The Bird (short story - approx. 5000 words)

Nice!

Lots of things I like about it.

One thing that I'm stuck on is what is up with the birds. I was confused when I finished, went back and re-read to see if I missed something, still confused.

First the narrator thinks it's a squirrel. The timescale is a week before present time.

Then this:



They've been there for two years? That the fact that a bird was sitting in a tree and twittering means that the mother and eggs are inside? (The latter doesn't seem convincing to me.)

Is the very fact that the narrator is leaping to conclusions based on scant evidence part of the point?

I think that the confusion could work within the story, just wondering what your intentions were with it.

Overally, really nice.

re: bird question
Hi sozobe,

Thanks for commenting. Sorry for the confusion.

The birds trapped in the soffit 2 years back are unrelated the the squirrel come bird trapped in the soffit now. They were only meant to show how a mother (outside) is bonded to her babies.

In the "current" narrative, the father is less upset that the mother is trapped inside sitting on some eggs.

(As a side question, I posted a link to my literary competition site with a request for feedback. Now it is gone. I am assuming the admins found this too blatantly self-serving or in some conflict of interest with them. If so, my apologies. Is there a spot here for that kind of thing?)

OK, thanks for the extra info. I think if you want it to be affecting, and not just confusing (and again, I think there is a place in this story for purposeful confusion if that's the direction you want to go), you need to connect a few more dots to indicate it really is a bird and a nest with eggs.

You don't want to lay it all out, necessarily (that is one other minor criticism I have, that you lapse into literalism a bit too easily -- "The way it tilted its head at a bunch of different obtuse angles made it appear confused," for example), but just clarify a tiny bit. It's a powerful conceit, and underplayed in general, I think you do well with it. But since it's so central, I think the whole thing would be strengthened if you make that part a little clearer.