Our Collection - The Short Story Project

Spain

That’s the way life is: you push a button, and life turns on. —Clarice Lispector Leonora and Adelino were an old-fashioned couple. They had just turned eighty, and they shook with fear when they blew...

Eclipse

Almudena Sánchez

14 min

Spain

There’s a theory, quite well-known but difficult to prove, about the psychic powers of animals. Of most animals. How they can sense magnetic fields, electrical fluctuations, pregnancies, divorces, how they predict full moons. How, breathless, transfixed,...

Señora Smaig

Almudena Sánchez

14 min

Spain

I DO not know whether this is history which seems like a tale, or a tale which seems like history; what I can affirm is that in its core it contains a truth, a truth supremely...

THE RAY OF MOONSHINE

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer

10 min

Spain

On the Night of San Juan, Nana built a gigantic ﬁre. She built it in the middle of the garden, and it was several metres tall. On the Night of San Juan, you couldn’t breathe for...

Dogs of Summer

Andrea Abreu

12 min

Spain

Julia knocked on his door for the third time, looked through the keyhole without managing to see anything, and strode moodily up and down the roof terrace. She now realised that she should have done something...

THE ANGLE

Cristina Fernández Cubas

15 min

Spain

The first note the Alberts’ son furtively slipped into my pocket looked like a cryptic puzzle. The words were written in concentric circles and this is what they said: Angry casserole, Smuts or minks. Crosses or...

The Garden Window

Cristina Fernández Cubas

21 min

Spain

It was the talk of the town. What a miracle! It’s not every day that a man in his eighties goes to the altar with a fifteen year old. To be precise, Inesiña, the niece of...

Vampire

Emilia Pardo Bazán

6 min

Spain

‘I’m sorry,’ says the girl. ‘You’re mistaken.’ I listen to her without batting an eyelid, nodding my head as if being mistaken were the most natural thing in the world. Because there’s no other explanation. I’ve...

The Woman in Green

Cristina Fernández Cubas

24 min

Spain

I’ve always enjoyed everyday violence. I remember one incident in particular: broken glass in the dark. I’m not certain that it’s a real memory but when I relive the scene, I find it hard to contain...

In Praise of the Hurricane

Alejandro Morellón

4 min

Spain

The tie is doomed, just as the larger Asian elephant is doomed. Manuel Vilas 8 January 2018 I can’t stand them. I’d burn them in a dirty flame, a diesel flame, no sandalwood or ceremony...

My Father’s Ties

Recaredo Veredas

9 min

Spain

I remember it was almost summer, and I called from my office, between patients, to make the appointment. Paz had recommended a beauty salon that happened to be near my parents’ house. I made an appointment...

What We’ve Become

Margarita Leoz

14 min

Spain

There are roosters around here somewhere. Kneeling, with my head down and covered with a filthy rag, I concentrate on hearing the roosters, how many there are, if they’re in cages or a corral. Papa raised...

Auction

María Fernanda Ampuero

8 min

Spain

She’s getting naked. Something either very bad or very good is happening. Happening to me. Whatever it is, my parents can’t find out. I’m at a friend’s house. Nothing strange there. But my new friend, half...

Nam

María Fernanda Ampuero

12 min

Spain

For Juanina Jaguen, my girlfriend now and forever “Orchids!” she cried. “Orchids! Those are orchids!” I was not in the mood for orchids. My leg was in agony. Not just one part of it, the...

Ligaments

Hipólito Gonzales Navarro

12 min

Spain

That night we were having guests for dinner, and Ines had been in a frenzy all week. She hunted down innovative recipes on the internet and buried my desk in sheets of paper as she printed...

An Enchanting Evening

Margarita Leoz

11 min

Spain

My sister always said that it was much better to have a niece or nephew than your own child. I suppose that my mother agreed with her. My sister said that with a nephew you got...

Oxytocin

Miguel Serrano Larraz

10 min

Spain

Miriam tells them that he built the house himself with his own hands. She tells them how he piled up the rocks on rainy days, so that they’d get good and soaked before he soldered them...

Second Residence

Margarita Leoz

10 min

Spain

When I arrived in Brussels, the supposed end of the European dream was all the media could talk about. General levels of uncertainty had increased, as had violence on public transport – for instance, when one...

The Doorbell

Cristian Crusat

11 min

Spain

The most beautiful part of the city of Cimannis—a name which the local scholars interpreted as a shortened form of City Magnificent—the first thing that they showed to foreign visitors was the clubhouse; and the most...

Batrachophiles and Batrachophobes

Miguel de Unamuno

7 min

Spain

I was pretty worn out that night, but to me the red mark on Concha’s shoulder looked like a hickey and I said so. “This, you mean?” she asked, pointing to the mark without taking her...

Half-Measures

Ángel Zapata

4 min

Spain

The incident with my wife occurred during an excursion into the jungle. It was an overwhelmingly green afternoon, the kind of thing you boast about to your guests. (“The sun that evening was incredible, wasn’t it?...

What’s Wrong, Honey?

Matías Candeira

5 min

Spain

When I was nine years old, my father hired me a whore. A whore, logically, who was nine years old. I have forgotten the clothes, the toys, the food, everything that was my life at nine...

The Japanese Garden

Antonio Ortuño

6 min

Spain

For Isa and Germán She was going to get married, she said. And then she started to laugh. She’d decided to drop out of university halfway through the year, weren’t expecting that, were we? Sofia...

About the Wedding

Eloy Tizón

10 min

Spain

And you treated my woman to a flake of your life, And when she came back she was nobody’s wife. (Leonard Cohen, «Famous Blue Raincoat») Inside a lost trailer in the desert, a man holds...

Famous Blue Raincoat

Aixa de la Cruz

9 min