Our Collection | The Short Story Project

Iraq

I don’t think we did go blind, I think we are blind, blind but seeing, blind people who can see, but do not see. José Saramago Saeed, drunk, opened the door. The rabbit hopped inside....

Rabbits of Baghdad

Raghad al-Suheil

11 min

Russia

Most of all I hate the sun, loud human voices, and pounding. Rapid, rapid pounding. I am so afraid of people that if I hear someone else’s footsteps and the sound of voices in the corridor...

The Red Crown

Mikhail Bulgakov

8 min

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

Israel

I can’t recall when I first started scribbling those little notes I later stashed in various hiding places around the apartment. It sure as hell could not have been a lot earlier, because at the time...

Sunflowers

Michal Yaara Carmi

3 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Poland

My grandmother lived in Podlasie. The house wasn’t in the village itself. The neighborhood was known as “the colony”—scattered farms separated by stands of aspen and avenues of age-old, slender poplars. The cottage stood amid an...

Grandmother and the Ghosts

Andrzej Stasiuk

6 min

Venezuela

How could Edgardo have hunted an animal if he didn’t even know how to love, much less kill. He’d become a useless idler, sitting all day in front of the television set or on the computer...

Silver Pistols

Liliana Lara

10 min

Israel

Night has descended on the military headquarters. Darkness veiling the barracks like a dewy tarpaulin. A man’s shadow stretches from the top floor of the Ministry of Defense’s office like a large bird, then vanishes, leaving...

Meningitis

Yitzhak Laor

24 min

Palestine

(From Letters to the Editor) We chose this letter amongst hundreds of letters that the newspaper receives. The reader preferred to sign his letter with R.A.; he asked for it to be published in the...

R.A. Looks for his Eyes

Sheikha Hussein Helawy

3 min

UK

Prison more like, said Madeleine. Come now, said Mr Kramer. If I run away they bring me back, said Madeleine. Yes but, said Mr Kramer. Mr Kramer often said, Yes but to Madeleine. Something...

Asylum

David Constantine

12 min

Spain

Miriam tells them that he built the house himself with his own hands. She tells them how he piled up the rocks on rainy days, so that they’d get good and soaked before he soldered them...

Second Residence

Margarita Leoz

10 min

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

Israel

My father died at six in the evening. After the doctor told us the news, we went home. Ariane drove, and I sat next to her. Neither of us spoke. The taste of the coffee from...

Coffee

Gadi Taub

7 min

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

Israel

That summer, I’d go there sometimes, and this week, I went again. It was a hot day at the end of summer. A hot wind blew from time to time, stopped suddenly and returned suddenly, full...

Apples in Honey

Yehudit Hendel

11 min

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

Argentina

She called you two weeks ago. Just like that. Out of the blue. Today is Mother’s Day, and you’re going to see her again. You wanted to make as good a start to the day as...

You’re Only Bleeding

Matías Capelli

16 min

Slovenia

Cracks Many stories have happened. This is one of them. You have a wife, you have kids, you have a job, you have a car, you have a house in the suburbs. It appears you’ll...

Cracks | Mainland

Andrej Blatnik

3 min