0 min 70 min
The Cat
Sweden
A cat was lying in the ditch by the exit road to Skogså, one of those long, strange autumn days when I’d just entered seventh grade but mostly tried to learn about magic, if any occult...
The Cat
Andrea Lundgren
24 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
The New Paris
Germany
Lately, on the night before Whit Sunday, I dreamed that I was standing before a mirror, occupying myself with my new summer suit, which my parents had had made against the approaching festival. The dress consisted,...
The New Paris
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
21 min
Napoleon and the Spectre
UK
Well, as I was saying, the Emperor got into bed. “Chevalier,” says he to his valet, “let down those window-curtains, and shut the casement before you leave the room.” Chevalier did as he was told, and...
Napoleon and the Spectre
Charlotte Brontë
4 min
The Unaccompanied Minor’s Tale
Nigeria
As told to Inua Ellams   Senebesh is holding Dani’s hand under the rusting jeep in a car park in Khartoum. She is trying to stifle the laughter which is as ripe as fruit in her...
The Unaccompanied Minor’s Tale
Inua Ellams
9 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
Over the Hills and Far Away
UK
Margaret Mahuntleth, in the corner of the big settle, basked in the hearth-glow like one newly come to heaven. Warm light reddened her knitted shawl, her white apron, and her face, worn and frail. It was...
Over the Hills and Far Away
Mary Webb
5 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
The Wizard
Japan
Well now, esteemed readers, I am now in Ōsaka and shall therefore relate a local story. Long ago there was a man who came to the city to seek a position as a menial. Ranking as...
The Wizard
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
5 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
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 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 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
Sun Shields
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
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
Zoya
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
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 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
The Golden Apple Tree
Canada
THIS story happened a long time ago in the country where anything may happen. The people who belong to that country stay there, and nothing can induce them to journey beyond its borders. Also, very few travelers...
The Golden Apple Tree
Virna Sheard
26 min
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