Our Collection – Page 12 – The Short Story Project

Germany

We stood with Gerschom Scholem at the grave of his parents and brothers in the Jewish Cemetery in Berlin-Weißensee. It was cold – it was December. Gerschom Scholem and Fania, his wife, were wearing light coats,...

Double Grave

Barbara Honigmann

8 min

Russia

At 17 Crooked Street there lived an old woman. She had once lived there with her husband and son, but the son grew up and left home, and the husband died, leaving the old woman all...

How the Old Woman Tried to Buy Ink

Daniil Kharms

10 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

UK

More than a thousand years ago, in a country quite on the other side of the world, it fell out that the people all grew so very polite that they hardly ever spoke to each other....

A Toy Princess

Mary de Morgan

12 min

Greece

In memory of Frieda Liappa I dreamt that it was evening –and it was. I could hear nearby the bells from a flock, scattered here and there. The flock moved onwards, hidden behind the night...

An Almost Sky Blue Hand

Rhea Galanaki

4 min

France

“I had loved her madly! Why does one love? Why does one love? How queer it is to see only one being in the world, to have only one thought in one’s mind, only one desire...

Was It a Dream?

Guy de Maupassant

7 min

Argentina

The house was falling down around us, but once you reach a certain age you just let it happen. The dirty plates were piled up in the kitchen, there was no one to make my bed,...

Interruption of Service

Tomás Sánchez Bellocchio

11 min

France

Besieged Paris was in the throes of famine. Even the sparrows on the roofs and the rats in the sewers were growing scarce. People were eating anything they could get. As Monsieur Morissot, watchmaker by profession...

Two Friends

Guy de Maupassant

8 min

USA

It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you. We were down South, In Alabama—Bill Driscoll and myself—when this kidnapping idea struck us. It was, as Bill afterward expressed it, “during a moment...

The Ransom of Red Chief

O. Henry

16 min

Australia

I always wanted a girl. There were places, shops almost, where you could get a girl at any time of the day and they even remembered your name. But I wanted a girl that I didn’t...

The Real Cambodia

Laura Jean McKay

11 min

USA

Nil sapientiae odiosius acumine nimio. Seneca. At Paris, just after dark one gusty evening in the autumn of 18–, I was enjoying the twofold luxury of meditation and a meerschaum, in company with my friend...

The Purloined Letter

Edgar Allan Poe

28 min

Russia

“To whom shall I tell my grief?” The twilight of evening. Big flakes of wet snow are whirling lazily about the street lamps, which have just been lighted, and lying in a thin soft layer...

Misery

Anton Chekhov

8 min

USA

A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man’s hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled...

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

Ambrose Bierce

11 min

Germany

NATHANIEL TO LOTHAIRE. Certainly you must all be uneasy that I have not written for so long—so very long. My mother, I am sure, is angry, and Clara will believe that I am passing my time...

The Sandman

E.T.A. Hoffmann

69 min

El Salvador

I went out because I was invited. I had just showered and was peeking out my bedroom window when, all of a sudden, I saw myself pass by. But it wasn’t the me that I’d just...

Invitation

Claudia Hernández

4 min

USA

Paul Espeseth, who was no longer taking the antidepressant Celexa, braced himself for a cataclysm at SeaWorld. He wondered only what form cataclysm would take. Espeseth had tried to veto this trip, making his case to...

Pending Vegan

Jonathan Lethem

19 min

Argentina

My name is Tomás. I’m thirty years old. I live with my father. We’re two bachelors in a big house who run into each other at odd hours and treat one another with respect, but we...

The Song We Sang Every Day

Luciano Lamberti

9 min

Russia

Poverty Brothers, what is the most fashionable word these days, eh? These days the most fashionable word around is, of course, “electrification”. I don’t deny the vast importance of shining a light on Soviet Russia....

Poverty | The Galosh

Mikhail Zoshchenko

6 min

UK

Perhaps it was the middle of January in the present year that I first looked up and saw the mark on the wall. In order to fix a date it is necessary to remember what one...

The Mark on the Wall

Virginia Woolf

12 min

USA

On one of the upper branches of the Congo river lived an ancient and aristocratic family of hippopotamuses, which boasted a pedigree dating back beyond the days of Noah—beyond the existence of mankind—far into the dim...

The Laughing Hippopotamus

L. Frank Baum

12 min

Russia

Night. Varka, the little nurse, a girl of thirteen, is rocking the cradle in which the baby is lying, and humming hardly audibly: “Hush-a-bye, my baby wee, While I sing a song for thee.” A little...

Sleepy

Anton Chekhov

9 min

Mexico

Tusnesdor arrives at the hotel at night after a ten-hour transatlantic flight. It’s hot in his room, even though the air conditioner is turned up as high as it will go, and Tusnesdor regrets not having...

The Forbidden Doors

Fabio Morábito

13 min

USA

The Reverend Curtis Hartman was pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Winesburg, and had been in that position ten years. He was forty years old, and by his nature very silent and reticent. To preach, standing...

The Strength of God

Sherwood Anderson

12 min

India

The postmaster first took up his duties in the village of Ulapur. Though the village was a small one, there was an indigo factory near by, and the proprietor, an Englishman, had managed to get a post office...

The Postmaster

Rabindranath Tagore

8 min

Czech Republic

I stand on the end platform of the tram and am completely unsure of my footing in this world, in this town, in my family. Not even casually could I indicate any claims that I might...

On the Tram

Franz Kafka

1 min

Italy

Shaken by his wife with an angry tug on the arm, jolted out of his sleep again that night, was poor Mister Anselmo. “You’re laughing!” Dazed, and with his nose still stuffy from sleep, and wheezing...

You’re Laughing

Luigi Pirandello

9 min

Bolivia

Natalia was late arriving at the bar, but she brought us a story, which we all accepted as a kind of safe conduct. This time my sister didn’t apologize for the hour; she knew she’d been...

The Red Ribbon

Magela Baudoin

12 min

USA

‘Let–go–that–Oh-h-h! Please, now, will you? Don’t start drinking again! Come on–give me the bottle. I told you I’d stay awake givin’ it to you. Come on. If you do like that a-way–then what are you going to be...

An Alcoholic Case

F. Scott Fitzgerald

9 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

“Brer Rabbit en Brer Fox wuz like some chilluns w’at I knows un,” said Uncle Remus, regarding the little boy, who had come to hear another story, with an affectation of great solemnity. “Bofe unum wuz...

Old Mr. Rabbit, He’s a Good Fisherman

Joel Chandler Harris

3 min

The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids

USA

The Paradise of Bachelors It lies not far from Temple-Bar. Going to it, by the usual way, is like stealing from a heated plain into some cool, deep glen, shady among harboring hills. Sick with...

The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids

Herman Melville

32 min

Russia

A Fantastic Story Chapter I I am a ridiculous person. Now they call me a madman. That would be a promotion if it were not that I remain as ridiculous in their eyes as before....

The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

34 min

USA

Impia tortorum longos hic turba furores Sanguinis innocui, non satiata, aluit. Sospite nunc patria, fracto nunc funeris antro, Mors ubi dira fuit vita salusque patent. [Quatrain composed for the gates of a market to be...

The Pit and the Pendulum

Edgar Allan Poe

24 min

USA

I stand here ironing, and what you asked me moves tormented back and forth with the iron. “I wish you would manage the time to come in and talk with me about your daughter. I’m sure...

I Stand Here Ironing

Tillie Olsen

9 min

Ireland

For preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick. It is a melancholy object to those, who walk...

A Modest Proposal

Jonathan Swift

10 min

Argentina

The moment he heard the scream – he hadn’t heard the gunshot, or hadn’t interpreted it as such, because once you’ve got used to the endless cascade of noise from an internal patio you stop trying...

Doing Your Duty

Ariel Magnus

11 min

Argentina

We set out early. Dad has a new second-hand burgundy Peugeot 404. I climb into the back, up onto the parcel shelf next to the rear window, and stretch out. I’m comfortable there. I like to...

Early This Morning

Pedro Mairal

8 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

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

UK

Before she went to Nigeria Julie bought twelve pairs of sharp dressmaking scissors. Good equipment showed respect. And buying things made it easier not to panic. She was afraid the women would resent her swanning in,...

Red Enters the Eye

Jane Rogers

15 min

Peru

“You really ought to see it before you go,” said Wordsworth. “It’s not something to be missed. That is, of course, if you dare …” Wordsworth tended to get a little peevish in the early hours...

The Pit

Santiago Roncagliolo

4 min

Taiwan

He turned his computer off and on again six times, took his first shower of the week, and went downstairs for some cold noodles and a packet of cigarettes. Only then did he dare believe what...

The Girl of his Dreams

Sabrina Huang

13 min

Argentina

I was in a bus, sitting by the window, looking out at the street. Suddenly a dog started barking very loudly nearby. I tried to see where it was. So did some other passengers. The bus...

The Dog

César Aira

13 min

UK

At last the revenants became so troublesome the peasants abandoned the village and it fell solely into the possession of subtle and vindictive inhabitants who manifest their presences by shadows that fall almost imperceptibly awry, too...

The Lady of the House of Love

Angela Carter

27 min

Argentina

The Christmas that Father Christmas came to spend the night at my house was the last time we were all together. After that night Mummy and Daddy stopped fighting, but I don’t think Father Christmas had...

Father Christmas Spends the Night

Samanta Schweblin

7 min

UK

It was the middle of November when we arrived at Martingdale, and found the place anything but romantic or pleasant. The walks were wet and sodden, the trees were leafless, there were no flowers save a...

A Strange Christmas Game

Charlotte Riddell

7 min

Romania

For the first few hours they drove silently. His father simply sat there without saying a word, just sniffling from time to time. It seemed to him that he was doing it ostentatiously. He could see...

The Cold

Augustin Cupsa

8 min

Japan

It was a chilly evening. A servant of a samurai stood under the Rashōmon, waiting for a break in the rain. No one else was under the wide gate. On the thick column, its crimson lacquer...

Rashōmon

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

8 min

Lebanon|USA

Part One Miserable is the man who loves a woman and takes her for a wife, pouring at her feet the sweat of his skin and the blood of his body and the life of...

Madame Rose Hanie

Gibran Khalil Gibran

13 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

Puerto Rico

Sharon took advantage of the fact that we were washing the dishes to tell me she had been thinking about the day when Willie, my lover, would no longer be with us. “I can’t stop thinking...

The Garden

Luis Negrón

11 min

USA

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until...

The Gift of the Magi

O. Henry

8 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