Short Stories Fall 2021

She didn't look around, not this queen, she just walked straight on slowly, on these long white prima-donna legs.

Lengel comes in from haggling with a truck full of cabbages on the lot and is about to scuttle into that door marked MANAGER behind which he hides all day when the girls touch his eye.

Lengel comes in from haggling with a truck full of cabbages on the lot and is about to scuttle into that door marked MANAGER behind which he hides all day when the girls touch his eye.

What the others want is juvenile delinquency.

One advantage to this scene taking place in summer, I can follow this up with a clean exit, there's no fumbling around getting your coat and galoshes, I just saunter into the electric eye in my white shirt that my mother ironed the night before, and the door heaves itself open, and outside the sunshine is skating around on the asphalt.

A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity – but that would be asking too much of fate!

Personally I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.

It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others.

There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside-down.

There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside-down.

I got positively angry with the impertinence of it and the everlastingness.

I verily believe she thinks it is the writing which made me sick!

But in the places where it isn’t faded, and where the sun is just so, I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to sulk about that silly and conspicuous front design.

I don’t feel as if it was worth while to turn my hand over for anything, and I’m getting dreadfully fretful and querulous.

I don’t feel as if it was worth while to turn my hand over for anything, and I’m getting dreadfully fretful and querulous.

Looked at in one way, each breadth stands alone, the bloated curves and flourishes – a kind of ‘debased Romanesque’ with delirium tremens – go waddling up and down in isolated columns of fatuity.

There is one end of the room where it is almost intact, and there, when the cross-lights fade and the low sun shines directly upon it, I can almost fancy radiation, after all – the interminable grotesques seem to form around a common centre and rush off in headlong plunges of equal distraction.

There is one end of the room where it is almost intact, and there, when the cross-lights fade and the low sun shines directly upon it, I can almost fancy radiation, after all – the interminable grotesques seem to form around a common centre and rush off in headlong plunges of equal distraction.

I tried to have a real earnest reasonable talk with him the other day, and tell him how I wished he would let me go and make a visit to Cousin Henry and Julia.

Why, I wouldn’t have a child of mine, an impressionable little thing, live in such a room for worlds.

John was asleep and I hated to waken him, so I kept still and watched the moonlight on that undulating wall paper till I felt creepy.

‘Better in body, perhaps—’ I began, and stopped short, for he sat up straight and looked at me with such a stern, reproachful look that I could not say another word.

‘My darling,’ said he, ‘I beg of you, for my sake and for our child’s sake, as well as for your own, that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind! There is nothing so dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like yours. It is a false and foolish fancy. Can you not trust me as a physician when I tell you so?’

The outside pattern is a florid arabesque, reminding one of a fungus.

The outside pattern is a florid arabesque, reminding one of a fungus.

I cannot keep count of them, though I have tried conscientiously.

I find it hovering in the dining-room, skulking in the parlour, hiding in the hall, lying in wait for me on the stairs.

All those strangled heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus growths just shriek with derision!

The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green.

School was recently over for the summer, and the feeling of liberty sat uneasily on most of them; they tended to gather together quietly for a while before they broke into boisterous play, and their talk was still of the classroom and the teacher, of books and reprimands.

There was the proper swearing-in of Mr. Summers by the postmaster, as the official of the lottery; at one time, some people remembered, there had been a recital of some sort, performed by the official of the lottery, a perfunctory, tuneless chant that had been rattled off duly each year...

“Listening to the young folks, nothing’s good enough for them. Next thing you know, they’ll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live that way for a while. Used to be a saying about ‘Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.’ First thing you know, we’d all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. There’s always been a lottery,” he added petulantly.

She hesitated for a minute, looking around defiantly, and then set her lips and went up to the box.

The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.

I must not only punish, but punish with impunity.

A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser.

I continued as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his immolation.

He accosted me with excessive warmth, for he had been drinking much.

There were no attendants at home; they had absconded to make merry in honour of the time.

"I drink," he said, "to the buried that repose around us."