Our Collection – Page 8 – The Short Story Project

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

Mexico

I met Olegario and his son William in the town cantina. I’d been on the run for weeks, travelling drunkenly from one place to another. I slept in the car and ate when I was hungry....

Sons

José Miguel Tomasena

9 min

New Zealand

The week after was one off the busiest weeks of their lives. Even when they went to bed it was only their bodies that lay down and rested; their minds went on, thinking things out, talking...

The Daughters of the Late Colonel

Katherine Mansfield

28 min

Russia

It was said that a new person had appeared on the sea-front: a lady with a little dog. Dmitri Dmitritch Gurov, who had by then been a fortnight at Yalta, and so was fairly at home...

The Lady with the Dog

Anton Chekhov

26 min

Israel

It is possible that you have lots of friends, or maybe you have only a friend or two. Your friends could be children, or they could be adults, or maybe your friends are dogs or cats...

The Granddad and the Dandelion

Yannets Levi

2 min

Ireland

She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the odour of dusty cretonne. She was tired. Few people passed. The...

Eveline

James Joyce

7 min

Israel

One day, when I was nine or ten years old, my uncle sent me alone from my father’s clothing shop to the post office in downtown Haifa. I’m not sure whether it was my idea or...

Memories from Haifa

Mati Shemoelof

4 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

Isis – The Story of The Goddess of Magic and Sorcery in Egyptian Mythology

Israel

The Goddess Isis was almost as strong as her grandfather the Sun God, the most powerful of all the gods in the universe. His name was Ra, but he had a few other names as well....

Isis – The Story of The Goddess of Magic and Sorcery in Egyptian Mythology

Shoham Smith

10 min

Israel

We Weren’t actually at starvation’s door, although even that depends on how you look at it – the house was in ruins, windows missing, the living-room armchair shot to pieces, a crack in the wall, the...

A Thousand Shekels A Story

Orly Castel-Bloom

5 min

UK

“In the year 17__, having for some time determined on a journey through countries not hitherto much frequented by travellers, I set out, accompanied by a friend, whom I shall designate by the name of Augustus...

Fragment of a Novel

Lord Byron

7 min

Israel

1. AZIZ Our small room in Motel 6 smells like depressing sex that someone tried to scrub off with lots bleach. Gershon and I sit on the bed and start scribbling calculations on a napkin....

Three Men in America

Julia Fermentto

30 min

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

Israel

David Lugasi, I think, never knew how much he really loved the Western Wall until he saw it completely dismantled, stone by stone by stone, and piled onto the three trucks of his hauling and renovations...

The Man Who Moved the Western Wall

Uzi Weil

15 min