More on: Short Stories

Regarding the vulture (karkas) it says that even from his highest flight, he sees when flesh the size of a fist is on the ground, and the scent of musk is created under his wing so that if in devouring dead matter, the stench of the dead matter comes out from it, he puts his…

HE FUCKING hated Jews, okay? He was no anti-Semite, either. Hadn’t he married a Jew, thereby becoming the progenitor of four children who, against all odds, decided, one after the next, to practice what they all called, without a trace of irony, the faith of their forefathers? All four of them married other Jews and…

IT WAS MY IDEA to volunteer as a clown, but it was my therapist who suggested that I work as a mute because I am so talkative. That way I’d have to use my face and props to communicate instead of words. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it’d be, for I quickly got…

THE WEIRDEST THING about what happened after everyone vanished? The church bells wouldn’t stop tolling. 1) Nobody died. It was an eternal life situation. 2) It was annoying for all the people who were left, always having to listen to bells every second that reminded them that 1) they should go to church more often…

The Lord is good to all; and his tender mercies are over all his works.                                               —Psalm 145:9 IN THE AUTUMN OF 1854, in the village of Grezhiv, in what was then known…

Content warning: this story includes a depiction of sexual violence. SALIM PEERS THROUGH the peephole in the men’s room in Temple B’nai Moshe and sees two girls standing side by side at the row of sinks in the ladies’ bathroom. One is tall and slim with golden hair that cups her scalp like a swim…

1 C AROLINE WAS PADDING, distracted and shoeless, through the weekday stillness of the empty church when she came upon Desmond’s wife standing on the other side of the back entrance. Framed by the double glass doors, Kim looked uncharacteristically small in an out-of-season winter jacket. Caroline offered up pastoral smile no. 6: Ironic Appreciation…

UNTIL LAST YEAR, I worked in a small apartment on Nampeidai in Shibuya. In actuality, the apartment was not on Nampeidai proper, but was located away from the main street and all its spacious mansions, and thus the deposit and the rent were not so very expensive. Of the apartment’s two rooms, I used one…

ONCE that creature had thudded to the floor and finally gone quiet, she had waited for her rage to subside and her breathing to return to normal before washing everything off at the hand basin in the toilet—the place she always washed. It was, perhaps, inadvisable to destroy all evidence of contact with the rapist—she realized…

BETWEEN SLEEP AND WHAT FOLLOWS sleep, she pushes against water, gasping for air. It’s not until she wakes—at the edge of daylight—that her mind registers two thoughts simultaneously: that her knees ache, that Albert is still dead. On this, a Sunday morning, a third thought follows as she begins moving her legs to the edge of…