The Last Catch
by Jane Broughton
The aquarium wall separated us but I pressed close, my hands leaving blurry smudges. Sudden tears clouded my sight. I blinked and gazed into the greenery of their eyes.
It had been twelve moon rises since they’d been captured. Their ship had appeared drifting in space until caught up in our trailing net. The captain had summoned me, the onboard expert in alien flora and fauna, for research, tests and conclusions about the usefulness of our new encounter.
Dutifully I’d conducted the standard risk assessments, extracted fluids, studied reactions. I’d regarded them as I would any other laboratory experiment. I’d produced an interim report assuring the captain of their low intelligence and benign nature. The next stage would involve attempting some sort of rudimentary communication. I assembled my usual toolkit of flash cards, musical instruments and keypads. It was all going smoothly, until they started to sing.
Jane won Beaconlit’s flash fiction prize in 2019 and this success prompted her to start writing in her sixties. She enjoys the challenge of writing flash fiction, the shorter the better. Her stories have been published in magazines and online by Free Flash Fiction, WestWord, Full House, Paragraph Planet and The Wondrous Real. She's been a LISP and Edinburgh Flash Fiction finalist.
This story was shortlisted in the November 24 Monthly Micro Competition.