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The Real Mother’s Song
USA
 “Win, win, win, win, win, win, win!!” was the incessant cry of our stepmother Sophie. It was the command that drove our household. She was a slight woman with a turned-up nose and a perky hairdo...
The Real Mother’s Song
Geoff Schmidt
9 min
Glossolalia
USA
That winter, like every winter before it, my father woke early each day and turned up the thermostat so the house would be warm by the time my mother and I got out of bed. Sometimes...
Glossolalia
David Jauss
34 min
Make Me Do Things
USA
Way over there, the boy could see them, in the deep end, his mother and the man his mother said he’d better stop calling Dan Dog. They were all the way over there, doing what his...
Make Me Do Things
Victoria Redel
5 min
How to Be a Prisoner
USA
Ben was my summer boyfriend, my “older man,” Mom called him. He was twelve, and I was eleven, a skinny eleven, though I believed my breasts appeared acceptable to those who mattered. He lived usually with...
How to Be a Prisoner
Jessica Hollander
3 min
You Are the Bad Smell
USA
“This isn’t the one,” she said, laying her hand on my arm. As if she was really sorry. “Stick a fork in me. I’m done,” I said. “No. You’re just upset. You thought this was the...
You Are the Bad Smell
Kathy Anderson
11 min
Let Go
USA
For three years, lifetimes ago, I was an office manager at a credit agency. During those years, with one exception, I never fired anyone. Probably this was because everyone quit first. The pay was miserable, there...
Let Go
Lee Upton
14 min
The Flower of One’s Heart
USA
Yoshi Takamata moved from Kyoto to Connecticut at the age of fifteen, and his three years of American high school, followed by four years at local college and two decades in New York City, had done...
The Flower of One’s Heart
Panio Gianopoulos
25 min
Liling
USA
During the early years of the Ming Dynasty, one young woman in particular was praised for her beauty. Of course there were other beauties, but wherever Liling went, admirers clapped, as if she were on stage...
Liling
Kelly Cherry
5 min
Words to Live By
USA
He’s confused. Too shy. His sister died of leukemia when he was thirteen. He’s not over his wife yet. He’s intimidated by your sarcastic sense of humor. You’re smarter than he is and he can’t handle...
Words to Live By
Aimee LaBrie
2 min
The Lie
USA
When I came down, Granpa’s door was barely open. A blade of candlelight from inside crossed the floor and the living room couch. Mom whispered orders. Someone prayed. When I peeked in, Mom’s hand touched the...
The Lie
Peter Brown
17 min
The Problem with Moving
USA
 One move leads to another move, and nowhere feels as good as you want it to feel; your childhood feels wrong, and this place feels wrong, and the next place feels wrong, and so you move...
The Problem with Moving
Jessica Hollander
2 min
Looking for Service
USA
As soon as they called the First Class passengers I stepped to the head of the line, hurried down to my seat and braced myself for the crowd that came slumping past minutes later with their...
Looking for Service
Nathan Oates
28 min
The Funeral Bill      
USA
At one time, the landlord Jeffers had been a busy person, but not anymore. Now he had time to think, and he had recently decided that he was going to die. His stomach was no longer...
The Funeral Bill      
Jason DeYoung
26 min
Filament
USA
 When she was seventeen, Loretta discovered that she was pregnant with Blue Simpson’s child, a shame really.  Not because Tildon turned out to be a bad son.  (In fact, he would do quite well, thirty-two years...
Filament
K.L. Cook
17 min
Magic
USA
And, Madame Blanchard, believe that I am happy to be here with you and your family because it is so serene, everything, and before this I worked for a long time in a fancy house—maybe you don’t know...
Magic
Katherine Anne Porter
4 min
Indie
USA
His picture would appear in the paper, scrutinized for any sign of dementia. People would read between the lines for hints of indiscretion or scandal in his background as to what had motivated him. They’d find...
Indie
Steven Schwartz
22 min
Riding to the Shore
USA
Ginny stood on the counter of the diner decorated in tinfoil. She’s my wife, if you want to call her that, which I do. She’d made bracelets and earrings and a fake-fancy necklace by folding and...
Riding to the Shore
Liz Prato
17 min
Tales From the Venia Woods
USA
This all happened a long time ago, in the early decades of the Second Republic, when I was a boy growing up in Upper Pannonia. Life was very simple then, at least for us.  We lived...
Tales From the Venia Woods
Robert Silverberg
31 min
The Last Leaf
USA
Old Nannie sat hunched upon herself expecting her own death momentarily. The Grandmother had said to her at parting, with the easy prophecy of the aged, that this might be their last farewell on earth; they...
The Last Leaf
O. Henry
6 min
Sissy
USA
l had planned on spending the holidays with a bottle of Chablis until my sister Mag showed up, itching for a fight. At the restaurant, she switched tables three times. The first table had no view,...
Sissy
Kathy Anderson
8 min
When the Lights Go Down
USA
Rita Loomis had fallen asleep at her own retirement party. Her colleague Amelia Monroe noticed this from the back of the room, embarrassed for Rita, and grateful for herself. Because until that moment, Amelia was sure...
When the Lights Go Down
Liam Callanan
12 min
Something, Anything
USA
 My wife is one of these people who drives on the freeway with a mattress on top of her car, held there by a single string. I first found her in a duplex made over into...
Something, Anything
Sally Shivnan
7 min
The McGugle Account
USA
We were all surprised when Brian hired the Cyclops. His references only spoke Greek. His sole job experience was shepherding. It was uncertain if he could commit to two years. No matter. Brian saw something formidable...
The McGugle Account
Sharma Shields
15 min
Weather
USA
His name is Charles Jenkins, but everyone calls him Zeke. No one in Little Bend, Zeke included, knows why. This is what people know about Zeke: when Zeke was fourteen, back when he was Charlie, he...
Weather
Elizabeth Gonzalez
16 min
Dear John
USA
When my husband first announced that he was leaving me, there were no packed bags. No studio apartment had already been leased on the other, seedier side of town. There were no missing photo albums or...
Dear John
Sarah Gerkensmeyer
5 min
Dinner in Audoghast
USA
“Then one arrives at Audoghast, a large and very populous city built in a sandy plain … The inhabitants live in ease and possess great riches. The market is always crowded; the mob is so huge and the...
Dinner in Audoghast
Bruce Sterling
17 min
The Automatic Garden
USA
At a late age, Thomas Francini, the engineer responsible for many of the grand fountains at Versailles and infamous for his will to control, married the sixteen-year-old daughter of the Compte de Frontenac, a pristine child...
The Automatic Garden
Adam McOmber
10 min
Pan and Pirates
USA
Hugh Furlong tells people that the single, snapshot moment that’s been burned into his brain to mark the end of his childhood was the moment he saw his brother Peter’s fist make contact with Albert Frank’s...
Pan and Pirates
Ashley Cowger
11 min
Produce
USA
I’ve started grocery shopping at one of the new, big places that takes up an entire city block, but claims to support the envi­ronment and our health and world peace and all of that. It’s one...
Produce
Sarah Gerkensmeyer
2 min
Guess Who Was at the Party?
USA
She didn’t look a thing like his girlfriend. This alone should have been a sign that she was just a fling, a diversion from what he had known for the past five years. She began to...
Guess Who Was at the Party?
Kate Hill Cantrill
7 min
The Last Communist
USA
 My parents always had visitors. They would come in the evening and sit in folding chairs on the back porch of our small house in New Brunswick. They greeted me—an only child —with the warmth of...
The Last Communist
Steven Schwartz
32 min
Mr. Tallent’s Ghost
UK
The first time I ever met Mr. Tallent was in the late summer of 1906, in a small, lonely inn on the top of a mountain. For natives, rainy days in these places are not very...
Mr. Tallent’s Ghost
Mary Webb
17 min
Abracadabra
USA
The restaurant is crazy busy and my entire head is engulfed in the heat and steam and smell of all the dishes being cooked and readied on the line. I am tired. I am always tired...
Abracadabra
Diane Goodman
14 min
Coming of Age in Karhide
USA
SOV THADE TAGE EM EREB, OF RER IN KARHIDE, ON GETHEN I live in the oldest city in the world. Long before there were kings in Karhide, Rer was a city, the marketplace and meeting ground...
Coming of Age in Karhide
Ursula Le Guin
31 min
Icarus
USA
Late that afternoon they were ordered from the crippled field. Sweat streaked sunburned faces and soaked their prison blues. To the west, the sun had grown huge and crimson as it nipped the horizon; broken strings...
Icarus
Lones Seiber
25 min
Meaning of Ends
USA
This version of the story is in English. In Milan. Standing tiptoe on the edge of a king-sized bed. She is shutting a window cut into the slant of the ceiling. She is naked. It is...
Meaning of Ends
Martha Witt
0 min
Two Days
USA
I met Adam at the bookstore. He was in the section marked Biography/History and he was looking, extensively, at a book about some historical event no one’s ever heard of.  The only way I knew it...
Two Days
Aimee Bender
8 min
Bull
USA
His father was now his mother but he was still an epic asshole. “He won’t even let me get a tattoo,” Josh said. “He gets his whole dick cut off and he won’t even let me...
Bull
Kathy Anderson
11 min
The Fulness of Life
USA
For hours she had lain in a kind of gentle torpor, not unlike that sweet lassitude which masters one in the hush of a midsummer noon, when the heat seems to have silenced the very birds...
The Fulness of Life
Edith Wharton
15 min
The Golden Honeymoon
USA
Mother says that when I start talking I never know when to stop. But I tell her the only time I get a chance is when she ain’t around, so I have to make the most...
The Golden Honeymoon
Ring Lardner
26 min
Goldene Medene
USA
Dr. Spencer looked up from his misery to the long, winding lines— dark eyes, brown clothes, the occasional red and yellow native costume—and each day before this and after seemed a wretched sameness to him, as...
Goldene Medene
Amy Gustine
18 min
The Blue Hotel
USA
The Palace Hotel at Fort Romper was painted a light blue, a shade that is on the legs of a kind of heron, causing the bird to declare its position against any background. The Palace Hotel,...
The Blue Hotel
Stephen Crane
42 min
The Door in the Wall
USA
One confidential evening, not three months ago, Lionel Wallace told me this story of the Door in the Wall. And at the time I thought that so far as he was concerned it was a true...
The Door in the Wall
H. G. Wells
27 min
To Build a Fire
USA
Day had broken cold and grey, exceedingly cold and grey, when the man turned aside from the main Yukon trail and climbed the high earth-bank, where a dim and little-travelled trail led eastward through the fat...
To Build a Fire
Jack London
28 min
Hands
USA
Upon the half decayed veranda of a small frame house that stood near the edge of a ravine near the town of Winesburg, Ohio, a fat little old man walked nervously up and down. Across a...
Hands
Sherwood Anderson
9 min
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
USA
Found among the Papers of the Late Diedrich Knickerbocker.   A pleasing land of drowsy head it was, Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye; And of gay castles in the clouds that pass, Forever...
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Washington Irving
48 min
Seeing Miles
USA
David stared at Mimi’s picture, taken at his bar mitzvah twenty-five years ago. She was his cousin, a second cousin, and she and her family had come out to Milwaukee from Brooklyn for the occasion. He...
Seeing Miles
Steven Schwartz
13 min
Upturned Face
USA
“What will we do now?” said the adjutant, troubled and excited.   “Bury him,” said Timothy Lean. The two officers looked down close to their toes where lay the body of their comrade. The face was...
Upturned Face
Stephen Crane
5 min
The Last Summer of Our Patriarch
USA
On the third day of vacation, we woke in our rental cabins by the ocean to find half our flip‐flops were gone. One of the baby’s potato‐sized sandals was missing as well. By the door, out...
The Last Summer of Our Patriarch
Idra Novey
10 min
The Tell-Tale Heart
USA
True!—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses—not destroyed—not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I...
The Tell-Tale Heart
Edgar Allan Poe
8 min
The Aspiring Idiot
USA
In March I received an invitation to appear at IdiotFest, the second most prestigious event on the entire Idiot circuit. I called my mother. ─IdiotFest? ─Don’t you remember, Mom? It was in San Diego last year....
The Aspiring Idiot
Todd Hasak-Lowy
17 min
Haircut
USA
I got another barber that comes over from Carterville and helps me out Saturdays, but the rest of the time I can get along all right alone. You can see for yourself that this ain’t no...
Haircut
Ring Lardner
19 min
Time and Again
USA
Mr. Weeks called me out again tonight, and I look back down the hall of my house. I left the kitchen light burning. This is an empty old house since the old lady died. When Mr....
Time and Again
Breece D'J Pancake
6 min
Death of the Pugilist (Or, the famous battle of Jacob Burke & Blindman McGraw)
USA
Who was Burke? His beginnings.   Born a caulbearer in the Bristol slums, in the quayside heap known only as “the Rat,” Jacob Burke, who would battle the great McGraw on that fateful day in 1824,...
Death of the Pugilist (Or, the famous battle of Jacob Burke & Blindman McGraw)
Daniel Mason
23 min
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