Lucky Thirteen!

By Ian Buchanan

Lucky? Lucky! Well, there are sixteen short stories, not thirteen, so you can’t call that “bad luck”. Some are funny, some are creepy, and my favourites are funny AND creepy. There's a fair bit of kitchen humor in there, plus some travelling stories. A couple are perhaps the start of something bigger.....

These stories are a compilation of individual short stories given away on Smashwords, (11,000 downloads so far!) with a few extras included.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ian Buchanan
• Release date: Mar 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476094007

Ian Buchanan

Hi I have been writing still, for those who are still waiting for the next stage of The Jetty Journals. It's coming along, slower than it should, but nearly finished. I'm biased, but I think it will be as exciting as the first book. I work as a technical manager for web projects, and write in bursts when I get some time. Thanks for your feedback, and happy to hear from readers. You can also contact me via the jetty journals website.

Book preview

Lucky Thirteen

Smashwords Edition

© Ian Buchanan March 2012

Discover other titles by Ian Buchanan at Smashwords.com

Smashwords Edition, Licence Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this ebook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

Introduction

Lucky? Lucky! Well, there are sixteen short stories, not thirteen, so you can’t call that bad luck. Some are funny, some are creepy, and my favourites are funny AND creepy. There's a fair bit of kitchen humor in there, plus some travelling stories. A couple are perhaps the start of something bigger, and your feedback is welcomed!

(If you like these short stories, try The Jetty Journals http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1908)

Or visit http://www.thejettyjournals.com, or

the Narratorium : http://rightword.com.au/narratorium/ )

Contents

Travels with Andy

Close Shave

Wrong Day

DeutschKurse

Essence of Vienna

See!Electric!

Gothic Monster

Look what you made me do!

Oops, an argument

So Lucky!

Some Days are Z-Days

Enthusiastic Hugh

The bulldozer ploughed on

The Food Boutique

Charlotte gets a job

The secret to everything

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Travels with Andy

On the backpacking road, you meet some interesting people. Meet Andy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I had the weekend free, but had to be back in Vienna Monday. The exercise was to visit the Tesla Museum in Belgrade. It was a lightning tour, appropriately enough. I caught a winter sleeper train from Vienna late on Friday night, which arrived in Belgrade at 6.30am.

To save money I booked a seat in a six person cabin, rather than a first-class-by-myself sleeper. It was a great choice: because it was winter, just after Christmas, no one was travelling and for most of the trip I had the cabin to myself and was able to stretch out across the three benched seats.

That was until we went over the Slovenian border, and 20 border police barged on looking for action. On the deserted train, I was it. Three of them crowded into my cabin while the other 17 hovered outside. I got the usual border grilling: where was I going/staying, why was I travelling? One of them took my passport and stood outside the cabin, inspecting it minutely wearing a weird magnifying helmet, relaying comments via radio headset to home base. All very reassuring.

This was at a cheery 2.00am. As fun as it was, eventually the party ran out of puff. They muttered amongst themselves, obviously disappointed that I wasn't much value. One of them made a last attempt to get something good from the meeting. He closed in on me, him standing and me slumping on my bench seat. Leaning down he thrust his face close.

Is there anything, he hissed, that you would like to tell the police?

A number of humorous answers sprang to mind, but I looked at him, and his 19 mates, and decided being witty probably wasn't my best option.

Reluctantly, we parted company, the train set off again, and eventually I dozed off. An hour or so later I was woken again, this time by someone else lumping his stuff noisily into the cabin.

The other bloke, Andy, was English. Like me he was travelling single, and we ended up inspecting Belgrade together. He was pleasant enough company for one day, but more than that might not have worked too well. I'll give you some background and you decide.

When we first got into town, I needed a coffee, and Andy was desperate to find a toilet: queasy stomach, and he hadn't liked the one on the train. We went into a pub/coffee place near the market. I enjoyed the thick, stewed coffee, and its early-morning jolt, and the flowery, oily schnapps the bustling market crowd was drinking out of little glasses. It was one of those travel moments that you can savour afterwards, rolling the memory over and recreating the smells and tastes.

But not for Andy. He came back from the toilet, completely freaked out. Gabbling, he explained that there was an old women sitting in the 1 metre by 2 metre pre-toilet room managing the toilet paper. He had suffered performance anxiety, and despite the queasy stomach, had not had a result. There was no choice: he had to go back in there. While he was gone I indulged in another schnapps/ raki/ paint-thinner special. Eventually he came back a shattered man. (A cruder person might say a shatted man.)

I'm pleased to report that the toilet paper guardian stayed on duty the whole time, ignoring Andy's pleas for privacy.

What to do? One option was to visit the Belgrade National Gallery. I've never done any fine arts study, but have a general, tourist's interest, and have been working my way through the galleries in Vienna.

Andy claimed to have expertise in the subject matter. I've done one painting, which is hanging on my wall. I'm going to sell it soon. I should do more.

Andy was an unmarried engineer, not much younger than me, a bit of a hypochondriac. He'd been on the road for only two days, starting from London, but already was carrying too much stuff, with a couple of shredding, bulky plastic bags of bootleg DVDs he'd bought along the way.

He was a rabid conspiracy-theorist, and seemed to go out of his way to develop an unworkable, improbably warped view of why and how things work. For example, he didn't believe in evolution, and trotted out the usual fundamentalist lies that creationists disseminate.

But he had no religious beliefs himself. Not even St Nikolai Tesla.

I think I was the only non-engineer at the Tesla museum. There were about a dozen young men there, on a pilgrimage, for them, to a sacred site. Given Andy was an engineer, you might expect him to also have been a worshipper, but he wasn't as impressed as I expected.

For example, the museum has a working model of Tesla's innovative 1896 electricity generator. Tesla supervised building the plant that captured the hydro power of Niagara Falls, developing nine newly patented ideas in the process and proving the worth of his barely understood invention of AC/DC power.

Andy pointed to the model and scoffed, The Ancient Greeks actually invented this.

Time to move on. Lunch was overdue.

At every touristy, mock-Italian cafe we passed along the way Andy loitered, whining he was hungry. I kept walking, and he sulkily followed. I was looking for a worn and weathered tavern I had read about, and found it just as Andy was about to sit down in the street in protest.

We were the odd ones out, this