Sighting One.
Driving along country roads, I saw the beast eating from knocked-over bins.
Sighting Two.
Walking at night with a headlamp in rural England, deer’s eyes often glinted before they scattered.
A pair of eyes, larger and lower than a deer’s, glimmered in the hedgerow.
I watched them as I passed.
Sighting Three.
I couldn’t sleep. I walked to the coast.
At the cliffs, I aimed my camera into the dark.
The flash exploded. For a millisecond the beast slunk, mouth open, staring.
The developed photo revealed only the slick wet pebbles of the beach; everything else was black.
Oliver Land’s work has appeared in Hobart, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Expat Press, and elsewhere. He is the author of the poetry collection White Light Fades (2026) and the novella-in-flash Dissolve (2026).