This story was born in my mind by pure chance.

I was searching Pinterest one night for a picture to use as a picture writing prompt and came across one I really liked, of a lighthouse.

The pin didn't say where the place was, and so I searched Google  :)

Of course, the first answer it gave me was wrong; the lighthouse it showed me as the same one I was asking about was very different. The one I had found turned out to be in America, while the one from Google in Scotland... on the Flannans.

Of course, I googled those islands next, and the first thing I found was the poem I used snippets of in my story, followed by loads of information about the mystery of the three men's disappearance.

By the time I finished reading through everything, my mind was gone, teeming with mystery spoken in the voice of the nameless narrator of my short story.

And so, here it is, as my entry to this year's Shortys  :)

I include three poems in the next chapters, not connected to the story itself but with the same 'lighthouse theme'.