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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
There Are No Bodies Such as This
USA
Berne, Switzerland 1765   A season of ice descends upon the winter chalet, cracking mortar and spreading bright veins across the window glass. Water freezes in the kitchen’s basins. The cat is found stiff and white...
There Are No Bodies Such as This
Adam McOmber
16 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
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
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
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 River Warta
USA
Now that Caroline lived alone for the first time in her life, she began to be irritated by the cleanliness of her house. When she left something somewhere, it stayed there. If she didn’t enter a...
The River Warta
Amy Gustine
20 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
Heidi is Dead
USA
The car that ran over Heidi didn’t even put on its brakes, let alone pull to the curb. Instead it signaled right onto Lexington Street. Heidi was a puppy, and a worried bloody smear on the...
Heidi is Dead
Sherrie Flick
8 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
The Magic Shop
USA
I had seen the Magic Shop from afar several times; I had passed it once or twice, a shop window of alluring little objects, magic balls, magic hens, wonderful cones, ventriloquist dolls, the material of the...
The Magic Shop
H. G. Wells
15 min
The Sensible Thing
USA
At the Great American Lunch Hour young George O’Kelly straightened his desk deliberately and with an assumed air of interest. No one in the office must know that he was in a hurry, for success is...
The Sensible Thing
F. Scott Fitzgerald
21 min
Rope
USA
On the third day after they moved to the country he came walking back from the village carrying a basket of groceries and a twenty-four-yard coil of rope. She came out to meet him, wiping her...
Rope
Katherine Anne Porter
11 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
Embrace
USA
They’re married, but not to each other.  Nat unlocks the door and then steps back, to let Ella go in first. The  hotel room is high-ceilinged and square, and a double bed takes up most of...
Embrace
Roxana Robinson
26 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 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
Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment
USA
That very singular man old Dr. Heidegger once invited four venerable friends to meet him in his study. There were three white-bearded gentlemen—Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew and Mr. Gascoigne—and a withered gentlewoman whose name was the...
Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment
Nathaniel Hawthorne
14 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
Antropolis
USA
My hatred for Agnes led directly to our family’s appearance on Oprah. You’d say, oh, you didn’t hate her; she was just your older sister. But she was not my older sister. She looked older, but...
Antropolis
Sharma Shields
15 min
The Gentle Lena
USA
Lena was patient, gentle, sweet and german. She had been a servant for four years and had liked it very well. Lena had been brought from Germany to Bridgepoint by a cousin and had been in...
The Gentle Lena
Gertrude Stein
54 min
Raggedy Ann Learns a Lesson
USA
One day the dolls were left all to themselves.   Their little mistress had placed them all around the room and told them to be nice children while she was away. And there they sat and...
Raggedy Ann Learns a Lesson
Johnny Gruelle
5 min
Raggedy Ann and the Kite
USA
Raggedy Ann watched with interest the preparations.   A number of sticks were being fastened together with strings and covered with light cloth. Raggedy Ann heard some of the boys talk of “The Kite,” so Raggedy...
Raggedy Ann and the Kite
Johnny Gruelle
5 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
Raggedy Ann And The Kittens
USA
Raggedy Ann had been away all day. Marcella had come early in the morning and dressed all the dolls and placed them about the nursery. Some of the dolls had been put in the little red...
Raggedy Ann And The Kittens
Johnny Gruelle
5 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 Capture of Father Time
USA
Jim was the son of a cowboy, and lived on the broad plains of Arizona. His father had trained him to lasso a bronco or a young bull with perfect accuracy, and had Jim possessed the...
The Capture of Father Time
L. Frank Baum
11 min
A Story About the Little Rabbits
USA
“FINE um whar you will en w’en you may,” remarked Uncle Remus with emphasis, “good chilluns allers gits tuck keer on. Dar wuz Brer Rabbit’s chilluns; dey minded der daddy en mammy fum day’s een’ ter day’s...
A Story About the Little Rabbits
Joel Chandler Harris
3 min
Mr. Rabbit and Mr. Bear
USA
“ wuz one season” said Uncle Remus, pulling thoughtfully at his whiskers, “w’en Brer Fox say to hisse’f dat he speck he better whirl in en plant a goober-patch, en in dem days, mon, hit wuz tech...
Mr. Rabbit and Mr. Bear
Joel Chandler Harris
3 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
Molly and the Red Hat
USA
Molly loved her red hat. It was full and round and bright. It was glorious and unadorned. That hat knew more than it was saying. It could have been a ladybug, it could have been a...
Molly and the Red Hat
Benjamin Rosenbaum
13 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
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
End Times
USA
Elli wouldn’t let me stop until we’d crossed the line into Utah. She was a nail in the passenger seat—rigid, sharp, her blue eyes darting back and forth between the speedometer and the double yellow lines....
End Times
Maxim Loskutoff
12 min
A Wild Swan
USA
Here in the city lives a prince whose left arm is like any other man’s and whose right arm is a swan’s wing. He and his eleven brothers were turned into swans by their vituperative stepmother,...
A Wild Swan
Michael Cunningham
5 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
The Story of an Hour
USA
Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death. It was her sister Josephine who told her,...
The Story of an Hour
Kate Chopin
4 min
Eve’s Diary
USA
Translated from the Original   SATURDAY. – I am almost a whole day old, now. I arrived yesterday. That is as it seems to me. And it must be so, for if there was a day-before-yesterday...
Eve’s Diary
Mark Twain
12 min
The Fall of the House of Usher
USA
“Son coeur est un luth suspendu; Sitôt qu’on le touche il rèsonne.” – De Béranger.   During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung...
The Fall of the House of Usher
Edgar Allan Poe
28 min
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