Our Collection – Page 8 – The Short Story Project

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

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

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

Israel

Our school was named after Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, the first woman awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union. Therefore, we had endless lectures about her life: how Zoya did in school, what she read, what essays...

Zoya

Alice Bialsky

33 min

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

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

Israel

On the night before her last spell in the hospital, Dawn was haunted again by that old dream about the stone men. As always, she woke the moment she couldn’t stand being terrorized any longer. She...

Heart of Stone

Nir Yehudai

26 min

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

Germany

This story is from the collection called “The Sheik of Alexandria and his Slaves,” and is supposed to be told by a slave to the Sheik. Sir, those people are much mistaken who fancy that...

Nose Dwarf

Wilhelm Hauff

44 min

Slovakia

My mother said to me: ‘You must go to school, or they will lock up your father.’ There were five of us children at home, four girls and one boy. The eldest was my sister, then...

How I Went to School

Tera Fabiánová

18 min

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

Iraq

When I pulled Teresa’s postcard from the mailbox it was three in the afternoon. I didn’t read it at first, just glanced at it quickly as I stepped into the house, the card still clutched in...

Wars in Distant Lands

Najem Wali

22 min

UK

Katherine Farquhar was a handsome woman of forty, no longer slim, but attractive in her soft, full, feminine way. The French porters ran round her, getting a voluptuous pleasure from merely carrying her bags. And she...

The Border-Line

D.H. Lawrence

36 min

Canada

It was over the Sunday paper that I first learned that a forty-one-year-old man named Hamish Mactavish of Inverness, Scotland, was eating a bus. The Sunday paper was a family thing at the Donaldson house. Mom and Dad...

Hamish Mactavish is Eating a Bus

Gordon Korman

16 min

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

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

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

Denmark

There once was a woman who wanted so very much to have a tiny little child, but she did not know where to find one. So she went to an old witch, and she said: “I...

Thumbelina

Hans Christian Andersen

16 min

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

Spain

That night we were having guests for dinner, and Ines had been in a frenzy all week. She hunted down innovative recipes on the internet and buried my desk in sheets of paper as she printed...

An Enchanting Evening

Margarita Leoz

11 min

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

Russia

He looks like me and is the same height, but he appears to be a half-head taller – the cad. —From an old comedy As it happened, Alexander Golts came out of the vaudeville show...

Incident on Cur Street

Alexander Grin

7 min

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

New Zealand

And after all the weather was ideal. They could not have had a more perfect day for a garden-party if they had ordered it. Windless, warm, the sky without a cloud. Only the blue was veiled...

The Garden Party

Katherine Mansfield

21 min

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

Ireland

According to the Style and Manner of the Hon. Robert Boyle’s Meditations. This single stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that neglected corner, I once knew in a flourishing state in a forest....

A Meditation Upon a Broomstick

Jonathan Swift

1 min

Italy

There was always, in the square, a curious and ancient rentable stagecoach that no one ever rented. The dozing coachman would shake himself awake at the striking of the hours from the bell tower, then his...

The Secret Game

Elsa Morante

20 min

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

UK

The King’s son was going to be married, so there were general rejoicings. He had waited a whole year for his bride, and at last she had arrived. She was a Russian Princess, and had driven...

The Remarkable Rocket

Oscar Wilde

17 min

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

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

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

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

Israel

Søren Kierkegaard was a young university student who lived in the city of Copenhagen, Denmark in the nineteenth century. He enjoyed his university studies, but he felt that they were missing something. His professors taught the...

Søren Kierkegaard Confounds the City

Tom Baikin-O'hayon

5 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

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

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

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

Mexico

Sunshine crept into the room, forming a white frame around the short dark curtain that barely covered the window. The glow around the darkened window reminded him of Malevich’s black square. He sighed. Vera would have...

The Square

Elisa R.V. García

1 min

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

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

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

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

Kunfoosa the Terrible Or: How to tell the difference between harmless pets and very harmful jinn

Israel

Many years ago, before the days of highways-speed internet and underground tunnels, before natural gas drilling sites ever existed, human beings lived here side-by-side with jinn. Today it may sound strange, but back then it was...

Kunfoosa the Terrible Or: How to tell the difference between harmless pets and very harmful jinn

Tamar Hochstadter

5 min

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

Russia

Yasha Hein woke up while it was still dark – long before the alarm clock rang – because of a strange quietness that was filling him up from within. During the evening of the previous day...

Yasha’s Eternity

Anna Starobinets

17 min

Israel

When Homai took the throne as the queen, She was kind and victorious – supreme! But when she had a son, the true heir to the crown, He was sent on the river, unseen. But...

Darab on the River

Thamar E. Gindin

8 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

Germany

Sergeant Guy Bohn was a lawyer in civilian life. In the winter of 1939 he had been transferred from active front line service as a soldier of France near the Luxembourg border because of a serious...

I Only Blast Under Written Orders

Alexander Kluge

5 min

Venezuela

You walk, you walk and you forget: that’s what she always says. Well, not in those exact words. It’s usually a more specific complaint: you didn’t call Pacheco, you didn’t check the Supercable contract, you didn’t...

Benjamin and the Walker

Krina Ber

11 min

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

Russia

I When the waste and dreariness of her life become too much for Zivia, the younger and more embittered of the two unmarried Pozis sisters, she stops eating and washing. Wearing only her shift and...

Impoverished

David Bergelson

11 min

Argentina

The autumn felt more like summer than the summer had. I was wearing my blue silk dress, and I had the little Pekinese they’d given me for my birthday when I arrived at my boyfriend’s house....

The Voice

Silvina Ocampo

2 min

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