Our Collection | The Short Story Project

USA

September 12, 1950. The survivors limp down the mountain to a 6×6 that drops them at the field service platoon behind the hills. Seven men remaining from forty, stunned and filthy as they line up for...

Services

Gordon Haber

8 min

USA

It was the 15th of the August of 1999, the morning before the wedding of Benjamin Kern and Maitreya Scheffer, ceremony and celebration to be hosted by the bride’s parents at their home in Bethel, Vermont,...

Are You Enjoying Your Forgiveness?

Julia May Jonas

31 min

USA

My Dearest Pearl, Your letter arrived last week, and of course, I read it many times like I do, then put it in the box with all your others, which you know I cherish. I will...

Crazy Over William

Rich Elliott

19 min

USA

At noon, the aftermath of lovemaking, I was still wandering around the apartment naked, makeup smeared beneath my eyes. I messaged Sarah: Come to meeting with me. Her reply: I don’t need that stupid shit. I’d...

Summer of Fun

Kirie Pedersen

18 min

USA

Eight or nine years ago – I think it was summer 2012 – I found myself browsing the shelves at a bookstore in Tehran. Outposts of the local bookstore chain Shahr-e Ketab glitter like branches of...

The Translator I Never Wanted to Be

Mariam Rahmani

13 min

USA

The child Charlotte sat on the narrow curbstone, her cheek against one knee, drawing idly in the dust with a stick. She sniffed at the flesh of her leg, smelt the dust and the sweat on...

A Mighty Nice Man

Patricia Highsmith

8 min

USA

When I came back to Tucson for Christmas break, my mom was like, “You need to clean out your closet or you’re not going anywhere.” This was her way of being dumb about the fact that...

She’s not quite woman’s best friend

KILEY REID

10 min

USA

It’s still dark when the weeping erupts, so Mather knows it’s early. How early he isn’t sure, but he won’t be able to fall back asleep, so it doesn’t matter. He pulls the extra pillow over...

Rollingwood

Ben Marcus

30 min

USA

But the best evidence we have that time travel is not possible, and never will be, is that we have not been invaded by hordes of tourists from the future. Stephen Hawking, “The Future...

10 to the 16 to 1

James Patrick Kelly

36 min

USA

“Let’s get the announcements out of the way,” said Ilka, the teacher, to her foreigners in Conversational English for Adults. “Tomorrow evening the institute is holding a symposium. Ahmed,” she asked the Turkish student with the...

Reverse Bug

Lore Segal

14 min

USA

“I am in love with my wife,” he said–a superfluous remark, as I had not questioned his attachment to the woman he had married. We walked for ten minutes and then he said it again. I...

The Other Woman

Sherwood Anderson

14 min

USA

I watched his face, nutmeg brown from the sun and criss-crossed like alpaca tracks, grow paler by the day, a yellow hue to his beautiful eyes that the doctor said was because his liver was quitting...

The Lonely Magpie

Alan S. Falkingham

1 min

USA

That autumn we knocked down the old barn foundation I asked the man with the backhoe to dig a grave in the center of a huge patch of tiger lilies. This was in case Annie died...

Dogs Know Those Who Dig Graves

Sharon Roznik

1 min

USA

It’d been a year since the fire. In the months that followed the blaze people still talked about it, still tried to understand what happened, still gathered occasionally to stare into the remains like parishioners at...

The Fire

Megan Benjamin

1 min

USA

I wait, listening for your footfalls, heavy, weary from your work. The sun will rise soon. I have readied the water; warm for your bath, cold for your clothing. The latch clicks, then the floorboards protest...

Soap and Water

Sonrisa Holmes

1 min

USA

In another world, Icarus ignored the sun. He soared through the air and relished in the ecstasy of flight. His arms were wings and he was the most glorious of birds. The sun became nothing more...

Fallen God

Madison Siwak

1 min

USA

“This song’s about you.” He leaned against the slick mahogany bar, watching a jazz trio perform Lady in Red. She glided past him and stood a few feet away, so as not to appear that she...

Medusa Wore Red or Testing the Waters

Stephanie Lewis

1 min

USA

Hot July, the taint of creosote. My brother sniffled, wiped his nose with the back of a dirty hand, leaving a brown smudge. Converse sneakers shifted, dragged. “Well? Go ‘head.” “Just a sec.” Steven Santilli’s sand...

Evel Knievel

Maribeth Mundell

1 min

USA

Running, through the vines and tree roots, encircling my legs, pulling me back to the Napalm Apocalypse. I hear the blades of the Huey just in the clearing ready to pick me up, I can’t move,...

Invisible

Jeannean Walker

1 min

USA

I peered out the passenger seat window of my mother’s car. She shifted from second to third gear. “You want to be committed; I’ll commit you!” she spewed while the car lurched forward. My sister laid...

My Sister

Hilary Sigismondi

1 min

USA

The first time Anna heard her son’s heartbeat, it was through the doctor’s stethoscope; a hummingbird beat, a frantic thumping; a small frenetic voice. She was a linguist, the first of her circle of friends to...

Ain’t No Word But Lonely

Rachel A. Levine

9 min

USA

Maggie is an expectant mother in a state that grants personhood at conception and protects the child’s rights over those of their mother. The world changed when I wasn’t looking. That’s what it felt like,...

Tertullian’s Law

Tia Levings

10 min

The Mother of all Defiance – Fourth Place

USA

Mom gave me a block of cheddar cheese and a sleeve of Fig Newtons when I left home for California in August of 1983. Apparently back then, when crossing the country alone in an unreliable foreign...

The Mother of all Defiance – Fourth Place

Mimi Broihier

9 min

USA

Tommy’s cousin Gabe. Tommy’s distant cousin Gabe from Stillwater, Minnesota. Tommy’s cousin Gabe, related to my husband through divorce and remarriage, in lieu of actual blood, who arrives on my front porch at dinnertime with a...

Gabe

Holiday Reinhorn

7 min