The Flag Room at the Helsinki Games
A short story about a widowed seamstress at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics who has two days and one length of blue wool to sew a flag she has…
8 min read
Tag
#Short Story
Before You Delete the Assistant
A short story about a Seoul drainage engineer who erases the personal assistant that ran his life for twenty years, told backward to the…
7 min read
What the Court Interpreter Left Out
A short story about a veteran Twi-English court interpreter in Kumasi who realises one gentle phrase has tilted a land-fraud trial, and…
8 min read
The Tamada Has Lost His Voice
A short story about a famous Georgian toastmaster who loses his voice on the day of his niece's wedding feast and must run eighty guests,…
9 min read
Inventory of a Motorbike Shop in District Four
A short story about a fifteen-year-old in Saigon who must list every item in his father's motorbike repair shop before it is sold, and who…
8 min read
The Fog Nets on the Hill Above Lima
A short story about a Lima seamstress who has tended her hillside's fog-catching nets for thirty years, told backwards from the vote that…
7 min read
Why the Salt Camel Walks Alone
A short story about a Gobi herder who tells his restless granddaughter an old fable on a windy winter night: a caravan girl, a stubborn…
8 min read
Last Hour on the Overnight Billing Floor
A short story about a Manila call-centre supervisor who, in the last hour of a typhoon-warning night shift, must decide what to do about…
7 min read
The Price of One Passage to Santos
A short story told in letters: a Japanese coffee picker in 1930s Brazil saves for three years to bring his sister over, then learns what…
8 min read
What the Caddie Saw on the Fourteenth
A short story about a Durban caddie who keeps quiet about a wealthy member's rule breach in 1995, and the choice he faces decades later as…
7 min read
Seventy Minutes of Silence in Hall Four
A short story about an exam invigilator in Daejeon who, during the silent listening section of Korea's college entrance exam, must decide…
8 min read
The Brick Wall Has Been Keeping Notes
A sign painter hired to restore a faded ghost sign finds something small and handwritten in the corner of the wall her late father once…
6 min read
The Second-Largest Chair, On Purpose
Margo inherits eleven acres, a gift shop the size of a horse trailer, and the second-largest rocking chair in America. The county wants her…
7 min read
The Spiral That Returns to Pool Seven
Every low tide, someone leaves a perfect curve of empty shells in a coastal survey pool. The field tech who counts sea stars for a living…
8 min read
The Cold Water Club Meets at Six
Every dawn, a dented tartan thermos of ginger tea waits on the sea rail at Ferryhead, and nobody knows who leaves it. One sleepless swimmer…
6 min read
The Word That Cannot Be Said Alone
Two old men are the last speakers of Kessin. They live four hundred metres apart and haven't spoken in forty-three years. A linguist with a…
7 min read
The Bean That Came Back Unnamed
Every January, an anonymous envelope of purple beans arrives at the county seed library, marked only with a small ink crescent. When the…
8 min read
Someone Keeps Cutting My Perfect Ice
For nineteen years Walt has laid down a flawless sheet of ice every midnight. Now somebody is writing loops and spirals across it before…
7 min read
Everything Left Between the Pages
A rural mobile library driver keeps finding odd things tucked into returned books — a feather, a cowslip, a pencil line in a margin. Then…
7 min read
My Mother's Tenth Frame Was a Choice
A daughter comes home to empty her mother's house and finds an old scoresheet folded into eighths. The famous 299 on the wall of Windrow…
7 min read
Both Parties Must Press the Button
In a transit station slated for renovation, a technician maintains kiosks that release an apology only if the other person offers one back.…
6 min read
The Last Piece Is Always the Sky
Frankie's mother entered the Bramblewick Open thirty-one times and never won. When Frankie takes her place at the jigsaw championship, the…
7 min read
Six Hundred Miles with Our Father's Parrot
Two estranged sisters are told to deliver their late father's grey parrot to an address neither of them recognizes. Somewhere past Mercer,…
7 min read
Nine Across, Two Words, Forgive Me
For thirty-one years, Maud Kerrigan hid private messages inside the newspaper's cryptic crossword, certain nobody would ever notice. Then a…
7 min read