The Shortest Short Stories The Shortest Short Stories
i
Illustration by Michał Loba
Fiction

The Shortest Short Stories

Everything’s Gonna Be Alright
Reading
time 2 minutes

The Holiday

I was seated at my computer, prudently planning my holiday trip. I was comparing hotel prices, reading reviews, looking at pictures, checking the distances to monuments and natural wonders on the map. Would I give up and not choose anything again, as I had been doing for three years in a row now? Anything but that! But there were so many offers, all of them were so much alike… Finally, I selected the first random location, reserved a stay and went to sleep.

The Little Mouse

My cat has literally gone crazy about its new toy – a little mouse made of rags and feathers. My furry friend doesn’t care about anything else, asserting its desire to play by meowing loudly each morning. So what’s the problem? Well, the problem is that in the meantime, my house has been infested by real mice. This morning, while chasing around its rags, Purrsey was wading in hundreds of rodents, which have created a live rug in my bedroom!

The Scarecrow

As I was walking through the fields, I saw a scarecrow sitting among the ripe wheat. It looked exactly like me. Could this have been a bad omen? Had I just stumbled upon my gloomy motionless look-alike? Oh, the horrific silence of the straw mouth! With trembling feet, I walked up to the scarecrow. Whew! Up close, he didn’t look anything like me at all.

Information

Breaking news! This is the first of your five free articles this month. You can get unlimited access to all our articles and audio content with our digital subscription.

Subscribe

Wrocław

I took a holiday trip to Wrocław. As I was visiting the city, I met a local who, to my comment about the beauty of Wrocław, replied that we weren’t in Wrocław, but in Gdańsk. Having laughed for a moment at the absurd idea of this obviously half-witted inhabitant, I continued my visit of the city. After a while, I reached the seaside and realized that this was indeed Gdańsk.

The Washing Machine

I once made up my mind to go into the washing machine and see how it is to be washed. I undressed fully. I didn’t add any detergent because it can irritate the skin and is terribly foamy. I also set the program so that the water temperature would not exceed 30°. I opened the door and stuffed my head inside the washing machine. There was no more room for anything else, so I dressed and left the house.

Also read:

Henryk Ochorowicz Steps Across the Threshold Henryk Ochorowicz Steps Across the Threshold
i
Illustration by Katarzyna Szybka
Fiction

Henryk Ochorowicz Steps Across the Threshold

Tomasz Wiśniewski

Is time stronger than love? Some say it is not. But is love stronger than time? An answer to this less-frequently-asked latter question is offered by the story of Henryk Ochorowicz and Queen Marysieńka.

Henryk Ochorowicz’s origins alone appeared enough to foretoken his bland existence. His father was a pedantic jeweller, fairly wealthy yet unbearably lacklustre, and his mother was the long-suffering wife of a pedantic and lacklustre jeweller. Henryk remembered very little from his formative years save for solitude and silence; the period of World War I was neither easy nor silent, but it went by eventually. Anything Henryk saw, heard or felt seemed to have gone by anyway (and nothing interesting ever came of that seeing, hearing and feeling, either). He finished university with poor results. He did not attract the interest of women, nor did he take any interest in anything. Finally, after the death of his parents, which did not affect him to any particular degree, he quickly sold the business he had inherited and continued his life, loitering here and there, dressed in a well-worn coat and a wrinkled hat, his only companion in life being a ginger cat. Everything indicated that he would never appear in anyone’s recollections.

Continue reading