Our Collection – Page 3 – The Short Story Project

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

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

Look at the Sky and Tell Me What You See

USA

I’m going to a funeral, and for the occasion, I’ve chosen a knee-length black Donna Karan dress (Flashy Trash, $15), black lace bra and panties, garter belt, sheer black stockings and brown snow boots with my...

Look at the Sky and Tell Me What You See

Aimee LaBrie

9 min

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

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

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

USA

There was a wall of Ruth and Sam’s house that bordered the neighbor’s bed of ivy. These neighbors allowed the ivy to spread unchecked. It crawled up the wooden fence and weighed it down so that...

The Migrating Wall

Karen Brennan

6 min

USA

I. You spotted the trapeze rig in the spring, where it seemed to have sprouted, like a flower, from its otherwise concrete surroundings. It was pitched on a medium-sized plot of grass in what counts as...

Planch, Whip, Salto

Becky Adnot-Haynes

6 min

USA

Him asking me to tell him about Kolkata. Lying in a twin bed, his head on my chest, some Saturday night. The whole room lit gray, the only color his voice. Why did you want me...

Kolkata

Gabriel Monteros

9 min

USA

So it’s like the Greeks, right? And everyone has a personal afterlife tailored to them, except it’s not all dark and bleak. You do the task and you go through the thing and then there’s another...

The Lake is a Long Way From Here

Joelle Schumacher

7 min

Israel

In the morning, when I first open my eyes, is when I really feel like a criminal for the first time. Like the crazy moms who bathe their babies, gently caressing the head, and then holding...

Criminal

Ofir Oz

8 min

USA

“Miri?” Hannah had intended to knock lightly on the bedroom door, but it hadn’t been closed properly so it opened slowly at her touch. Miriam never closed her door all the way. “Miriam?” She stood in...

Inseparable

Anaia Daigle

9 min

Israel

As the flames died to embers, he knew something had to change. He looked around the little rented cabin and his eyes met Emily’s. They had talked about having to move again, about needing a better...

Late Bloomers

Amir Atsmon

6 min

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

Syria

As soon as he saw his friend, who had just arrived from back home, in the airport arrivals lounge, he asked him, “Did you bring it?” His friend gestured to the backpack hanging off of his...

A Handful of Dirt

Jan Dost

8 min

Palestine

The death of my grandfather, Abu Kamel, God rest his soul, felt like the end of an era. I used to see him as my link to the past, that distance that stretches all the way...

The Photographer

Muhammad Hamad

1 min

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

Israel

His heart suddenly flipped over in his chest. “Just like a carp in the kitchen sink,” Grigory Katz thought. To calm himself down, he stuck his nose into his scarf and breathed in his own warm...

Rooms

Anna Likhtikman

8 min

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

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

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

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

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

Israel

Yuda is banging the wall with his pillow; Moishe is switching the lights off and on again. I lay silent, not involved in the nightly disturbance. “He’s coming!” calls Zvika, the sun-shield watcher. We get under...

Sun Shields

Yariv Sapir

2 min

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

Israel

“Sonya, how could you? How can you wear those short dresses covered with pea-green dots?” “Sonya, have you said your prayers?” “Sonya, how can you listen to those fascists?” “Sonya, have you read Sholem Aleichem?”...

Chicken Morning, Noon and Night

Tasha Karluka

8 min

Iraq

This vinegar is exactly ninety-nine years old, if the calculations I jotted down on my calendar of motivational quotes are correct, because the perfume was produced exactly a week before the enormous concrete head of Saddam...

The Day By Day Mosque

Mortada Gzar

6 min

Argentina

A moral romance The restaurant, which offered simple but excellent fare, was lit by a large artificial moon augmented by some weak recessed lighting in the walls. The owner oversaw proceedings from the till. At...

You Have to Pay

Marcelo Cohen

11 min

Trinidad and Tobago

The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men Gang aft a-gley, An’ lea’e us nought but grief and pain, For promis’d joy. —Robert Burns, “To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the...

The Best Laid Plans

Darby Maloney

17 min

Mexico

I met Olegario and his son William in the town cantina. I’d been on the run for weeks, travelling drunkenly from one place to another. I slept in the car and ate when I was hungry....

Sons

José Miguel Tomasena

9 min

Israel

There are those who invent lies, and there are those who believe them. In an ideal world Jerry would spread his wings and fly away from there. For as long as he can remember himself,...

The Gift

Iftach Alony

6 min

Israel

1. AZIZ Our small room in Motel 6 smells like depressing sex that someone tried to scrub off with lots bleach. Gershon and I sit on the bed and start scribbling calculations on a napkin....

Three Men in America

Julia Fermentto

30 min

Ireland

When I think of Ireland, John-Paul Finnegan said as we stood on the deck of the ferry while it pulled out of Holyhead, I think of a limitless ignorance. And not just an ignorance, but a...

John-Paul Finnegan, Paltry Realist

Rob Doyle

15 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

A Protracted Evening. The Art of the Japanese Writer Yasushi Inoue

Germany

I owe my acquaintance with the works of the Japanese writer Yasushi Inoue to a young colleague with whom I once spent a long and arduous evening. At the time I had been living apart from...

A Protracted Evening. The Art of the Japanese Writer Yasushi Inoue

Volker Zastrow

11 min

Germany

Why can’t we try Mike or Robert or Knosi? Because the guys say that Mike and Robert and Knosi are busy today and that we’ve no other choice, so up we go again, back up to...

Why Are We Going Back to Watan?

Andreas Stichmann

7 min

Germany

When they woke up in the morning the architect was already sitting at his computer. His office was in the right wing of the building; they lived in the left wing. The light was on all...

The Architect

Maxim Biller

10 min

Germany

The Sankt Johannesweide Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic encompasses spacious grounds. Patients have access to this Lower Bavarian gem among mental institutions from seven in the morning until six in the evening, five days a week. For the...

It’s Me

Kristina Schilke

9 min

Germany

Fritz had met ‘that Hilda woman’ in a bar called Paradise Now – sheer chance, really. He never usually went to places like that. For years he had been rotating among three or four pubs and...

Sloth

Eva Menasse

13 min

The Great Illusion at Klingenreiter Lumber Sawmill and Woodworking Import Export

Germany

When Ferdinand Klingenreiter asked the audience, dear friends and family, boys and girls, to be quiet for his great illusion, some laughed; most went on talking. The Stadelmann girls interrupted their squealing chase and turned towards...

The Great Illusion at Klingenreiter Lumber Sawmill and Woodworking Import Export

Saša Stanišić

16 min

Israel

In those days I talked a lot about weapons. There was Alex, the lone soldier who lived with the old lady. It was unclear whether they were related. On Friday afternoons Alex was always out on...

Copy and Paste

Yoav Rosen

11 min

Israel

1. A month before Independence Day, 2048 The Chief Scientist of the Weizmann Institute took a deep breath and turned on the secret switch on the back of the Hitler. The Hitler blinked. And blinked...

Another Love Story

Uzi Weil

11 min

Romania

I’ve found so many things in my hat by now, I couldn’t even list them all. Sandwiches, rotten food, rocks, trash, dog shit more than once. I end up with more junk than bills. But of...

Caviar

Ilka Papp Zakor

6 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

USA

This morning our gun dropped about 270 pounds of ICM on a smuggler’s checkpoint ten kliks south of us. We took out a group of insurgents and then we went to the Fallujah chow hall for...

Ten Kliks South

Phil Klay

15 min

Israel|USA

Earlier, the pipe from the water tower on the roof burst and water began to fall. Now we’re sitting around my dining table in the living room, drinking Champale and eating humus on melba toast. Two...

The A Line

Miryam Sivan

17 min

Mexico

We only learned about the curse three months after Mom had sold our apartment, bought this land, and unceremoniously upped and moved us here. The Land came with a rudimentary house, mature trees that plied us...

Back to The Land

Laia Jufresa

7 min

Israel

The defining period of my youth stretched into my mid-twenties, and more than any other afflictions, it was plagued by deep seated agitation. I engaged in minor, almost perfunctory, identity crises, but overall I willingly acceded...

Verging on the Abyss

Jonathan Fein

29 min

Israel

Light snow fell on Bilbao. We sat there beneath the Guggenheim Museum and waited for it to open. A few meters away stood the famous architect Frank Gehry, carefully examining the extravagant structure whose planning had...

Titanium

Dror Burstein

8 min

USA

He had always believed that his immortality would take the form of the Aerojet. The two-stage, solid-fuel boost rocket had been, in its time, one of the crowning achievements of human technology — the first apparatus to...

The Northeast Kingdom

Nathaniel Rich

41 min

USA

Rory knew before he came to New York what sort of life he would have. He’d read about it in novels by hip young authors who lived there. He saw the apartment, small but high-ceilinged, a...

Emerald City

Jennifer Egan

14 min

Israel

The heart, had it been able to think, would stop beating, I thought as I entered that dark club. People leaning against the walls, people being dragged down to the light only to resume their fixed...

Richard Nixon, My Mother

Tahel Frosh

4 min

Israel

I live in the dread of silence. But am I not the soundless of all? Grey, humped, rat-like monsters with reddened eyes shadow my life. I detect them. Recognize them. Catch their scent as they come...

An old story

Iftach Alony

1 min

Israel

She was so glad the wedding was over. The unadorned car stopped in front of the hotel at the far end of the esplanade. They stepped out, he and the driver, his best friend, hugged before...

Honey

Liat Elkayam

12 min