Short Story: Eliyahu ha-Navi by Mark Sparber

I read Eliyahu ha-Navi by Mark Sparber in Strange Horizons, another short story site. It is a Jewish science fiction with lots of fantasy elements.


"Although he was not recognizably human, in 1908 the old man was nevertheless recognizably Jewish. He looked as I imagine he must have looked for a thousand years. He was dwarfish and twisted, with long, gnarled limbs that grasped whatever they could clutch with a fierce clawing motion. His gray, matted beard and sidelocks met on the ground, where they tangled with each other and with the filthy fringes from his prayer shawl. He was small enough that my great-grandparents could fit him into an accordion case, and this is what they did, so that his moans and wheezing might be mistaken for the sound of wind running through an instrument's reeds."

This beginning sets the pace of this story which in a way defies description. Here prophet Elijah is brought to live in the new world. For the reason "It is Elijah that will tell the world of the Messiah's coming! He will go from door to door, knocking and saying, 'Gather your prayer shawl, gather your phylacteries! He is here! The Messiah is here!"

Elijah is taken to be a stinking old man. He is hated by the children yet they have to look after him. As an obligation for a better world, for the arrival of the Messiah.

When the narrator finds him in a bad state, we see a change in his heart. He no longer hates the pitiful prophet. He somehow has developed fondness for the wizened old man and prays for him to live.

The imagery in this story is good. It has that fantasy element which keeps us rivetted to the story. In the beginning, we hate the prophet but we slowly come to like him, even saddened when he falls ill. For all his fault, he seems like a helpless old man locked in a time period of not his making.

"From outside the room, from some distant hallway, I heard the moans and wheezes of an accordion."

I recommend.....

Short Story: Time, Again by Tim Maly

Another short story read for Short Story September Challenge. This is the 31st one. A bonus read!


"Before we met, you showed me your diary and then we were having sex on the wooden floor of your living room. I still remember the way the plants filtered the sunlight and the sound of the tea kettle building up steam. Then our son was at the foot of the bed, asking me where you'd gone."

Time, Again by Tim Maly defies description. It is short short story. One feels timeless reading this. One wants to what period of time is the protagonist talking about. It seems like a dream. Yet it is not. One wants to know about this time which can't be described. And what does Time, Again means? Maly has created magic with his words. A delightful short story which has past, no future.

"There's nothing I can do. The future is just as real as the past. There is no before or after anymore. Because of you, there never was. "

We weren't meant to live like this."

A story meant to be read. Click on Time, Again and read on.........

Short Story: Leaving the Yellow House (1957) by Saul Bellow

I read Leaving the Yellow House (1957) by Saul Bellow online in Narrative Magazine.


This is about Hattie Waggoner who is seventy two years and lives alone in a Yellow House. Only six people live at Sego Desert Lake, including her. The neighbours are helpul and caring.

"Hattie was not exactly a drunkard, but she hit the bottle pretty hard, and now she was in trouble and there was a limit to the help she could expect from even the best of neighbors."

Nonetheless, Hattie is liked by her neighbours. Then she has an accident, where one of her arm breaks. She is unable to take care of herself and her neigbours urge her to sell her house so that she will have some money to look after herself by taking in someone else. Hattie has lived in the yellow house independently for more than twenty years.

She is forced to look out for options. She looks back at her life. However, as is her habit, she procastinates that too. She has always lived in self deception, where the world is all rosy for even though the truth is so much further. The Yellow House has been her home for twenty years, a part of her. She cannot give it up.

The story ends, with Hattie thinking,“Only tonight I can’t give the house away. I’m drunk and so I need it. And tomorrow, she promised herself, I’ll think again. I’ll work it out for sure.”

Short Story: Weddings and Beheadings by Hanif Kureishi

Weddings and Beheadings by Hanif Kureishi is an interesting title. I found it online in a back issue of Zoetrope: All-Story.

"You don't know me personally. My existence has never crossed your mind. But I would bet you've seen my work: it has been broadcast everywhere, on most of the news channels worldwide. Or at least parts of it have. You could find it on the Internet, right now, if you really wanted to. If you could bear to look. "

The narrator seems to be a film-maker who is made to video tape beheadings by some people who seem to be terrorists. Although the place is not mentioned, it might have been set in Afghanistan or Iraq or any such place. At least thats what I presumed. It is a short story but makes one sit up and notice. Here the narrator, the place and the terrorists, all remain nameless.

It is dark, deeply sad for the victims as well as their families yet it has that black humour. To quote a few lines of conversation between friends who take such shots:

"Don't bury your head in the sand, my friend. Don't go losing your head now. Chin up!"

"It's too dark, it's not going to come out and you can't do another take."

"You'll get a prize for the next one. Don't you guys love prizes and statuettes and stuff?"

At one point you do feel he is enjoying his work in a macabre way.

"To make the shot work, it helps to get a clear view of the victim's eyes just before they're covered. At the end the guys hold up the head streaming with blood, and you might need to use some handheld here, to catch everything. The shot must be framed carefully. It wouldn't be good if you missed something. Ideally you should have a quick-release tripod head, something I have and would never lend to anyone."

Maybe it his way of being clinical. After all it can affect the mind. This line of work. How did the title come about? It is explained by the narrator in the story:

"Until recently, my closest friend filmed beheadings, however he's not a director, only a writer, really. I wouldn't trust him with a camera. He isn't too sure about the technical stuff, how to set up the equipment, and then how to get the material through the computer and onto the Internet. It's a skill, obviously. He was the one who had the idea of getting calling cards inscribed with WEDDINGS AND BEHEADINGS."

Short Story: The Ruin of Grant Lowery by Audrey Niffenegger

The ruin of Grant Lowery by Audrey Niffenegger


Grant Lowery meets three elderly women in a bar. They had made a bet.

"We made a bet," said the lady, with a serious expression. "We bet that you would be willing to spend a year with one of us, and teach that one how to be human."

He has a vision of a blonde girl in his mind and he can't make out what it is. He chooses or it is already chosen that he spend a year with the nameless fairy who contated him first.

"He woke the next morning with a sense of something forgotten, an appointment missed; what day of the week was it, anyway? Someone had brewed coffee. Grant felt slightly hungover. He struggled to remember the previous evening, but failed. He sat up and looked around."

He is in his own apartment but now completely redecorated and the fairy is there waiting for him to wake up. When he asks her name she shuts him up. His days fall into a pattern, he doing chores for her. Still he dreams of the girl. Then one day the girl tells him the old fairy is named Harriet. When he calls her by her name, she disappears. And the blonde girl takes over his home. And him.

A fairy tale set in the contemporary world with all the elements of present time evil. It is not about fairies but most likely about witches. Read on.....

Short Story: Hair by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Hair by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a fairy tale published in Guardian.

Hair by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

"The mother cried every day. The father had signed the agreement one afternoon after drinking a whole carton of Guinness at the club, after his friend Lugardson proposed a game of cards and wrote out the agreement that said whoever won would take over the other's property and added that it was a joke of course and not at all legal. And so the father signed it and then lost the game. Lugardson took the agreement to court and the judge was Lugardson's crony and he ruled that the father had truly signed away all that he owned. His company. His homes. His cars."

After the father lost it all, they had nothing. Their friends deserted them. The mother despaired. She had no money to do up her hair, uncurl it, burnish it and straighten it. The daughter too saw her real hair for the first time, and was amazed by it.

".....watched in wonder as it grew back, soft and dense like wool, for she had never seen her natural hair. In their old life, as soon as her hair grew out, it had been singed and straightened. Now it was vibrant and kinky and full. She did not comb it but lovingly untangled it every morning with her fingers."

It saddened the daughter to see the state of her family. She wanted their former glory to be restore. One day she felt her hair talking telling her the "the agreement is in Lugardson's air conditioner." The daughter did not believe her hair speaking out but the voice in her persisted. At the behest o that voice, she went an stole bak that agreement taking it to a uncorrupt judge. At last their former glory was restored. Lugardson was punished.

This fairy tale has an expected happy ending. The daughter can be assumed to be the priness here and her fairy Godmother is her natural hair.

Short story: Narcissa by by Hilary Mantle

Narcissa by by Hilary Mantle is a fairy tale. I must say, a very unusual fairy tale, the likes of what I have not read before. Just read the opening lines:

"In the days when all the priests were dead, and most people walked around with their heads tucked under their arms for safety's sake, there was a princess for whom nothing was ever good enough. You will want to know what she was called, but this she did not know herself; given her choice from Names A-Z, she had got up to R and torn the book apart with her teeth."

When she comes of age, the princess is seeking a mate for herself. She wants "hand-built suitors from the land's best workshops." But when they are wheeled in fron of her, she says, "These are not good enough for me."

Now what did the princess looked like?

"You will want to know what the princess looked like, and I can tell you only that this varied from day to day. Sometimes she looked like Helen of Troy and sometimes like Cleopatra, depending which head she called for when she woke in the morning. No wonder the bottled souls failed to recognise her. And she had trouble knowing herself, as none of the mirrors in the palace was good enough. They hung them picture and landscape, they lit them up and lit them down, they tinted them and silvered them, and sometimes they sneaked up on her with wing-mirrors and make-up mirrors, but still she said, "These are not good enough for me."

As she did not find anyone good enough for her, the years went on. She was 50, 60 or maybe 70 when she came across a closed cupboard. Opening it she found creature unlike anything she had seen before. Surprisingly it answered her back the way she used to talk to others. And hence she found her soulmate.....an ugly hedgehog like creature who looked like her.

A fairly tale which is not rosy and all things beautiful. It is about us, the inner ugliness within us and about our ego, which needs to be curbed. And uglines of the soul begets ugliness.

Short Story: Gwen's Grief by Jennifer Cande/Disappointed by Al Riske

Gwen's Grief by Jennifer Cande

A surreal story where a girl keeps loosing each of her body parts. Finally she ends up with nothing. She finds a new boy parts in Russ' attic and makes a body for herself with the help of those. Slowly re-building taking the best out of those. Very over-powering story. Surreal and different

In the first read, this story seems unreal. However, what I assimilated that we can lose ourselves entirely if we are not too careful. We should not give anyone the power to rule over our heart and mind. That is what brings us down. But, we can re-build ourselves. Literally from scratch. Gwen does, despite her grief. She renews herself.

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Disappointed by Al Riske

Petra sets a date for her friend Danielle and is disappointed when the narrator does not kiss her friend.

It remains a surprise why she herself did not want to date the narrator. Even though Petra asks for a blind date, she is not very enthusiastic about it. This story left me flabbergasted. I did not get it at all. I stil mention it here. If someone reads it and explains it to me, I welcome that. .

Short Story: Tomorrow is too Far by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Tomorrow is too Far by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a short story I read in Prospect online.

Only your cousin Dozie knows who killed your brother Nonso

Here a girl is reminishing about something which happened 13 years ago. It was the summer her brother Nonso died. She has gone bask to that plae, where her brother had died. She again meets her ousin Dozie. She has alway been in love with him. Their granmother had preferred her brother over them. He being, her daughter's son, and she being a mere girl. Even when grandmama was dying, she thought of Nonso, talked of Nonso, even though Dozie was her all this while..

You turn away. There is a long silence while you watch the column of black ants making its way up the trunk, each ant carrying a bit of white fluff, creating a black-white pattern. You feel a rush of gratitude and pity and love and contempt for Dozie for not wanting more, for accepting so little. And you wonder about destiny - if Nonso was destined always to be loved more, if love on the whole is always predestined, if it is ever possible to earn love, or to obtain love that was not originally portioned out for you.

It strikes you too - the illogic of missing something you never had.

Even after his death, Nonso won. In the eyes of her mother too, he was the coveted one, not she. How did he die? Who is responsible for his death? The secret is safe with Dozie. However, forgetting is not easy. Not even after 13 long years.

Thirteen years is long enough to forget, long enough to choose what to remember.

This is the irony of the story.

Short Story: Gina by Alex Burford/The Reading Room by Jen Michaelski

I read Gina by Alex Burford and The Reading Room by Jen Michaelski at Pindedyboz online, another site with good short story collection. Don't forget to check the archives.

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The Reading Room by Jen Michaelski

A lady is reading aloud slowly from a periodical in a library. The senior librarian informs the supervisor about after much buzz amongst the librarians. She arrives and tells that she is not to read aloud in the library. The lady is flustered and says she is not doing anything wrong. But the supervisor asks her to accompany her. She is led to "a dark basement that smelled of old books and wet paper" where three children are sitting on the floor, reading. The supervisr asks her to read for them and walks out locking the door. Looking at the children, the lady wonders if they are going to eat her. They look so hungry.

"She looked back at the children. She could sense, with a shivering degree of certainty, that they were hungry."

Reading this very short story, I felt a chill run down my spine. How did the children come about? Why were they locked from outside? What was expected of the lady? Why was she too locked in?
Do read The Reading Room by Jen Michaelski

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Gina by Alex Burford

It s a short short story. One cannot put any kind of classification to it. It is about Gina, who I understand works in a club, probably dancing. The narrator wants to have sex with her. He takes her along. She falls asleeep in his car. He looks at her, thinks of her family and pushes her out of the car letting her lie on the road. Ater a while he does come back for her, although he knows she won't have sex with hm.

"Gina and I are not friends."

Why did he think that? He wants to believe a lot of sereotyped stuff about Gina but she is not what he wants her to be. She is very different. To know about her, read Gina...