting the moon. At exactly 01:03, a faint knock sounded on the heavy oak door, soft, deliberate, as if made by a gloved hand. I opened it to find a man I had never seen before, his coat slick with spray, his hair matted by the sea breeze. He introduced himself as Arlen, a former deckhand-turned lighthouse apprentice, sent by the Coast Guard to relieve me after my tenure. In his satchel, he cradled a small, neatly folded parcel. When he opened it, a pristine, wool-gray sock lay there, its twin identical in hue and weave, gleaming as if pressed fresh from a dryer. He handed it to me with a wry smile, "Looks like you finally found its partner."

          When Arlen stepped into the lantern room, I felt the beam's rotation shift subtly, the light growing steadier, brighter. The Fresnel lens seemed to hum with a resonance I had never sensed before, as if the very soul of the coast had found a new rhythm, a new heartbeat. The mysteries that had haunted me, the phantom letters, the vanished ships, the singular sock, now wove together into a tapestry of strange providence. I realized that the letters were not just omens of impending events; they were a dialogue between the living and the lost, a conduit that allowed the sea's forgotten voices to reach out across time and guide me toward a future I could not have imagined.

          In the days that followed, I taught Arlen the routines of the lighthouse, showing him how to wind the lantern's clockwork, how to polish the glass until it caught the sun like a polished gem, and, most importantly, how to respect the mute stories that the sea whispered at each tide. The lone sock in the dryer was finally paired, and I placed the perfect pair on the shelf, a small testament to the strange, looping connections that tie the mundane to the marvelous. As for the letters, they stopped arriving once Arlen took over, as if the lighthouse itself had closed the channel once the tide of change had passed.

          The lighthouse stands, a sentinel of mystery, its light forever guided not just by oil and glass, but by the lingering whispers of those who have gone before, and by the promise that every unanswered question, no matter how trivial, may one day find its perfect counterpart.

Word Count: 1,955
Prompt: A lighthouse keeper begins receiving handwritten letters from ships that vanished decades ago, each one describing events that will happen the next night.