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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/solardrxpp1 on 2025-02-08 01:55:47+00:00.
Living five miles from Florida’s Atlantic coast means salt air bleeds into everything—the sun-bleached siding of our house, peeling like sunburned skin, the tangled mangroves framing the tidal creek behind our property, their roots clutching at briny mud like arthritic fingers. Even the ice cubes in our freezer taste faintly of the ocean, as if the sea had seeped into the tap water while we weren’t looking.
Dad’s 27-foot center console, the Salty Serenity, might as well be a fourth family member. Her hull is pocked with barnacle scars, her vinyl seats cracked like desert earth, but Dad polishes her twice a week with the devotion of a priest tending an altar.
Come June, when the pavement starts sweating by 9 a.m., leaving the backyard asphalt shimmering like a mirage, our weekend routines shift. No more strolling Cocoa Beach at sunset, the sand cool and sugared between our toes, no more road trips to Georgia’s mountains where the air smells of pine resin instead of decayed jellyfish. Just the Serenity cutting through Mosquito Lagoon’s tea-dark water, her twin outboards growling as Dad grins into the wind like a kid gripping a rollercoaster bar, his baseball cap flipped backward so the brim doesn’t snap off in the gale.
That Friday in July clung to us like wet gauze, the kind they’d press over a wound to staunch bleeding. Humidity hung pregnant over the Intracoastal, thickening the air until dragonflies moved through it like swimmers fighting a riptide. The dock’s wooden planks wept beads of condensation, and the rope lines sagged, limp as dead eels. Cicadas screamed in the palmettos, their drone rising and falling like a theremin’s whine.
Mom hovered in the kitchen doorway, her knuckles white around a ginger ale can—her “seasick armor,” she called it, though we all knew the cure wasn’t working today. The aluminum dented under her grip, droplets sliding down the sides to pool on the linoleum. She’d worn that same wilted smile when Dad announced the trip, her eyes tracking the Serenity’s keys as they jingled in his hand. “Y’all go,” she said, too quickly, her voice fraying at the edges. “I’ll defrost the conch fritters for when you’re back.” The freezer hummed in agreement, exhaling a plume of frost as she opened it.
Dad didn’t need persuading. He was already halfway to the dock, his flip-flops slapping against the warped boards, shouting over his shoulder about a new sandbar he’d spotted near the spoil islands. “Gonna be glassy out there!” Glassy meant flat water, which meant he’d open the throttle wide, let the boat fly until the bow lifted and the world blurred into seagrass and sky, the horizon line trembling like a plucked guitar string. I hesitated, watching Mom press the cold can to her forehead, her eyelids fluttering as condensation trickled down her temple.
She shooed me off with a flick of her dish towel—a faded thing patterned with lobsters and anchor knots—but not before I caught the way her gaze snagged on the horizon. Not wary, but hungry, as if she were staring at a ghost ship only she could see, its sails full of the same wind that used to fill her lungs when she’d race Dad to the channel markers, back when her stomach didn’t turn at the smell of diesel and low tide.
The Salty Serenity sliced into the bay, her cooler packed with Dad’s lime-flavored seltzers—cans slick with condensation, their tabs hissing like tiny airlocks—and my mason jar of lemonade, still pulpy with rind the way Mom insists on making it, the bitterness clinging to the back of the throat like a secret. Mosquito Lagoon hummed with July’s feverish energy: Jet Skis zigzagged like water striders, their wakes crisscrossing into lace, while toddlers shrieked as mullet leapt silver arcs over their inflatable rafts, their scales catching the light like flung nickels.
From Sharky’s Shack, its roof patched with license plates and fish nets sagging with plastic crabs, the tinny thump of Zac Brown Band covers drifted across the water, the chorus of “Knee Deep” warring with the guttural croak of bullfrogs in the sawgrass. Dad docked at their warped pier with a captain’s flourish, the Serenity’s hull kissing the pilings with a groan, and tossed the rope to a sunburned teenager whose shoulders blistered tomato-red beneath peeling tattoos of anchor ink. The kid nodded like they’d rehearsed this a hundred times, his bare feet gripping the splintered wood with the ease of someone who’d never known shoes.
Time dissolved. We ate blackened mahi tacos that burned our tongues, the charred edges crumbling into our laps, their heat cut by dollops of mango salsa so bright it tasted like summer itself. We laughed as pelicans dive-bombed for our discarded lime wedges, their beaks snapping shut with a sound like castanets, wings grazing the water’s surface as if testing its temperature.
The sun melted us into the vinyl seats, the material sticking to our thighs like warm glue, until dusk arrived unannounced. The horizon bled tangerine and violet, the water reflecting the sky’s fire like spilled gasoline, iridescent and dangerous.
Dad raised his last seltzer in salute, the aluminum crumpled in his fist, condensation dripping onto his wristwatch. “To nights that outshine days,” he said, his voice roughened by salt and sun, and I clinked my lemonade against his can, the glass ringing hollow. I didn’t yet notice how his toast sounded like a warning, how his eyes lingered a beat too long on the darkening east, where the first stars pricked through the bruise-colored sky.
Darkness fell with the finality of a theater curtain, the last daylight snuffed out behind the spoil islands. Dad queued up his “Night Cruisin’” playlist—Springsteen’s growl, Seger’s gravel-road rasp, that one CCR song he swears every boat needs—and cranked the volume until the bass vibrated in my molars, the speakers buzzing like hornets in a jar.
We glided into the unlit stretch beyond the channel markers, where the lagoon widens into a black mirror, the mangroves reduced to jagged cutouts against the moonless sky. The Serenity’s running lights painted emerald ripples on the water, their glow dissolving inches below the surface as if the lagoon drank the light whole. The air turned crisp, carrying the sweetness of night-blooming jasmine—thick as syrup—tangled with something sharper, metallic, like a penny held on the tongue. It clung to the back of the throat, a taste that wasn’t quite a taste, as the boat pushed farther into the void, the only sound the churn of the engines and the occasional slap of a mullet fleeing our wake.
We passed near a lighthouse, a skeletal sentinel perched on Ponce Inlet’s crumbling jetty, its iron ribs exposed where storms had gnawed through limestone flesh. Its beam sliced through the dark every ten seconds, a staccato swish-swish that lit the foam around us in stark, clinical white, bleaching the color from Dad’s face and my trembling hands. Shadows leapt and contorted in its glare—seaweed became grasping fingers, drifting logs arched like the spines of drowned creatures. The light’s pulse throbbed in time with my heartbeat, each pass leaving afterimages burned into my retinas. I gripped the console, the fiberglass edge biting into my palm. “That thing’s straight out of a Stephen King novel,” I said, too loud, my voice cracking like the gulls screeching overhead.
Dad smirked, his face half-lit by the GPS screen’s ghostly green glow, the other half drowned in shadow. “Built in 1887,” he said, as if reciting a psalm, “back when this inlet ate ships for breakfast.” He adjusted his grip on the wheel, the leather wrap creaking. “Your great-granddad used to supply the keepers. Said they’d trade whiskey for snapper—fresh snapper, not that freezer-burnt crap.” He nudged me, his calloused hand rough on my shoulder, the salt-stiffened fabric of his shirt scraping my neck. “Relax, kid. Only ghosts out here are the ones we bring with us.” His laugh was a dry thing, lost to the growl of the engine, but his thumb tapped the throttle twice, quick and restless.
The beam swept over us again. For a heartbeat, the lighthouse’s brickwork seemed to ripple, its mortar oozing black as crude oil, rivulets crawling downward like veins. Then darkness swallowed it whole, leaving only the aftertaste of that image—a wet, glistening rot. I blinked, but the tower stood inert again, its cracks and fissures frozen in the brief glare. The air smelled different here, the usual brine undercut by a dankness, like the inside of a storm drain after a flood.
Dad killed the engine. The Salty Serenity’s hum died abruptly, leaving a vacuum of sound so thick I could hear the blood rushing in my ears, the click-click of cooling metal from the outboards. The boat swayed, creaking like an old floorboard, as waves lapped at the hull with wet, open-mouthed kisses. My skin prickled, gooseflesh rising despite the humidity. I couldn’t stop staring at the lighthouse—its beam carved the dark into fragments, each pass illuminating the tower’s peeling paint, its rusted railing clawing at the sky. It looked less like a guide now and more like a bone jutting from a grave, something the earth had tried to bury but couldn’t quite keep down. Dad rummaged in the cooler for another seltzer, the crack-hiss of the tab deafening. “Trust the process,” he muttered, though I couldn’t tell if he was talking to me or the night itself.
Maybe that’s w…
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