That one with the little girl and mr beasly her "imaginary" friend
this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2024
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Not short stories, but I have two books that I read in high school that have stuck with me more than most:
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Earliest short story I can remember is Monsters are Due on Maple Street in middle school. Didn't quite get the historical context at the time. But the theme of rampant senseless paranoia stuck with me.
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The Veldt. Also, All Summer In A Day.
There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury
7th or 8th grade English class.
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An occurrence at owl creek bridge - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/375
And then “The Cold Equations” https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-cold-equations/
Both are downers and have stuck with me for 35 years
A Worn Path, The Test, and a story I haven't been able to find about kids who go into a carnival fun house but it's really set up to kill them (vats of acid, snakes hanging from the ceiling).
This was 6th grade. I seemed like all the short stories in middle school made the Tell Tale Heart seem cheerful.
And Bartleby, the Scrivener.
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The Chaser by John Collier… that ending … still gives me chills
Fall of the House of usher
This one was a banger, my dad played it in the car on a roadtrip when I was like 10. Shit was fucked up
Usher II by Ray Bradbury!
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how about steinbecks the pearl
scarred for life from a 7th grade shortish story
For me that is 'The Dreams in the Witch House', but that was 100% self inflicted.
Flowers for Algernon, that was thought provoking but also way too heavy for a 7th grade English class.
This shit made me fucking sob, I was also in seventh grade. I came to this comment section to mention it. Unforgettable
That was 5th grade for me. I still wonder what that teacher was thinking.
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Jesus Christ. I read that aged 27 and cried like a baby. Way too heavy for grade school.
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The Hatchet when he kills the rabbit.
My 4th grade teacher read a chapter to the class every day, same with the sequel. I specifically remember the part where he was standing outside naked in winter and some tree bark just kinda exploded, and he was freaking out trying to decide if the freezing bark caused it to expand and explode or if a hunter was out there shooting bullets at him. Also, the part where he finds an orange-drink packet in the survival supplies of the plane and describes the taste of it.
Edit: I think the tree bark part was in the sequel, Brian's Winter.
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“The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World" by Gabriel García Márquez would have been that, but it lost its impact because my generation associates the name Esteban with the silly bellhop from The Suite Life of Zack and Cody
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
Came here to say this. Now I have to dig even deeper into my high school trauma to find something else, thanks. 🤣
Oh that fucking thing.
Edit: wait so what exactly is the point of this?
It's been near 15 years since I read it, but it's kind of a cautionary tale about tradition, superstition, and how easily humans succumb to their base impulses and can commit insane violence.
Ohhh. I remember now. Thank you.
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A Child Called It and The Lost Boy by David Pelzer. That did some heavy desensitization in the future.