Use the photograph above as the inspiration for your flash fiction story. Write whatever comes to mind (no sexual, political, or religious stories, jokes, or commentary, please) and after you PROOFREAD it, submit it as your entry in the comments section below.
Welcome to the Indies Unlimited Flash Fiction Challenge. In 250 words or less, write a story incorporating the elements in the picture at left. The 250 word limit will be strictly enforced.
Please keep language and subject matter to a PG-13 level.
Use the comment section below to submit your entry. Entries will be accepted until Tuesday at 5:00 PM Pacific Time. No political or religious entries, please. Need help getting started? Read this article on how to write flash fiction.
On Wednesday, we will open voting to the public with an online poll so they may choose the winner. Voting will be open until 5:00 PM Thursday. On Saturday morning, the winner will be recognized as we post the winning entry along with the picture as a feature.
Once a month, the admins will announce the Editors’ Choice winners. Those stories will be featured in an anthology like this one. Best of luck to you all in your writing!
Entries only in the comment section. Other comments will be deleted. See HERE for additional information and terms. Please note the rule changes for 2018.
Beachside Musings
I love the cool feel of damp sand on my bottom. Bet you didn’t know that about us. Well, it’s true. I don’t mind sitting atop an old arbutus, though any old tree will do I suppose. Nevertheless, surveying the landscape, watching whatever offspring I have popping out, ensuring continuity, looking more regal than Queen Elizabeth…yeah, I know what’s going on in the world. Have to say my family has been quite impressed by her longevity.
Might make her an Honorary Eagle someday…
All that aside, the survival of our species is number one with our bullet.
It hasn’t been easy. My lineage was almost rendered kaput back in the sixties. Pesticides. Foul air. Global Harming, I called it. Okay, I borrowed that from a Seagull friend.
A few years ago, I took up beachcombing. Sort of a break from the same old same old resplendent fowl folderal. That’s all well and good but trust me, there’s nothing like spending a few weeks at the beach, swapping avian anecdotes, kicking back, getting a little fishing in…who am I kidding. Getting a lot of fishing in.
But back to that Global Harming theme. The sea is in peril. Doesn’t take an eagle-eyed environmentalist to notice that.
What the hey! I didn’t mean to go all sermonizing on you.
There are plenty of others who do that better.
I love the caress of the sweet damp water under my waiting bottom.
Is there a greater pleasure?
Not that I’ve found.
Beachcomber Queries
Majestic icon, why do you reveal yourself outside of your normal natural habitat? Are you separated from your home lands and kind as I am?
Did you sleep on this isolated stretch of Mother Nature’s bosom like me, hoping to catch a lucky find from her ocean’s bounty? I comb this beach out of necessity, not by choice.
You are closer to Great Spirit than I, soaring high above the land. Fly home, but if you stay, then I am grateful for your company. Share my breakfast. Have a raw piece of the fish I’m preparing to cook.
The unblinking avian king didn’t flinch as the tossed filet landed at his feet. A piercing shriek of thanks shattered the morning solitude as the remaining salmon sizzled on the fire.
The lowly beachcomber ate his meager portion as his guest tore and gobbled the shreds down. The huge predator guarded his meal from unseen thieves, hunched over, shielding his meal with an umbrella of wings.
Thank you for joining me, symbolic spiritual emblem of my people. Your image perches atop our towering tribal totem pole. You are the modern day Thunderbird.
The bald eagle scratched the sand, spread his mighty wings, and took to the winds and sky. The messenger of Great Spirit circled once before heading inland.
The beachcomber went to clean up the eagle’s leftovers but knelt to give thanks. His feathered companion unearthed a gold coin hidden in the sand as payment for the man’s kindness.
Another sunny, humid and extremely warm day in paradise. As we make our weekly trek to our local beach, I begin to appreciate this ritual with my young sons. Getting ready to head out is quite a chore for myself, but well worth it once we dip our toes in the cool waters that run off from the inter coastal and the ocean. I make sure we have our buckets and shovels, towels, waters and snacks.
“Mom, please can we go to crab city first?,” my youngest begs. Before I reply, I think back to when I had the freedom to go to the “Real beach.” Venturing in to swim , waves breaking, trying to push me back to shore. “Of course,” I reply quietly, still lost in my thoughts.
As we descend down a small sand dune, we find ourselves amongst a crowded shoreline and quickly maneuver around other parents and young children, mostly preschoolers. Trudging along shallow water, feeling instant relief from the heat. The squealing of my children remind me of how sweet they are. I’m appreciative of their imaginations and the time we spend outdoors! Video games are a thing of the future. I gladly enjoy their playfulness and inquisitive nature!
Eagle Sign
“Sweetie, your grandmother was always tuned into watching for signs. She mentioned to me that a nearby Cardinal was a sign that a recently passed love one was reaching out to say they were okay.”
“Daddy, what was she like and why didn’t I ever meet her?”
“You sometimes ask the toughest questions. She had red hair like you, and freckles across her nose too. She was a great woman, just like you’re going to be. Sometimes life doesn’t work out the way we want it to.”
“What else did she do?”
“She could hold her finger out in the back yard, and most often a butterfly would land on it.”
“I lost a good friend at school to COVID. Why do the ones we love have to go to heaven so soon?”
“Another tough question. Just remember to enjoy the time you have with those you love…enjoy every single day.”
“Daddy, is the wind making you cry? Daddy, look at the pretty bird walking on the shore.”
“Sweetie, that’s an Eagle, and a strange sight to see so close and walking. That’s our country’s national symbol.”
“Would grandma say it was a sign?”
“Now that you mention it, maybe she would. I’m not sure we’re still headed in the right direction, given the fuse they just lit to our First Amendment.”
“What’s that?”
“That my dear, is our ability to express our opinions, and ask tough questions like yours.”
“I’m going to remember today.”
“I hope so.”
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Oz the Osprey was getting to be a pain in the ass.
Buckie watched the waves roll in and looked out to the ocean. There were salmon and trout in abundance, swimming just below the surface, begging him to pluck them out and chow down on them. There were snapping turtles as well, although they created their own problems. They took a little more work, requiring that he drop them onto rocks before giving up their meat.
But no one cared what Oz the Osprey ate.
Buckie preferred to call Oz a seahawk. It lacked the alliterative charm he liked to draw on, inferring that he was from the southern continent, at least the only one worthy of mention. It made him seem exotic, giving him a buzz his publicists capitalised on. In comparison, Buckie the Bald was staid, boring, passé even. And that was before Oz’s people informed everyone who had an interest that Buckie ate rats, snakes, and whatever carrion he could find.
Like he was a degenerate vulture or a fake in a cape.
Oz’s people called him a sea eagle, again playing on alliteration. They made him seem dynamic, like a force of nature, as though he was as unstoppable as the wind he rode. They said nothing of the hagfish and the slime eels he ate.
But Oz had got his focus groups and a week devoted to him on the Discovery Channel.
And now, to make things even worse, he was going water skiing.
When I was a kid, we had a cottage on a lake up in Minnesota, a little northwest of Minneapolis. There was a beach where we could swim as long as one of the grownups was there to watch.
I made a lot of memories up there, but as we became busier with activities, we had less time for those getaways. By the time I headed off to college, it had been several years since we’d been up there.
There was never any point where we decided to stop going. We just sort of slip-slid out of the habit, until our trips were just nostalgic memories.
Sort of the way our country has gone from “the experiments were definitely unethical, but their subjects shouldn’t be blamed for what was done to them” to “these products of Frankenstein science are traife and need to be stigmatized.” There’s no defining moment you can point at, no single event that changed people’s minds. But somewhere we went from “so glad the Cold War ended without going nuclear” to “they must understand they are the least and lowest.”
It bothered me enough I decided to go back up to that lake and see how much was left of my childhood memories – and maybe get some sign as to the fate of the Republic. So I was surprised to get there and see a bald eagle on the beach where I used to play with my cousins.
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“I want to see my friends”. That’s what my Aunt Mary said that prompted me to bring her home from hospice. Countless times she had regaled me with stories of feeding the seagulls…“her friends”, a tradition of over forty years
With the blessings of the fabulous hospice staff, I spirited her home, and soon onto a lounge on the beach in time to see “her friends”.
In a voice ravaged by her cancer, she whispered, “Whistle for me?” I whistled the three notes she had taught me all this years ago. Almost immediately a large seagull landed and perched on the lounge. Soon, the lounge was surrounded by at least fifty birds, all squawking and clicking.
With great effort, my aunt raised her hand and the birds fell silent. In a near whisper she said, “Come.”
Amazingly, a big gull hopped on her chest and, bypassing the bowl of chopped sardines I had prepared, approached my Aunt.
“Thank you, Thomas”, she whispered, and kissed him on the beak. Only then did the bird visit the sardine bowl, where it took took a single morsel! My aunt thanked every one by name as well. Yes, she knew every single gull by name.
After the last bird, my aunt spread her arms and the gulls flocked to her and nestled against her body.
My beloved aunt, sighing with pleasure looked up at me and whispered, “Thank you”… and was gone.
THE EDGE
Sandals dangled from my fingertips and my other hand gripped a bottle of champagne. It found my mouth and I gulped the Widow Clicquot. I walked on the edge where land met sea as a reminder of why we must accept what we don’t understand, and what we can’t control.
In the sea’s mist, an eagle landed on the beach. I took another gulp and the bubbles burned my throat. He was a symbol of strength, power and patriotism. My husband was strong, powerful and patriotic, but those virtues did not serve him on that day. On that day, he fell.
His parents and I met his remains at the airport. We trembled and cried and clutched each other as his body was carried across the tarmac, in a box, our flag covered him.
The edge reminded me how it kept the water back, invited it in just enough before sending it back again. It reminded me to hold my tears, let them flow and then pull them back to pool on reddened eyes. I took another gulp.
As I remembered those moments, my heart beat kept time with the sound of waves that met the shore. It was I who never knew the why as I walked on the edge of knowing not what his sacrifice meant, but I took comfort believing the eagle knew as he took flight out over the sea.
The breeze from the ocean is sharper than I expected. I wish I had the power to make this meeting on a sunny beach, a happy place. But I know, like I hope she does, that we control so little in our lives.
Maybe she knows this now. That’s the only reason I can give for asking to see her. It’s been six months. The kids miss her, not what she had become with the drinking but what she used to be, when they were little, when we all were younger.
All I can do now is pace, my footprints sinking into the sand behind me. I dare not go far because I don’t want to miss her when she gets here. If she gets here.
She said she’d come. She said she wanted to come, that it was time. She was ready. And I’m ready if that’s true. We all make mistakes, me especially. But I did the right thing for us and for the kids when I called a timeout on our family. When we left, I’m not even sure she knew that we were going.
It was hard letting go. The hardest thing I’ve ever done. Also the best thing I’ve ever done. Not just for me but for her and for the kids. She agrees. So she says.
Fifteen minutes past the time we set to meet. If I were a bird, I’d unfold my wings and take off. But I’m not, so I won’t. Yet.
Freedom Through Vigilance: The
motto of the secret forces of the
United States Air Force
by P.J. Mills
The dark-haired man watched the Air Force special agents as they checked out the perimeter of the hotel, and area adjacent to the beach; where, in 2 weeks , dignitaries would watch the prestigious military air show.
He had been watching them since they arrived. He knew they would do a thorough job, but this time he had them foiled. It should have all happened last year, but his teams’ plans were interrupted by the weather. Now, all pieces were falling into place: the girlfriend, her family, the hotel location; his team sneaking into the country as students, (most of them were explosive experts).
The special agents weren’t looking for him. They were looking for his older brother. Not the younger, studious brother.
The lead security officer, for the Air Force team, watches the dark haired man leave the cafe. Talking into the mic on his collar,”Pigeon on the move. Activate the eagle.”
Just then, 50 ft from where the officer was standing in the sand, an eagle, that was unobtrusively walking on the edge of the water, flapped his wings and took flight. The robot was made with real eagle feathers, using the latest 3D technology. It was one of the new spy tools that fooled most suspects.
“When we get a bead on his hunker-down location, we’ll call in Delta.”
“Copy that, sir.”
The officer looked at the sky, and then down the beach, and thought, no one will ever know how close we came.
Beachside
Proud, perfect and patriotic the eagle stood on the beach. What was that look on his face? Disdain? Disdain for humans who thought they were so intelligent and above other species, yet had polluted the atmosphere, the land and ocean. Like a bloated bladder a plastic bag blew past into the ocean. Picnickers disrespectfully left their wrappers and litter to blow here and there.
With majesty, the eagle gazed out to sea. What did he see with his unflinching eyes? Birds eating microscopic plastic mistaking them for fish eggs? They will die in pain from ulcerations in the gizzard, feeding will be impossible leading to starvation and death. I wanted to slink away in shame because only that day the news featured a brutal report on an animal’s belly bursting open because of the plastic it contained.
Was the eagle thinking about litter being beyond ugly? It harmed ecosystems, animals and humans. alike. Coral reefs were dying. Litter could drown or starve animals once they became entangled. Litter poisoned, suffocated and enmeshed marine species.
Was the eagle thinking how pollution harmed his own? Contamination builds up on his feathers causing health and reproduction dilemmas. Lead impairs their flying. Pesticides, especially DDT poisoned their fish supply. DDT thinned their eggshells causing reproduction failures.
The eagle turned, looked me disdainfully in the eyes as if to say that I was personally responsible for pollution and climate change. Sadly, I had to agree.