Day 2,219

The shoreline is full of broken ships, broken cargo and broken bodies - all because the lighthouse prefers to watch our village instead. Maybe it's the spirit of the person we buried in the walls to give the lighthouse a heart. Maybe the fixtures are rusted from the ocean spray. Either way, it only shines on us while the shoreline suffocates.

The doors might as well be painted on for all the good they do - damned things are stuck fast and nothing we've tried, short of explosives, has made them budge an inch. The last keeper had to lower himself out of a window, not wanting to risk starving to death or facing the buried man's rage.

This has never happened anywhere else, at least nowhere that still talks to the mainland. We are an outlier that seems doomed to die like the guardian in the lighthouse - trapped like rats in a barrel of tar, surrounded by the rest of the swarm while the mainlanders holds their breath and waits for the struggling and squeaking to end.

We can't sleep, we can't sail away, we can't get any supplies delivered and autumn is in full swing. The ocean feels miles away for all the shipwrecks in the way and the night air is full of waves crashing against their emptying hulls while the lighthouse shines down upon us bright as the summer solstice.

Something's got to give and I reckon it'll be us.