Paso del Norte by Juan Rulfo

 

PASO DEL NORTE
by Juan Rulfo

“I’m going away, father; so I came to tell you.”

“And where’re you going, if one may know?”

“I’m goin’ to El Norte.”

“Why there? Don’t you have your business here? Aren’t you into selling pigs?”

Miracle Stain Remover by Glen Donaldson

 

Miracle Stain Remover

by Glen Donaldson

Long-suffering Gwendolyn O’Malley felt mid-sentence, the tiredness that comes with uttering pointless words.

 

Them by Meg Pokrass

 

Them By Meg Pokrass

You would hate it if you knew how many times I apply lipstick now that you’re gone. I’m putting it on, like, every five minutes to get through the next fifteen, though I know they use fish scales to make it.

 

Retreat by Jack Coey

 

Retreat 

by Jack Coey

She ran away from home, and Pastor Bruce was dismayed after talking with her mother. Her mother said she’d been sullen for the last month or so, and even the school nurse called once.

 

Thief by Kristy Gherlone

 

Thief by Kristy Gherlone

I watch them together, though I’m supposed to be in my room. They’re sitting too close. Cigarette smoke trails in front of my eyes as I sit huddled in the corner.

 

The Garden Party by Kathleen Mansfield

 

The Garden Party 

by Kathleen Mansfield

  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 with a haze of light gold, as it is sometimes in early summer. The gardener had been up […]

Nobody Shall Sleep By T. Dem

Nobody Shall Sleep 

By T. Dem

I’m lying down on the bed. Naked. Carefree. One hand thrown carelessly behind my head propping me up. The other playing with my belly button or any small indent on my skin within a comfortable radius.

 

Dave Eggers / The Definition Of Reg

Short short stories

The Definition Of Reg by Dave Eggers

Saturday 12 June 2004

The man, named Reg, works in a small office. He is 27 years old. There are three people in Reg's office: Reg; an older woman named Bea; and a man named Stu, who is about 40. They all get along well, and talk often during and after work about a wide range of subjects. One Friday, when their boss has encouraged all of them to dress more casually if they so choose, Reg comes to work in a short-sleeved polo shirt and khaki pants. Stu, who is married and straight, comments on what Reg is wearing. "I didn't know you were so buff!" Stu says. Reg is standing about four feet from Stu, removing a new dry-erase board from its packaging, and Stu is looking him over. "I always thought you were kind of skinny," Stu says, "but you're well-built, man! Like a jock! Do you work out?" Reg shrugs and tells Stu that he doesn't work out, but sometimes plays lacrosse, a sport he played in college. Stu is still looking him over. "Well, you should wear stuff like that more often. That shirt's good on you. Chicks would dig that, I bet. You gotta show off those pipes," he says, now pointing to Reg's arms. Reg is hoping he is not blushing and Stu is not finished: "You've got nice shoulders, Reg. You swim?" Reg admits that he did a bit of swimming as a young man. "Looks like it," Stu says. "Man, you think you know a guy, then he comes to work like some kind of Adonis!" There is a long pause as Reg wonders if Stu is finished commenting on his body, and while Stu continues to examine Reg, deciding if there is any more commenting that needs to be done. Finally Stu's phone rings, and he turns to answer it and the moment is over. Reg returns to his desk and tries to work. How can he work? He feels touched, massaged. He feels as if he's been slathered with peanut butter and that Stu has licked it off. Reg is straight, and knows that Stu is straight, and that he doesn't mean anything sexual by his comments, but still Reg wonders, briefly, what it would be like to kiss Stu. He imagines the bristles of Stu's goatee against his own chin. He wonders if Stu's tongue, if men's tongues generally, are thicker than women's. He tries to work, but finds he cannot concentrate. Is he in love with Stu or in love with his own body, now that it has been immortalised by Stu's gorgeous words? He cannot sit still. He goes to the bathroom and flexes his arms. He pushes up his sleeves a bit to reveal more bicep. He masturbates into the toilet. He jogs in place. He returns to his desk and writes down Stu's exact words. He daydreams of spending more time with Stu, basking in his approval, in being appreciated this way. All Reg has ever wanted, he now realises, is this kind of thing, to be gazed at, to be admired. It electrifies every part of him; it's more pleasing to him than the affirmation of any work he's ever done or could do, and he wants more of it. He wants it always, and he finds himself wondering how far - into a different lifestyle, as a gay man, as a young man dating an older man, as a seducer, as a homewrecker - he would be willing to go to get it. He wonders how to tell Stu that if this is going to work, Stu will need to lose some weight, because right now he looks like a goddamned heifer.

THE GUARDIAN

Dave Edgers / The End Is Night

 

Short short stories

The End Is Night

by Dave Edgers
Saturday 4 June 2005

There once was a man who thought, one day, on a lark, while looking at a lark - he was looking out of the window and there it was, a well-built lark with a dirty mind and a filthy mouth - that maybe he should write some very short stories and publish them in a land very far from his own land, which was California, which has a ludicrous man as its governor. The man, then, began writing these short stories, one a week, and they were published in this far-off land, which is sometimes called London, and sometimes England, and also the UK and Britain and sometimes Europe or Over There. The man wrote these short stories each week, and sometimes, when he had finished writing one, he thought that he liked it. Other times, he read over what he'd written and didn't like it quite so much, but often it was too late, and these short stories went out to the people of the land described before, and, presumably, ruined their days. But, overall, the practice of writing these tales, which often involved bears and sometimes squid and once in a while people, was a pleasurable one. Yes, it was, until one day, when the writer suffered a bout of some kind of disease. It was not a normal disease, in that it had never struck anyone before, at least no one outside of Canada, where the diseases are all very deadly, thank God.

Dave Eggers / Woman waiting to take a photo

Photo by Juan Yanes

Short short stories

Woman waiting to take a photo

• 
  Dave Eggers
  THE GUARDIAN
  Saturday 22 May 2004

The woman is a young woman. She wants to make a living as a photographer, but at the moment she is temping at a company that publishes books about wetlands preservation. On her days off she takes pictures, and today she is sitting in her car, across the street from a small grocery store called The Go-Getters Market. The store is located in a very poor neighbourhood: the windows are barred and at night a roll-down steel door covers the storefront. The woman thus finds the name Go-Getters an interesting one, because it is clear that the customers of the market are anything but. They are drunkards and prostitutes and transients, and the young photographer thinks that if she can get the right picture of some of these people entering the store, she will make a picture that would be considered trenchant, or even poignant - either way the product of a sharp and observant eye. So she sits in her Toyota Camry, which her parents gave her because it was four years old and they wanted something new, and she waits for the right poor person to enter or leave the store. She has her window closed, but will open it when the right person appears, and then shoot that person under the sign that says Go-Getters. This, for the viewer of her photograph when it is displayed - first in a gallery, then in the hallway of a collector, and later in a museum when she has her retrospective - will prove that she, the photographer, has a good eye for the inequities and injustices of life, for hypocrisy and the exploitation of the underclass.

THE GUARDIAN

Chiara Barzini / Three Stories

Benjamin Naca. Noche venusiana, 2015, collage. Courtesy of the artist.

Three Stories

by Chiara Barzini

The Tenants

Things were happening. It was festive and official: everyone in the building was allowed to take the elevator. No more exceptions. To celebrate the new event, the tenants were invited to a dance performance and offered a free ride in an airplane that would drive across the city and maybe even take off. The couples were excited. They left babies at home and kissed. Some even had the courage to look into each other’s eyes. “If you want to go and kiss our neighbor, that’s fine. It’s such a joyous event. Don’t let me keep you.” Men pressed their lips against new women’s necks. Some pulled down their pants playfully. The women saw their partners falter in front of fresh desire. They stayed and watched their performances, feeling jealous, then free.

Stuart Dybek / For Woody

 

For Woody

A STORY

BY STUART DYBEK

The boy in row nineteen has a cold.

“Don’t lean on my armrest,” he cautions his sister. “You’ll get germs. They’ll stuff you up, it will hurt to fly, and like last vacation we’ll all have to listen to you whining, ‘I can’t unplug my ears.’ ”

The boy sits on the aisle and his sister, a little girl in braids, has the window, although—germs aside—she’s agreed to switch seats halfway through the flight, which means she gets to see the plane rise from Detroit, and he to see it land in Paris. She’ll probably grow into a beauty, but she needn’t contend with that yet, nor with the censorship that physical beauty can sometimes impose. Without a hint of self-consciousness, she sings an unrecognizable song, no doubt inspired by the view, as its only lyric seems to be floating, floating, floating . . .

It’s her brother who’s embarrassed.

“Do you always have to hum?” he inquires.

She ignores him. Perhaps she’s one of those people who always hears music. The song expands to: Floating, floating, floating on the clouds . . .

“I’ll always be older and taller than you,” he brags.

Stuart Dybek / Bruise

Bruise

A SHORT SHORT STORY

BY STUART DYBEK

SHE CAME OVER wearing a man’s white shirt, rolled up at the sleeves, and a faded blue denim jumper that made her eyes appear even bluer.

“Look,” she said, sitting down on the couch and slowly raising the jumper up her legs, revealing a bruise high on the outside of her thigh.

It was summer. Bearded painters in spattered coveralls were painting the outside of the house white. Through the open windows they could hear them scraping the old, flaking paint from the siding on one side of the house, and the slap of paint-soaked brushes from the other.

“These old boards really suck up the paint,” one of the painters would remark from time to time.

“I’ve always bruised so easily,” she said, lowering her voice as if the painters might hear.

The bruise looked blue behind the tan mesh of nylon. It was just off the hip and above it he could see the black, lacy band of her panties. It was a hot day, climbing toward 90, and as he studied the spot that she held her dress up for him to see, it occurred to him that even now, at this moment, there was a choice. Things between them might not be as irrevocable as they seemed. It occurred to him suddenly as he studied the bruise that it might still be possible to say something that wasn’t charged with secret meanings. The direction their lives were uncontrollably taking might be changed, not by some revelation, but in the course of an ordinary conversation, by the twist of a wisecrack, or a joke, or perhaps a simple question. He might ask why she was wearing panty hose on such a hot day. Was it that her legs weren’t tanned yet? He might rise from the couch and ask her if she would like a lemonade, and when she said yes, he would go to the kitchen and make it—real lemonade squeezed from the lemons in his refrigerator, their cold juice stirred with sugar and water, the granulated sugar whispering amid the ice, the ice cubes in a sweating glass pitcher clinking like a temple bell.

Stuart Dybek was born to Polish immigrants in Chicago, the setting for most of his work, which includes several poetry collections. Dybek is a progenitor of the short-short form, and his fiction includes Childhood and Other Neighborhoods; I Sailed with Magellan; a New York Times Notable Book; and the collections Ecstatic Cahoots and Paper Lantern, published simultaneously by FSG in 2014. He has won a PEN/Malamud, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and numerous O. Henry Prizes. In 2007 he received a MacArthur Fellowship Genius Award and the Rea Award for the Short Story. Dybek teaches at Northwestern and in the renowned Prague Summer Program.

NARRATIVE

 

Twitter fiction: 21 authors try their hand at 140-character novels

We challenged well-known writers – from Ian Rankin and Helen Fielding to Jeffrey Archer and Jilly Cooper – to come up with a story of up to 140 characters. This is their stab at Twitter fiction

Geoff Dyer

I know I said that if I lived to 100 I'd not regret what happened last night. But I woke up this morning and a century had passed. Sorry.

James Meek

He said he was leaving her. "But I love you," she said. "I know," he said. "Thanks. It's what gave me the strength to love somebody else."

Jackie Collins

She smiled, he smiled back, it was lust at first sight, but then she discovered he was married, too bad it couldn't go anywhere.

Ian Rankin

I opened the door to our flat and you were standing there, cleaver raised. Somehow you'd found out about the photos. My jaw hit the floor.

Blake Morrison

Blonde, GSOH, 28. Great! Ideal mate! Fix date. Tate. Nervous wait. She's late. Doh, just my fate. Wrong candidate. Blond – and I'm straight.

David Lodge

"Your money or your life!" "I'm sorry, my dear, but you know it would kill me to lose my money," said the partially deaf miser to his wife.

AM Homes

Sometimes we wonder why sorrow so heavy when happiness is like helium.

Sophie Hannah

I had land, money. For each rejected novel I built one house. Ben had to drown because he bought Plot 15. My 15th book? The victim drowned.

Andrew O'Hagan

Clyde stole a lychee and ate it in the shower. Then his brother took a bottle of pills believing character is just a luxury. God. The twins.

AL Kennedy

It's good that you're busy. Not great. Good, though. But the silence, that's hard. I don't know what it means: whether you're OK, if I'm OK.

Jeffrey Archer

"It's a miracle he survived," said the doctor. "It was God's will," said Mrs Schicklgruber. "What will you call him?" "Adolf," she replied.

Anne Enright

The internet ate my novel, but this is much more fun #careerchange #nolookingback oh but #worldsosilentnow Hey!

Patrick Neate

ur profile pic: happy – smiling & smoking. ur last post: "home!" ur hrt gave out @35. ur profile undeleted 6 months on. ur epitaph: "home!"

Hari Kunzru

I'm here w/ disk. Where ru? Mall too crowded to see. I don't feel safe. What do you mean you didn't send any text? Those aren't your guys?

SJ Watson

She thanks me for the drink, but says we're not suited. I'm a little "intense". So what? I followed her home. She hasn't seen anything yet.

Helen Fielding

OK. Should not have logged on to your email but suggest if going on marriedaffair.com don't use our children's names as password.

Simon Armitage

Blaise Pascal didn't tweet and neither did Mark Twain. When it came to writing something short & sweet neither Blaise nor Mark had the time.

Charlie Higson

Jack was sad in the orphanage til he befriended a talking rat who showed him a hoard of gold under the floor. Then the rat bit him & he died.

India Knight

Soften, my arse. I'm a geezer. I'm a rock-hard little bastard. Until I go mushy overnight for you, babe. #pears

Jilly Cooper

Tom sent his wife's valentine to his mistress and vice versa. Poor Tom's a-cold and double dumped.

Rachel Johnson

Rose went to Eve's house but she wasn't there. But Eve's father was. Alone. One thing led to another. He got 10 years.

THE GUARDIAN

Nicole Flattery / End Days

End Days

by Nicole Flattery

Angela and her suitors conducted all their encounters underground …

Top 1o contemporary short stories
Nicole Flattery / Bottle Man
Nicole Flattery / Track
Nicole Flattery / Sweet Talk
Nicole Flattery / End Days

Nicole Flattery / Sweet Talk

Sweet Talk

by Nicole Flattery

In the mornings, before my preening routine, I examined my mouth for evidence of badness.

Top 1o contemporary short stories

Nicole Flattery / Bottle Man

Nicole Flattery / Track

Nicole Flattery / Sweet Talk

Nicole Flattery / End Days

Alex Epstein / Seven micro stories

Translation Tuesday: seven micro stories by Alex Epstein

An intelligent mouse, a broken umbrella and Franz Kafka feature in tiny stories of love and hope translated from Hebrew

By Alex Epstein and Yardenne Greenspan for Translation Tuesdays by Asymptote, part of the Guardian Books Network

Hope

In the religion column the robot wrote: human.

Immigrants

It was an old spaceship with no windows (they couldn’t afford a new one). Before takeoff, they painted stars on the ceiling of their child’s bedroom.

Libby Flores / Legs

Legs 

by Libby Flores

A couple sit on the floor in a short but intensely charged flash fiction instalment

By Libby Flores for Flash Fridays by Tin House, part of the Guardian Books Network

Friday 29 January 2016

T

hey sat on the linoleum floor, the two of them. His watch was the only thing moving. Through the small window above the sink the rising sun was bleaching the room white. The sound of a garbage truck, a man calling his dog, newspapers hitting doorsteps. Her long, bare legs were out in front of her, knees like turned down saucers. He loved her legs. Something he’d miss. Their backs on the kitchen cabinets, his arm so close to hers. They were tired, but more thirsty. A glass of water would change things, she thought, if he would just get up and get a glass of water.

Libby Flores is a 2008 PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellow. Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Post Road Magazine,The Rattling Wall, CODA Quarterly, and FLASH: The International Short-Short Story Magazine. She is the program manager at PEN Center USA’s Emerging Voices Fellowship.