Short Stories

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Short Stories

R. Ross Whalen • Sep 11, 2020

Recently I talked about flash fiction. Flash fiction is defined as any writing under a thousand words. I happen to like flash fiction. The ability to tell an entire story in as little as six words is incredible. And extremely talented authors to be able to do this. Now some might argue the six words is micro fiction and some other stuff. That doesn’t matter to me, I simply enjoy the medium.

Another medium I enjoy is the short story. Short stories are defined as having one thousand words or less and usually only a couple of characters. One of my all-time favorite short stories, The Gift of the Magi is by O. Henry. A master of the genre. Here is a sample:

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.

There was clearly nothing left to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the look-out for the mendicancy squad.

All of O. Henry’s works are well worth reading. The brevity of the work combined with the incredible use of language forms the story in your mind in a manner you simply can’t turn away from.

Another master of the short story was Rudyard Kipling. His Jungle Book was a collection of short stories from his time in India. One of my favorites is the tale Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. Here is a sample:

This is the story of the great war that Rikki-tikki-tavi fought single-handed through the bath-rooms of the big bungalow in Segowlee cantonment. Darzee, the Tailorbird, helped him, and Chuchundra, the musk-rat, who never comes out into the middle of the floor, but always creeps round by the wall, gave him advice, but Rikki-tikki did the real fighting. He was a mongoose, rather like a little cat in his fur and his tail, but quite like a weasel in his head and his habits. His eyes and the end of his restless nose were pink. He could scratch himself anywhere he pleased with any leg, front or back, that he chose to use. He could fluff up his tail till it looked like a bottle brush, and his war cry as he scuttled through the long grass was: "Rikk-tikk-tikki-tikki-tchk!"

Now I cannot talk about short stories without including this next author - Edgar Allan Poe. His classic horror story The Pit and the Pendulum was a short story. Check it out:

I WAS sick, sick unto death, with that long agony, and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me. The sentence, the dread sentence of death, was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears. After that, the sound of the inquisitorial voices seemed merged in one dreamy indeterminate hum. It conveyed to my soul the idea of REVOLUTION, perhaps from its association in fancy with the burr of a mill-wheel. This only for a brief period, for presently I heard no more. Yet, for a while, I saw, but with how terrible an exaggeration! I saw the lips of the black-robed judges. They appeared to me white--whiter than the sheet upon which I trace these words--and thin even to grotesqueness; thin with the intensity of their expression of firmness, of immovable resolution, of stern contempt of human torture. I saw that the decrees of what to me was fate were still issuing from those lips. I saw them writhe with a deadly locution. I saw them fashion the syllables of my name, and I shuddered, because no sound succeeded. I saw, too, for a few moments of delirious horror, the soft and nearly imperceptible waving of the sable draperies which enwrapped the walls of the apartment; and then my vision fell upon the seven tall candles upon the table. At first they wore the aspect of charity, and seemed white slender angels who would save me: but then all at once there came a most deadly nausea over my spirit, and I felt every fibre in my frame thrill, as if I had touched the wire of a galvanic battery, while the angel forms became meaningless spectres, with heads of flame, and I saw that from them there would be no help. And then there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave. The thought came gently and stealthily, and it seemed long before it attained full appreciation; but just as my spirit came at length properly to feel and entertain it, the figures of the judges vanished, as if magically, from before me; the tall candles sank into nothingness; their flames went out utterly; the blackness of darkness supervened; all sensations appeared swallowed up in a mad rushing descent as of the soul into Hades. Then silence, and stillness, and night were the universe.

Last but not least as a master of the short story format is Mark Twain. Here is a sample:

"Aunt Rachel, how is it that you 've lived sixty years and never had any trouble?"

She stopped quaking. She paused, and there was a moment of silence. She turned her face over her shoulder toward me, and said, without even a smile in her voice:—

"Misto C—, is you in 'arnest?"

She faced fairly around, now, and was full of earnestness.

"Has I had any trouble? Misto C—, I's gwyne to tell you, den I leave it to you . . . .

I hope you are inspired by these to take a good look at the short story. I find I adore them. They are like candy to me. Easy to eat and always leaving me wanting more. For a better look at the short story I recommend this website: https://americanliterature.com/100-great-short-stories

I took the excerpts from there.

I’m Ross, The Editor-in-Chief at The Pyrateheart Press and I’m out.

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