Really Short Short Stories: The Birds Series

IA little woodpecker flies through the woods, and finally settles on a sturdy-looking tree. Perched on the highest branch, it then begins to peck at the trunk, ceaselessly, industriously. Soon, there is a growing pile of woodchips at the base of the tree and the tree is bleeding.

When it starts to bleed profusely, the tree stirs and groans, begging the woodpecker to stop its pecking because it hurts, and asking the little bird why it’s doing what it’s doing. The woodpecker only continues to peck mutely.

Finally, for the last time, the tree asks the woodpecker, and this time, the woodpecker stops its pecking to say the tree is no longer a tree. And it’s true: the sturdy tree is now a naked slender young girl who is bleeding where the woodpecker’s claws and beak have been digging into.

The girl looks at the blood running down her arm and asks the woodpecker why. The woodpecker looks at the girl, who doesn’t hear the bird’s answer but now understands everything. She accepts the woodpecker, still perched on her arm, whose claws are still digging into her flesh and making her bleed, and asks the little bird to teach her more.



IIA young lady walks through the market-place and spots a seller of birds surrounded by cages and cages of the winged creatures and is attracted to the store. There she sees a cage with a nightingale and buys it without bargaining down the outrageous price the bird-seller quotes her.

In her house, she feeds the bird honey-water and it begins to sing. She opens the cage and takes it out. The bird is still singing as she lays in down and runs the sharp tip of a knife from under its beak to the bottom of its tail feathers. Then she pries apart the body of the nightingale and bends down to breathe in the nightingale’s singing.

Later that day, in the evening, she puts on a beautiful gown and goes to the opera house, where she sings sweetly before a mesmerized audience. At the end of her singing, they give her a standing ovation, whereupon she uses her knife and runs it from her forehead to the hem of her gown. From the slit the blade has made, a little brown bird emerges and flies away, and the woman’s entire being and costume - wig, birthday suit, and gown - collapse onto her shoes in a pile.

Outside the opera house, the bird seller waits with the cage. As the nightingale flies out from the opera house, he catches it in his hand and puts it back in the cage. He walks away into the night. In the morning, his bird store has completely vanished from the market place.



IIIEvery night for a month, a young man dreams of a young lady who wears a black half-mask of shaped a like swallow. She sings to him a song which he cannot understand but nevertheless thinks is sorrowful because he feels drowned by tears whenever he hears it. When she stops singing, he awakes.

One morning, he sees a black swallow perched on branch just outside his window. Without much difficulty, he catches the bird and places it in a cage beside his bed, so he can gaze at it until he drifts off to sleep. That night, he dreams again of the young masked lady, but she doesn’t sing to him. He gazes at her until he falls awake.

The next morning, he finds the cage locked but empty. He is inexplicably sad, and feels his heart ache. By late afternoon, he has taken to bed because his heart hurts too much and he feels drained by the pain. That night, in his dreams, the young lady sings again to him. After her song has ended, she removes her black swallow half-mask. She is so beautiful the young man in his dreams thinks he must have died and found paradise.

Some time later, the young man is found dead in his bed, wearing a black half-mask shaped like a swallow, and where his heart is supposed to be is a small nest in which are four little eggs that hatch into four black swallows that fly away and are never seen again.



IVOnce, there is a young woman who keeps a whole aviary of birds about her. Every time she feels for someone, a single bird will fly away, never to come back. Therefore, she is very careful about the people she comes in contact with, lest she should find herself bereft of all her birds and left with an empty aviary.

One day, as she is taking a stroll in the middle of a field, the front of dress bursts open, and from her breast hundreds of birds fly out from their aviary and soar into the sky. As they fly pass above her - an avian cloud - feathers rain down on her, burrowing under her skin, until she is feathered like a bird in her aviary.

Just as she is about to fly away with her birds, she is caught and placed in someone else’s aviary.



VA young man buys a cuckoo clock from a little shop tucked in a corner of the market place. The shop is crammed with cuckoo clocks of all shapes and sizes, and, on the hour, every hour, the shop sounds like an aviary of hungry birds.

When he gets home, he realizes the clock he has bought should have two cuckoos coming out on to cuckoo every hour on the hour but one cuckoo is missing. By then, it is too late to go back to the cuckoo clock shop, so he decides to go to bed and return to the market place the next morning.

That night, he dreams of meeting a beautiful girl inside the cuckoo clock he has just purchased who has the wing and tail feathers of a cuckoo bird peeking from beneath her dress. He falls in love with her and kisses her. The bird girl tells him to fly away while he still can, and he realizes he too has the wing and tail feathers of a cuckoo bird.

The next day, on the hour, two cuckoo birds are thrust out of the cuckoo clock to cuckoo, and when they are whisked back into the clock, the cuckoo clock seller lets himself into the young man’s house and takes with him the cuckoo clock. His cuckoo clock shop is never seen again in the market place - nor is the young man ever found.


End