This short campfire-style horror story by Neil Gaiman sucks you in (no disrespect to Click-Clacks intended) and then at the very end surprises. A young man is spending time with his girlfriend’s much younger brother. The boy asks for a bed-time story that is “a little bit” scary. In describing what he means by this the boy tells the man about Click-Clacks, “the best monsters ever”, that come from the dark when you don’t pay attention. We are left wondering how the narrator is still around to tell the tale. Themes include fear, awareness, manipulation, the power of storytelling. More…
Idyll
In this story by Guy de Maupassant, a man and woman share a compartment and become friends during a long train journey. The idyllic countryside is in contrast to the way the woman feels. She is a wet-nurse (a woman who cares for and breast-feeds other people’s babies) and is in great pain because she hasn’t had a baby to her breasts in over two days. The man offers to help and, in so doing, solves a problem of his own. Themes include connection, desire, social perceptions of human anatomy and function, defiance of social norms to satisfy a basic need. More…
The Old Demon
In this story by Pearl S. Buck, the widowed matriarch of a small Chinese village is too old to flee when it is bombed during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Left alone, she tends to a dying Japanese pilot and refuses to allow his body to be defiled by Chinese soldiers fleeing an advancing Japanese army. With help from her “Old Demon” (the Yellow River), she single-handedly stops the advance, saving her family and thousands of other villagers. Themes include family, change, the unpredictability and power of nature, the brutality of war, humanity, sacrifice. More…
The Centipede
The major theme of this story by Rony V. Diaz is revenge. A boy who has suffered years of torment from his older sister snaps when she severely beats and injures the eye of his beloved dog. Forgetting she has a weak heart, he plays a cruel, potentially fatal trick on her. The girl’s hatred and victimization of her brother raises the question of whether she, too, is taking revenge (albeit unconsciously) for the death of her mother when giving birth to him. Other themes include dealing with injustice and the need to stop and think before acting in anger. More…
The Boy Who Broke the Bank
Although published over thirty years ago, this light-hearted story by Ruskin Bond highlights a major problem in today’s world: the spread of fake news on social networks based on incomplete or inaccurate information. A young sweeper working for an Indian bank is paid late, presumably because of his lowly caste. He complains to a friend, who mentions it to a customer, and soon word spreads throughout the bazaar that the bank cannot pay any of its salaries. This causes panic among depositors, leading to a run on the unfortunate bank. Themes include social class, exploitation, discontent, rumor, panic, crowd psychology. More…