Birds of Fortune and Other Stories

By Wando Wande

A collection of fantastical short stories for your perusal:
Vignettes on love, pigeons, and death, especially death.
A lady divided in a existential quandary; there is a gun somewhere.
A little boy and his ghost bird friend try to find a way home and intact.
A physicist and her serial killer boyfriend.
Two grannies outdoing each other over a magical purse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wando Wande
• Release date: Jan 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310832468

Wando Wande

A crazy fish who lives in a mangrove paradise. Daydreamer. Professional Procrastinator. Likes the smell of bees and the buzz of flowers. Claims to be the most interesting author in the world, who has fought against lions in the Serengeti, trekked with penguins across the Antarctica, makes a mean chicken Parmesan. But I digress.

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Birds of Fortune and Other Stories

Wando Wande

Copyright Wando Wande 2014

Smashwords Edition

http://omnifish.wordpress.com

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All the World’s a Stage

Our man, translator of time and space, plays the Revolutionary Étude to an audience stiff-necked with wonder. The song is quite fitting because what everyone doesn’t know is that the universe is about to tunnel out of its false vacuum. Now what, you say, do I mean?

Some think that the universe inhabits a false vacuum, a metastable state. Imagine, a ball perfectly balanced on the back of a spoon. It is stable but any slight motion will set it rolling away, and so is the same with our universe. It has lived this long, why roll now? I cannot give you an answer nor can anyone else. But back to our distinguished pianist.

A bubble of unrest sparks in his left hand. He feels nothing because it is just a nanoscopic bubble. Hear those glissandos. Hear the rumble of the lower keys. The audience are too afraid to blink, or they might miss a laudatory moment from the Chopin genius.

But that bubble is a pesky bubble. It fizzes into other bubbles, eating up tendon and bone. But harmony plays on. The left hand is a like mad octopus over the keys. Silence enthralls the audience. Four fingers are gone now. The fan whirrs an appreciation to one-fingered left hand playing. What of the chords, you say? The pianist is a master of interpretation. Lessons since he was three, an adolescence sacrificed to fugues and scales then adequately rewarded with a trophy at the Van Cliburn competition. A master of melody he is, even after the left hand is a raw stump to nothingness.

The woman dabs at her runaway heart. Another woman holds back her cough in reverence. The audience lean towards the piano and player. The show does continue. Finger pecking does deliberate a genius.

Hands are gone, stumps bang out discordant chords. At last the triumph of atonality at the end of world. Arms crumble into the void. Head bangs against the ivory keys till that itself is gone.

The silence and void become one. Only then does a man propels out of his seat and darts for the fire exits. Panic calls upon panic. Blah, blah, blah. 

Rest assured, the universe does fall into its true vacuum, kicking and screaming.

***

Welcome to open mic.

People yak, they spill coffee over their precious macbook pro, they wonder if Henry is twenty minutes late because he’s screwing the perky intern. A minute ago, someone exalted the pleasures of cannabis and organic shea butter. Now someone is playing their acoustic guitar, singing about love, true love, great love, deep love, love, love, love. Then someone comes through the backdoor, a glock in hand.

Bang. Next! Bang. Next! Bang. Next! Bang ... I will not bother you with the details of blood and screaming because there’s no blood and screaming. People are still yakking, now wondering if Henry