English
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The Secret Life of Insects
Mexico
Two items of interest: (1) Today I’m going to talk to my wife for the first time in two years. (2) My wife is dead. She passed away two years ago under strange circumstances. It’s my...
The Secret Life of Insects
Bernardo Esquinca
5 min
Harvest
Israel
“He’s alive!” Member Ma`ayan entered the room at a run. “He’s healthy, I heard him cry. It’s a Harvest Festival miracle. Didn’t you see the texts?” The faces of the five members of the Committee who...
Harvest
Nadav Neuman
12 min
An Attempt at Murder
Czech Republic
That evening Mr. Tomsa, chief clerk in a government office, had just settled down with his earphones and, with a gratified smile, was listening to a pleasant performance of some Dvorak dances on the radio —...
An Attempt at Murder
Karel Čapek
5 min
LA GRANDE BRETÈCHE
France
“Ah! madame,” replied the doctor, “I have some appalling stories in my collection. But each one has its proper hour in a conversation—you know the pretty jest recorded by Chamfort, and said to the Duc de...
LA GRANDE BRETÈCHE
Honoré de Balzac
11 min
The Ghost
UK
HE KILLED me quite easily by crashing my head on the cobbles. Bang! Lord, what a fool I was! All my hate went out with that first bang: a fool to have kicked up that fuss...
The Ghost
Richard Hughes
3 min
The Green Door
USA
Suppose you should be walking down Broadway after dinner, with ten minutes allotted to the consummation of your cigar while you are choosing between a diverting tragedy and something serious in the way of vaudeville. Suddenly...
The Green Door
O. Henry
10 min
The Open Window
UK
 “My aunt will be down presently, Mr. Nuttel,” said a very self-possessed young lady of fifteen; “in the meantime you must try and put up with me.” Framton Nuttel endeavored to say the correct something which...
The Open Window
Saki
4 min
A Haunted House
UK
Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure—a ghostly couple. “Here we left it,” she said. And he added, “Oh,...
A Haunted House
Virginia Woolf
2 min
Captain Murderer
UK
If we all knew our own minds (in a more enlarged sense than the popular acceptation of that phrase), I suspect we should find our nurses responsible for most of the dark corners we are forced...
Captain Murderer
Charles Dickens
4 min
A Mighty Nice Man
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
A Scandal in Bohemia
UK
To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any...
A Scandal in Bohemia
Arthur Conan Doyle
34 min
The Adventure of the Speckled Band
UK
On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large number...
The Adventure of the Speckled Band
Arthur Conan Doyle
39 min
The “Gloria Scott”
UK
“I have some papers here,” said my friend Sherlock Holmes, as we sat one winter’s night on either side of the fire, “which I really think, Watson, that it would be worth your while to glance...
The “Gloria Scott”
Arthur Conan Doyle
31 min
10 to the 16 to 1
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
A Child
Slovakia
She had been married for five years – and still nothing. Her relatives felt pity and compassion for her; it was not usual for women to be barren in her large family, where children had always...
A Child
Erika Olahová
5 min
S&M in the Holy Land
Israel
“Did you hear about the girl?” the Candyland cashier, who resembled a human gummy bear, asked me. “You didn’t hear? She was brought to the emergency room early this morning. The orderlies are calling her ‘The...
S&M in the Holy Land
Roy Chen
17 min
The Beretta Always Wins (A chapter from a novel)
Tunisia
The smell was stuck in my nose and wouldn’t go. Whenever I drew air into my lungs, the smell took over, and all the torture I went through that night came rushing back. Before emailing the...
The Beretta Always Wins (A chapter from a novel)
Kamal Riahi
4 min
The Opportunity
Israel
He played his role well. He showed no sign that he knew what was going on behind his back. He could be truly satisfied with himself. And when Bennet and Yossi Cohen told him why they...
The Opportunity
Iftach Alony
15 min
Getting Ahead
Sweden
Sometime in June, my back started to itch. I thought I’d been bitten by a mosquito or some other insect. That’s how it felt. It was always worst when I’d been out running and worked up...
Getting Ahead
Jonas Karlsson
31 min
The Woman in Green
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
Everyone’s Favourite Blonde
Mexico
“Evangelina Segunda, you have the beauty of Artemis: Venus herself fiercely envies the innocence of your smile” Sunday Magazine, Issue 54, El Dictamen (13 February, 1983)   The centre of Veracruz is full of ghosts, my...
Everyone’s Favourite Blonde
Fernanda Melchor
8 min
The Veiled Man
Syria
I learned of the character of drugs and the nature of poisons from an alchemist – an Arab alchemist from the outskirts of Baghdad who had come to work as a physician in the palace of...
The Veiled Man
Jan Dost
6 min
Black Cats
Morocco
The Imam’s words to me at the entrance to the mosque that night were strange and dramatic. He said that a pack of ferocious black cats had attacked the district and was destroying everything it came...
Black Cats
Samir Salmi
2 min
Inside Outdoors
Argentina
The giant is starting to rot and Minerval still has no news from the man that’s dreaming it. The programmer must be sick, she thinks: if he were dead the forest would dissolve and then the...
Inside Outdoors
Martín Felipe Castagnet
7 min
The Return
Uruguay
The news was brought by Darío, the baker’s son. We knew something had happened as soon as we saw him, standing up on his bike pedals, coming closer under the midday sun. Someone said, “Who could...
The Return
Fernanda Trías
7 min
The Psychic Uncle
Argentina
It was one of those wedding parties that was doomed to failure right from the start: too many deaf great-aunts, friends of the bride’s father who’d only come because they felt they had to and couldn’t...
The Psychic Uncle
Federico Falco
16 min
Auction
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
Soul Anatomy
USA
323 Juneberry Way, Deptford, NJ 08096 (856) 848-0501 Lmanfredo@comcast.net   In certain places there exists a permeating pointlessness to life with an aura of despair so acute that its inhabitants come to be unafraid, or, at...
Soul Anatomy
Lou Manfredo
29 min
The Castle in the Woods
USA
Nature is a haunted house — but Art — is a house that tries to be haunted. -Letter excerpt, Emily Dickinson, 1876.   Chilled Autumn air settled over me, the dryness of it tickling my lungs....
The Castle in the Woods
Isabella Connor
9 min
The Father Hole
Sweden
When Dad’s eyelids drop like a guillotine she pulls the car door shut with a click. He turns his gaze to the road, and from her shady spot in the backseat she can only see his...
The Father Hole
Andrea Lundgren
32 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
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
The Amputated Arms
Denmark
It happened when I was about eighteen or nineteen years old (began Dr. Simsen). I was studying at the University, and being coached in anatomy by my old friend Solling. He was an amusing fellow, this...
The Amputated Arms
Vilhelm Bergsøe
25 min
Lambing Season
USA
From May to September Delia took the Churro sheep and two dogs and went up on Joe-Johns Mountain to live.  She had that country pretty much to herself all summer.  Ken Owen sent one of his...
Lambing Season
Molly Gloss
22 min
Second Skin
UK
The transport, once owned by an outer system cartel and appropriated by Earth’s Pacific Community after the Quiet War, ran in a continuous, ever-changing orbit between Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. It never docked. It mined the...
Second Skin
Paul McAuley
36 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
Napoleon and the Spectre
UK
Well, as I was saying, the Emperor got into bed. “Chevalier,” says he to his valet, “let down those window-curtains, and shut the casement before you leave the room.” Chevalier did as he was told, and...
Napoleon and the Spectre
Charlotte Brontë
4 min
The Marble Child
UK
All over the pavement of the church spread the exaggerated cross-hatching of the old pews’ oak, a Smithfield market of intersecting lines such as children made with cards in the old days when kings and knaves...
The Marble Child
Edith Nesbit
14 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
The Open Window
UK
“My aunt will be down presently, Mr. Nuttel,” said a very self-possessed young lady of fifteen; “in the meantime you must try and put up with me.” Framton Nuttel endeavoured to say the correct something which...
The Open Window
Saki
4 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
Dracula’s Guest
Ireland
Dracula’s Guest was excised from the original Dracula manuscript by its publisher because of the length of the original book. It was published as a short story in 1914, two years after Stoker’s death.   ***...
Dracula’s Guest
Bram Stoker 
13 min
Still Water
Guatemala
On the silt and pebble-covered floor of the lagoon lay the body of a man. His open eyes seemed to be looking at the sun of a lower, liquid sky. A small black and yellow fish...
Still Water
Rodrigo Rey Rosa
8 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
The Blue Cross
UK
Between the silver ribbon of morning and the green glittering ribbon of sea, the boat touched Harwich and let loose a swarm of folk like flies, among whom the man we must follow was by no...
The Blue Cross
G.K. Chesterton
29 min
The Feather Pillow
Uruguay
Alicia’s entire honeymoon gave her hot and cold shivers. A blonde, angelic, and timid young girl, the childish fancies she had dreamed about being a bride had been chilled by her husband’s rough character. She loved...
The Feather Pillow
Horacio Quiroga
5 min
The Signal-Man
UK
“Halloa! Below there!”   When he heard a voice thus calling to him, he was standing at the door of his box, with a flag in his hand, furled round its short pole. One would have...
The Signal-Man
Charles Dickens
20 min
Fragment of a Novel
UK
“In the year 17__, having for some time determined on a journey through countries not hitherto much frequented by travellers, I set out, accompanied by a friend, whom I shall designate by the name of Augustus...
Fragment of a Novel
Lord Byron
7 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 Waldstein Sonata
Germany
Franz Liszt died on the 31st of July in the year 1886; he could not recall the finer details. Now, however, he found himself, in full possession of his senses and mental faculties, walking purposefully along a...
The Waldstein Sonata
Hartmut Lange
16 min
Séance with the Stasi
USA
She was the lady in your neighborhood. You saw her at the supermarket, you saw her in line at the post office. She was like Monday, the day she brought her kid to school, Tuesday, the...
Séance with the Stasi
Sarah Khan
12 min
There Was a Man Dwelt by a Churchyard
UK
This, you know, is the beginning of the story about sprites and goblins which Mamilius, the best child in Shakespeare, was telling to his mother the queen, and the court ladies, when the king came in...
There Was a Man Dwelt by a Churchyard
M.R. James
5 min
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