Flutes of paradise, p.1
Flutes of Paradise, page 1
Blurb
Flutes of Paradise is a novella of experimental nature and perhaps a tapestry or collage of sorts. Follow Leopold to the end of existence in an uproarious world of intrigue, alien, and dreamshape, where the only way to love is to love complete, ask questions, and tell stories with eyes wide open.
Praise
Flutes of Paradise ripsails along with the most absurd lucidity imaginable. Surprising. Important. Fantasy-Real. Like the superfly-wicked Cruzbike Q45.
Pete O'Brien
Flutes of Paradise
Pete O'Brien
Xyloquirk Books
Published by Xyloquirk Books, www.xyloquirk.com. Flutes of Paradise. Second Edition. Copyright © 2025 by Pete O’Brien. All Rights Reserved. Ebook ISBN: 978-1-951390-41-9. Print ISBN: 978-1-951390-40-2. Previously published as Visions (First Edition) by Pete O’Brien (Visions. Copyright © 2025 by Pete O’Brien).
The following chapters in Flutes of Paradise were originally published as short short stories on the Xyloquirk Books blog (www.xyloquirk.com) in 2023: Cured, Zoom Birds, In the Warehouse, Shock Sun, After Dark, The Homecoming, The Orbific, and Let Me Explain. The Danger Exit appeared on said blog in 2025. The illustrations for said shorts were adapted from the full color illustrations on the blog.
Visions has been fully revised, and is published with the updated title of Flutes of Paradise for the Second Edition. Cover Art and Design by Pete O’Brien. Text Illustrations, Art, and Photography by Pete O’Brien.
Flutes of Paradise is a work of fiction. The characters and events in the story are imagined things. Figments. Any resemblance to actual people and events is coincidental. In a case that there is a reference to something in reality, the doodad is used fictitiously.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Dedication
To the one who is somewhere
if it turns out not to be with . . .
* * *
And to those who imagine with gusto and succumb not to the screens of diminishment.
* * *
And to various extraordinary canines.
Epigraph
Hey. I’m ready for the journey now.
Anonymous
Contents
1. Essential
2. The Danger Exit
3. Encore
4. Magical Ring
5. Cured
6. Zoom Birds
7. In The Warehouse
8. Shock Sun
9. After Dark
10. The Homecoming
11. The Orbific
12. Let Me Explain
13. Something Has to Happen
14. The Astronauts - The
15. Entirely Nondescript - The
16. Wanderer - The
17. Delirium - The
18. Clues - The
19. Into the Night - The
20. Interview - The
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
25. Once Upon A Sweeping
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
28. Elemental
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
31. Judge
32. Mellow Jacket
Chapter 33
34. Orange Juice
35. Rosary at Noon
36. Cow Charmer
37. Shockwave
Chapter 38
39. Turquoise
40. Torn
41. Her Face
42. Mistakes
Chapter 43
44. Then A Princess
45. Gallery
46. Apple
47. Knowledge
48. Collars
49. Fire Escape
50. The Way
51. Soulreach
52. Camera
Chapter 53
54. Cloud Storm
55. War
56. Amplified
57. The Fine Point
58. Solid Cherry?
59. Understood in Time
60. Humbongo
61. Zinc
62. Raspberry
63. Wanderer
64. Journey
65. Homespun
66. Relevancy
67. Painter
68. Pale Stone
69. Animation
70. Dictator
Chapter 71
72. Cancer
73. X
74. A Natural Prism
75. Library
76. Rows Upon Rows
77. At the Start
78. Fugacious
Chapter 79
80. Steam: The Common Good
81. Hair
82. Sweat
83. Speck
Afterword
Also by Pete O'Brien
About the Author
1
Essential
In my dream, the hands of a little girl slip away from her at birth. A great cloud of azure pajamas allows it, and everyone is so busy staring up at the sky in their hideous stockings, grabbing for the flannel, that they forget, some things you can’t control. But you can fight. And you can fight to the death.
It’s like this. When the elders come home, with their heads in shopping bags by their sides, searching for their cerebellums in ancient telephone books (yet another artifact of time), there are tears in my eyes as I remember their younger selves grilling hamburgers and hot dogs in the park.
The past is no more. Steam rises through a nose for a vision of tidal youth, and I waft into other dimensions. Nevertheless, never does it, never will it, make sense to stop enjoying novellas.
And so I pick up the synopsis on the table. I am Leopold.
Mysterious? Very. Dramatic? Choice. Good to the good. Not so nice to the bad. Toothache funny? Depends. Grossly overdone, long, tedious peregrinations to the corona? Sultry and erudite airs quick to ignite accidental passion in Corey Umworthy? A fiery patchwork of debates that pertain to him in particular by two sluggish critics? And the graces and smarts of one Urfa Dzama, whom Corey queries, “Is any man your astonishing equal?” Ah. And so with astounding prescience at what you are about to read, this plain summary, as you prepare yourself for the solid cheer, corky joy, blissful sorrow, and choppy awe of true love.
After reading the synopsis, I live several more years before I become aware of the story itself. And as I soon discover, it’s only a slight ditty in the larger narrative of The Danger Exit. I don’t mean to trouble you with it, but I must, as it pertains to the magical ring on my finger that affects us all.
2
The Danger Exit
The flying car heads to the moon. A destination is a marvelous thing. It’s convenient for the moon to be there.
In the cockpit, two audio streams issue from a groove. But whose eardrums beat to catch the soundwaves?
One of the voices soon speaks again. It says, “A very beautiful scene is about to break and burst like a ripped balloon. There’s so much love in the thing about to be lost that you can finally hear the mourning dove that waits in the bush, without appointment, for your customary rush down the sidewalk, as you hustle to the office of wonders.”
“What?” says the other voice, incredulously.
“Yes. It’s happening. The birds are back, some of them, to make a chorus of sound. The deer, nine of them, stop chewing the brown roots of dead grass to stare at you blankly as you hurdle over them and into your.”
“Car.”
“Yes. You step in your car and something very strange happens.”
“Opera.”
“Yes. Opera begins to play through the speakers of your jovial car. Verdi perhaps.”
“Always a good guess.”
“Not if it’s Mozart.”
“Yes.”
“Right. Not if it’s Mozart.”
It’s quiet then, like a battlefield waiting for Charlie Chaplin to do a two step over the graves. But the voice continues. It says, “Be quiet or I shall never get through this. And it will be too confusing to the people we need to see.”
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
WARNING! WARNING!
BEEP! BEEP!
“Wait, wait! I get it! Stop! Cut! Rewind! Fast forward! Spiral away! Go! Drop! Sing! La dee la dee la dee da dee da! Oh, thank goodness you’re here!”
The beeping silences like sudden fire.
And Corey Umworthy wakes up.
I am Corey Umworthy. In the room where I sit, thick fog sweeps in through a large break in the wall. The words Danger Exit pulse in my head. It’s the feel of the dream, and I don’t want its tension and unease. I want a fountain of bliss to be what there is, because life isn’t fair. Millions of people suffer horribly.
Also, I’m deeply in love with Urfa Dzama, a beautiful maiden with magical abilities. She moves mountains. She sees with her eyes closed. The light of her eyes never fails to set me on fire. Her voice releases a sweet mountain stream of life and miracles. She walks like a princess, she is a princess. She traipses about in my mind, and runs sundry errands in my vicinity whenever she wishes.
The primary obstacle between her and me, well, there are three. First, there’s the Bad Guy. Second, there are the Two Critics who always interfere at the wrong time. And third, there’s Urfa herself, who might not have any interest in me, even if I’m an honorable knight. Perhaps it’s the name Corey Umwor thy she dislikes? I mean her name is far superior to that! And when she moves me to tears, I say, “Urfa, is any man your equal?”
“Ha!” she cries, the first time I say it, and stamps out of the room.
How is it we four (well, five counting the Bad Guy, but he only shows up when I’m alone) converge here? And I never think of it as such, but it can only be my digs. Yet very strange the two critics who intrude upon the space whenever they feel like it. Typically via a ladder I glimpse when they somberly, very business-like, step over the sill. They brush off their pants when their feet tag the floor. The critics come together. It’s never just one or the other.
Sometimes they don’t use the ladder. They fly! And how do they do that! Conte and Dagle are their one-word names.
The fact that it’s barely my digs makes it more possible for the interactions that take place to take place, I believe. Perhaps no one notices or cares whose chamber it is. Lately I’ve been the first to arrive, though I must warn you, my memory stinks. Hence, my poor recollection of whether Conte, Dagle, or dazzling Urfa ever shows before me doesn’t count for much. Still, I guess I’m the original one perennially, and the chief advantage to this phenomena is I get ample time to reflect and ponder before the rest of the crew materializes with a complicated convolution to resolve or a thirsty sunflower to water.
“The knight is too offbeat!” bellows Conte, out of the blue.
The critics! How strange not to have wind of them before the popping in, but the fog is so thick!
Dagle yawns. “What’s the time?” he says.
“EARLY!” shouts Conte. “Very! Now wake up!” He splashes a glass of water in Dagle’s face. I can barely see the glass. They mess around a lot, doing things like that.
Conte steps back. “Sorry, Dagle. I don’t know what came over me. You know I think very highly of you, even early in the morning. I suppose I tossed the water to refresh you. I mean maybe it’s exactly as I would have hoped to have been treated if I were the one struggling to stay awake. Though, I admit, it’s largely you who needs the boost.”
Dagle looks daydreamy.
Conte pauses, peers over at me, then says, “Well here we are in a real pickle of a story. It is I who’ll make it clear that nothing we once took for granted may be taken for granted anymore. In the past, we might have proceeded in the usual way of a narrative, and went on as if our world wasn’t something recorded and shared within the pages of a book. But this time it doesn’t matter, does it? Because no one will notice. Books are rarely read.
“I have to admit, the situation is peculiar. The writer doesn’t shag a setting beyond a foggy version of my digs. But I have a poor recollection of my habitation. I feel like I’m seeing you all and myself for the first time, yet I know there’s a history.
“Dagle, my associate, has as much a tongue for comment as I do, for example. And though we seldom agree because no two minds think alike, nonetheless he has ideas. Apologies, Dagle, for speaking of you in the third person. But you are asleep on your feet, I trust you didn’t notice.
“Now then, I began with the assertion that you, Corey, are too zonky. To be plain and exact, I said you are ‘too offbeat.’ And I maintain that that is so. You must endeavor to be careless and light, or it’s going to be a spitball account, this narrative of glockymince.” He eyes me keenly as he clears his throat.
“Hear, hear,” chimes in Dagle at last. “Very apropos this time. And that is rare. Naturally I have my own opinion of the matter that runs contrary in most every direction, but it’s early and I’m not about to shake things up with my mind.”
Conte coughs and smiles through the white puffs. “Much obliged on both counts! But,” says he, “I have to say, we are in more trouble than usual this time. There are bad guys about, and I am no longer young and fleet of foot. I will probably be taken hostage.” He strides to the window and looks out at the tree, which is all one can see. “Yes! See! There on the big bough, at the split! It’s the Bad Guy! The one of many! Their boss and king! Here already. When in the past, you and I have been a step ahead of him, Dagle! Uff! We have slowed down! We will be captured! What do we do? We can’t run.”
Dagle’s nostrils flare. “THE LADDER!” In a flash, he’s on the sill, and then out of view. Conte huffs and whizzes out and down after him.
I step back. The ladder is gone.
The bad guy stares back at me, his face pale and blank, his eyes blinking.
“Grrr. The bully is back!” I shout.
The bad guy smiles. “But I’m stuck in a tree! No! I didn’t say that! I mean there sure are a lot of bullies, aren’t there! I have a feeling you’ll be meeting some! Stay where you are! Peon!”
I consider what to do upon this ughspotch. Fortunately I recall the strategy I need to employ. Pepper the idiot with questions. “I’M GOING TO ASK YOU A QUESTION? WHAT’S YOUR NAME? IS IT DUDLEY?” I shout.
The bad guy looks mortified. “Nah! It’s Sneerf Fang the Third!”
“Ha! I might have guessed. And I am Corey Umworthy. As always. Do not dare face me. You will be whipclod!”
“Eh? I can’t hear!” says Sneerf.
I shake my head. Questions!
“Sneerf?” I cry. “What color is love?”
Directly then, Sneerf, who had been straining to catch the words so he could get the best of me in a moot counterstrike, hears what is said, but the message so rattles him that his reaching hands slip over the smooth bark, his left leg swings about, but touches only air, and he falls! He falls from the tree!
“OUCH!” he cries from the ground, out of view, in the fog. “And ohhhh, my pain,” he complains.
I quickly turn for the door, and bump chest to chest with Urfa Dzama.
“Knight!” she says.
But the point of the story is not to have Conte burst in upon my fluffzonk with Dzama, anymore than the point of the writing is to make a show of resistance against Sneerf, whose power stems from the ones who favor pulling the plug on the government for leaving them in the lurch, and who abuses his power to get more of it by doing the unconscionable with the thugs he eggs on, to put himself and his gang on top, and the people in the mire.
The writer must let go and allow whatever will come, to come. Otherwise there’s no story, or nothing that’s any good! His other manuscript is 200 pages. Does he pick up his pen and work on it? But if he’s going to continue, he can’t force it. The Universe determines things.
And what does the Universe do? If it’s a serial novel he’s writing, if he starts it and introduces a handful of folks, then presumably he has them. The only rule is, no starting over again from the beginning and deleting text.
Every step forward is a step into the unknown. And if it includes thoughts on the creation of the thing itself, then okay. But what is it? Who? And why?
