SPECIAL OF THE DAY

The little town had grown closely around a hill like a bunch of tiny white ladies in red hats huddling together on a stool, trying not to get their shoes wet or scared into a hug by some imaginary rat.

At the top of the hill, what had once been a castle lingered now as one solitary tower, a half ruined finger to the world that no longer needed that kind of protection.

This was Southern Portugal, not Transylvania. The sunlight reflected by those whitewashed houses could blind a man.

Around the hill, fields spread in all directions, occasionally disguising their flatness under the tired green leaves and stripped raw orange trunks of cork oaks.

Swallows and swifts were making a riot out of chasing invisible clouds of bugs high in the sky, defying gravity with each acrobatic revolution.

A family of bee-eaters cruised leisurely over the road, whistling by as if catcalling at the two people on the ground next to the car.

I was one of those two: the redhead looking up at them.

Bee-eaters are some of my favorite birds.

They can actually eat wasps.

Wish I could do the same.

Our only protection against the particular type of wasps we were tracking was the Ruger Old Army revolver Gramps had left behind – the only gun capable of handling his special ammo without disintegrating, according to him. 

My cousin kept telling me it'd be fine. “The old man knew his business.”

We'd soon find out if that was true or not.

Spoiler alert: it wasn't.

In the end, there would be bee-eaters as well, looking down on us, uninterested.

And a pair of Egyptian vultures circling too close for comfort, possibly wondering if we were on the menu, listed under special of the day.

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© 2026 CE 

Pic: Wikimedia Commons 

86.1 #vss365 #microfiction #flashfiction