Every evening as the sun melted over the edge of the ocean and the crisp blue sky began to fade to violet, a man began his climb. Up and up hundreds of steps on his old knees until he reached the peak of his tower. There is the humid glass room, the man crouched down below the enormous crystal beacon that took up most of the round chamber. He reached into the mechanics and pulled down on the stiff brass lever until it clicked and the whirring of electricity within the machine broke the silence. The man now watched the amber wisps of cloud grow darker above where the sun had perished for the night. The dimming light outside was suddenly illuminated by a blinding beam of light that cut through the window pane that faced directly away from the ocean. The man looked away from the light although he was not unfamiliar with the crippling quality it had when it first came to life. A second gear clicked within the mechanism and the glow began to move very slowly to the right. As the machine got louder, the light began rotating around the room more quickly; the power of the light still increasing. The man loved the exhilaration he experienced every time the stream of luminescence illuminated his pale skin. He felt as though he were on fire.
When the man saw that his light was working properly, he descended from his tower back to his living quarters. Even down below, his view of the sea was stunning. The man watched his beacon swing around the landscape several times. Its glare was faint as the night was still in its lavender youth. The man sat down to dinner and watched time go by in the sky. Every time he looked back up to the heavens, a new star would materialize. Although the man was sitting alone as he did every night, he was not lonely. The man had lived a long life full of the comfort of a family and full of conversation. Now he was quite pleased by the silence. The man had loved, and had been loved. He had travelled and learned and experienced. But now he rarely left his home; the man loved his lighthouse and what seemed to be an entire sea before him that belonged to him and his light.
One cloudy eve the man sat in his study reading when he looked up at the clock. The weather outside had made it difficult to know the time and how much sunlight the day had left. The man set his book aside and took off his glasses. He went past the kitchen to the staircase in the middle of the house. He embarked up his tower. Every ten winds around the spiraling staircase, there was a window. All he saw out the window that marked halfway up the tower was gloom beyond his kingdom. He longed for his light that would soon brighten the twilight like a second sun.
At the top, the man huffed and puffed for half a minute. Even after trekking up the stairs every morning and evening to turn the light on and off, the journey remained tiring. He leaned on the beautiful lens surrounding the powerful light bulb and then bent down to reach the switch below. He found the cool metal handle and pushed down. He waited for the flurry of waking up to come from inside the machine. He waited longer. There was no sound and no click and definitely no light. The man’s white eyebrows wriggled into one crumpled caterpillar as his heart began to race. He wiggled his fingers and bent down to find the lever again. He pushed it up and then down again, but still it was quiet. The man let out a heavy sigh and struggled to sit down on the floor. He managed to get down and duck beneath the lens to fiddle with the mechanics. He turned various switches on and off, he pressed buttons, he tried the lever again. But there was nothing.
The man felt a swelling panic begin to bubble inside him. He looked outside, where the clouds obstructed his view of the actual sun, but he could see that it was significantly darker than before. The black in the east of the sky was steadily spreading to the indigo west. The man tried several more times to get the light to turn on. But nothing worked. The man sat down and stared outside. What could be done? Without light, what could happen? Who would perish at the hands of the now useless man? He began banging in desperation on the contraption. He kicked it and yelled at it. But the light just wouldn’t work. An hour passed. The sky was dark and the waning moon hung low, peeking out between two large clouds. The man wept as he grew more and more hopeless.
It was a cold night, and rain seemed to be approaching. With no full moon nor stars for guidance, any ship could be in danger. The reason the man did his job each day was to protect the cold strong people out on boats in the vast dull ocean that the man never fancied to endure.
That night with no job, no purpose, and no light, the man unlocked the dusty glass windows that encircled the top of the tower. Every one now open, the chilly night air blew in and rattled the frame of the room. While the night whipped past his ears, the man went to the window facing the sea, directly where the sun had surely set and stared down at the rocky shore below.