Sol opened his eyes and cursed at the ceiling. It was still dark. He forced himself to breathe deeply. He wouldn't panic. Not yet. He figured he'd slept a few hours, and some part of him had expected that when he opened his eyes again, he'd be able to see.
"Shit." It might be too soon to panic, but that moment was growing closer. The cottage was quiet and felt empty. "Farron?"
He tried once again to put a face with the name and came up empty.
She didn't answer. He turned his head, eyes searching the room. No fire. He sat up and when his dark world didn't start spinning, he swung his feet to the floor.
His stomach growled. He was starving. He had to take a piss. And he needed to swim. Like hours ago. Maybe that's all he needed to get his sight back, a nice long swim.
He had no idea which way the door was. So he sat on the bed, fingers squeezing the mattress and stared. And listened.
The surf was quiet so it must be calm today. It was still too early in the year for there to be many tourists. He just needed to figure out how to get out of the cottage and to the beach.
He wasn't totally unfamiliar with Levi's beach cottage. He'd brought a girl here once when he was fifteen. He'd been partying with Levi, who'd been closer to eighteen and had really hot girlfriends. Sol had thought he was cool as shit. One girl in particular evidently thought Sol was cool as shit too. They'd been all kinds of high, looking for some privacy. They'd stumbled into the cottage, and before Sol closed the door the girl dropped to her knees and pulled down his shorts and well, it was the night Sol decided he liked older girls. The night he decided he liked lander girls. Because whether you were an elite athlete, or a rock god, or wore a uniform, or were part of a little-known sub-species of human, there was always that segment of the opposite sex that got off on that kind of shit. The kind of girls that were eager and dispensable. That's the kind of girls Sol liked. Easy. Dispensable. Another reason he'd quit looking at Farron. There was nothing dispensable about a breather girl.
He "looked" around the room. The darkness that engulfed him wasn't a complete deep down in the bottomless depths of the ocean kind of dark. He'd faced that kind of dark—the dark of his nightmares—and this wasn't the same. It wasn't the kind of dark that swallowed you whole and squeezed the life, the air right out of you. The world wasn't pitch black. He saw something. And he sensed something. Something he thought he could hear and feel more than he could see. When Farron had been here earlier he'd felt her in the air, those minute disturbances she made when she moved, when she breathed. And even now, he could get a sense of things. Solid things like the table beside the bed. The door across from him that was denser than the walls and a darker shade of dark if that made any sense. And he thought maybe the square of gray inside the black was a window.
He needed the sun. If he couldn't see it, he needed to feel it.
He pushed to his feet and swayed, swallowing back the rise of bile. He breathed through the dizziness, and thankfully it cleared. He dared a step forward and when he didn't fall over he took another. On his fifth step, his toes smashed into something hard.
"Shit." He put his hands out, searching for a wall and when he found it, he followed it with his fingers. He'd eventually find a door and escape. His hip banged into a piece of furniture. He ran his hand over the dresser and made a mental note of its proximity to the bed. Counted his steps until he found the door. He fumbled with the handle and when the door opened subtle warmth hit his face and a light wind tickled his skin. He'd been hoping for a bathroom, but outside worked just as well for him.
He stepped through the door onto the porch and hallelujah, let there be light. Not like a bright light or a blinding light, but it was different than the dark of indoors. A not as dark dark. And it smelled rich and salty, and the breeze felt like a touch, coaxing him forward. He figured it was a straight shot to the water, so he just walked, letting his nose lead him. After three steps his foot met with air, and he teetered, arms flailing at nothing and he fell, a belly flop into the sand that knocked the wind out of him.
"Are you drunk?"
God, he wished. He lifted his head, spitting sand. He waited for his lungs to fill with air then croaked, "Something like that."
"Are you wearing a wig?"
"No." Sol pushed to his feet, the sand sticking to his balls, an itchy reminder of his nakedness. He dropped his hands in front of his crotch. Whoever was asking these asinine questions was young. A kid. He hoped it wasn't a girl. He angled his face in the direction the voice was coming from. A few yards away a hip-high ghost of a shape wavered in front of him. "Who the hell are you?"
"Brady. Why don't you have on any clothes?"
"Where are your parents?" Surely the kid wasn't out here by himself. He wasn't sure how far away the closest house was, but it couldn't be far.
"My mom's in her chair reading a magazine."
Sol looked beyond the boy, but couldn't make out squat. He squinted. Maybe there was something there. A glimmering mass. The Gulf. Thank the goddess.
"I think I hear her calling you." He started walking toward the glimmer, toes digging into the uneven sand, the anticipation of feeling the water on his skin prompting him to walk faster.
"Where are you going?" Brady called after him.
"Swimming." He must be in some state if he was playing twenty questions with a random kid. He hadn't only lost his sight, he'd lost his damn mind.
"Can I come with you?"
Sol stopped and turned around and tried to look mean. "Fuck no." There. That'd shut the kid up. He started for the water again.
Kid-sized feet scraped in the sand behind him. Was the kid following him? Didn't matter. Wasn't his problem. Not his responsibility.
"You're going skinny-dipping?"
"Holy shit," Sol muttered but kept walking. He could feel the mist coming off the Gulf, feel the gentle lick of the waves on his toes.
"Brady!" someone yelled. Definitely the mother.
"Told you," he tossed over his shoulder before he waded into the water and when it reached his hips, he dove.
