Prompt: roses, kiss.
Word count: 250.
This one is a little different. With those prompts I decided to be inspired by Seal’s 1994 hit song ‘Kissed By A Rose’.
There used to be a graying tower alone on the sea.
You became the light on the dark side of me.
Mitch had been alone for thirty years, manning the lighthouse up at Dead Man’s Point every night without fail. Every evening before the sun sank from sight he’d climb the winding staircases – becoming a greater effort as the years wore on – clean the giant mirrors, and lit the fire that reflected and shone as a warning beacon to the ships that passed by – mostly ore ships, and less of them as the years went on (the mines were closing). On foggy nights he stayed awake with hot coffee in a thermos and a blanket, manning the foghorn.
Every night in the blinking light he thought about Katarina.
He’d planted a dozen red rose bushes for her birthday the year she disappeared. He tended to the bushes every morning, just as the sun came up and before he went to bed. There was only one bush left now – the others had succumbed to the cold and the wind, the loneliness of the tall peak and its single grey tower.
The rumours at the small village he visited monthly for supplies sometimes reached his ears. The wailing wind that spread through the rocky tors was the final scream of a woman who had thrown herself off the high cliffs, unable to take the isolation any more. Some people thought she’d turned into a seagull for the freedom she longed for and was denied. Some people whispered that Mitch was responsible for her disappearance.
It should have been called Dead Woman’s Point.
PS – I like this one so much I might turn it into a whole story one day.
Lissa Bilyk 