Our Collection – Page 12 – The Short Story Project

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

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

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

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

France

In Rue Las Cases it was as quiet as during the height of summer, and every open window was screened by a yellow blind. The fine weather had returned: it was the first Sunday of spring,...

Sunday

Irène Némirovsky

24 min

Argentina

A court in Edmonton, in the Province of Alberta, Canada, has found the Southern Tobacco Company guilty of the charges presented against it by Joshua Lynn and has ordered the company to pay compensation of two...

The Tobacco Man

Diego Vecchio

9 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

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

Spain

I must be discreet. I don’t want to get her into trouble. I’ll call her… I have a photograph of her in my desk along with a few photographs of other people as well as a...

The Woman Who Wouldn’t

Jorge Ibargüengoitia

9 min

Australia

I say, ‘Hi, dad, how are you doing?’ His eyes snap in my direction, there is a sudden jerk of his body as he recoils from my voice, then he slumps back in his chair. There’s...

Genetic Material

Christos Tsiolkas

9 min

Poland

The best ideas always came to her at night, as if she were a completely different person at night than in the day. That’s trite, he would have said. He would have changed the subject, begun...

An Evening with the Author

Olga Tokarczuk

20 min

Israel

Lacking any alternative image, we turn to the moment of creation. The form bursting from the awkwardness of matter. No, not the awkwardness, the indifference towards being. This time, I am ready; this time, I’ve prepared....

Ishmael

Shimon Adaf

7 min

Malta

This time she’s building a city. The first city after eleven islands in a row, now gathered together in the soft red folder which, when her father goes out for a coffee in the evenings and she finds herself...

At Livia’s Bar

Pierre J. Mejlak

5 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

UK

The alien parked its car across the street and came and sat down in the waiting room. He must have seen this happen, peripherally. But he was busy settling the bill with a middle-aged woman with...

The Universe of Things

Gwyneth Jones

17 min

Israel

“Did he talk to you?” “Not a word till Bilu Junction.” “And then?” “And then he slowed down and showed me the ugly shopping center they’re building there.” “Well, it all came as a surprise to...

Thorns

Sharon Horodi

13 min

Greece

It was one of those nights when our Athens was stewing in its own juice, a mixture of exhaust fumes, burnt plastic, teargas, despair. We struggled to seal off all the cracks; the air slipped through...

Dead Dog at Midnight

Kostas Katsoularis

33 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