Grief by Anton Chekov

The turner, Grigory Petrov, who had been known for years past as a splendid craftsman, and at the same time as the most senseless peasant in the Galtchinskoy district, was taking his old woman to the hospital. He had to drive over twenty miles, and it was an awful road. A government post driver could hardly have coped with it, much less an incompetent sluggard like Grigory. A cutting cold wind was blowing straight in his face. Clouds of snowflakes were whirling round and round in all directions, so that one could not tell whether the snow was falling from the sky or rising from the earth. The fields, the telegraph posts, and the forest could not be seen for the fog of snow. And when a particularly violent gust of wind swooped down on Grigory, even the yoke above the horse's head could not be seen. The wretched, feeble little nag crawled slowly along. It took all its strength to drag its legs out of the snow and to tug with its head. The turner was in a hurry. He kept restlessly hopping up and down on the front seat and lashing the horse's back.

A Painful Case by James Joyce

MR. JAMES DUFFY lived in Chapelizod because he wished to live as far as possible from the city of which he was a citizen and because he found all the other suburbs of Dublin mean, modern and pretentious. He lived in an old sombre house and from his windows he could look into the disused distillery or upwards along the shallow river on which Dublin is built. The lofty walls of his uncarpeted room were free from pictures. He had himself bought every article of furniture in the room: a black iron bedstead, an iron washstand, four cane chairs, a clothes- rack, a coal-scuttle, a fender and irons and a square table on which lay a double desk. A bookcase had been made in an alcove by means of shelves of white wood. The bed was clothed with white bedclothes and a black and scarlet rug covered the foot. A little hand-mirror hung above the washstand and during the day a white-shaded lamp stood as the sole ornament of the mantelpiece. The books on the white wooden shelves were arranged from below upwards according to bulk. A complete Wordsworth stood at one end of the lowest shelf and a copy of the Maynooth Catechism, sewn into the cloth cover of a notebook, stood at one end of the top shelf. Writing materials were always on the desk. In the desk lay a manuscript translation of Hauptmann's Michael Kramer, the stage directions of which were written in purple ink, and a little sheaf of papers held together by a brass pin. In these sheets a sentence was inscribed from time to time and, in an ironical moment, the headline of an advertisement for Bile Beans had been pasted on to the first sheet. On lifting the lid of the desk a faint fragrance escaped -- the fragrance of new cedarwood pencils or of a bottle of gum or of an overripe apple which might have been left there and forgotten.

Gazebo by Raymond Carver

That morning she pours Teacher's over my belly and licks it off. That afternoon she tries to jump out the window. 

I go, "Holly, this can't continue. This has got to stop." 

We are sitting on the sofa in one of the upstairs suites. There were any number of vacancies to choose from. But we needed a suite, a place to move around in and be able to talk. So we'd locked up the motel office that morning and gone upstairs to a suite. 

She goes, "Duane, this is killing me." 

We are drinking Teacher's with ice and water. We'd slept awhile between morning and afternoon. Then she was out of bed and threatening to climb out the window in her undergarments. I had to get her in a hold. We were only two floors up. But even so. 

God Made Me this Way By Grant Bentley

*This is a short story that I have analysed in post entitled "God Made Me this Way by Grant Bentley and History of Gay Literature in Australia"

This story is written from a Christian perspective. If your beliefs or non-beliefs would make this offensive to you then you might not want to read it.

If any nice person, nasty person, place, event, happening, thing or sport seems familiar, it is purely coincidental.

It’s Sunday morning and once again I’m being dragged off to church. I hate going to church. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate God. I just hate going to church – or, at least, Pastor John’s church. Pastor John has been our pastor for about four months now.  He’s nothing like our old pastor, Pastor Robert, who is one of the kindest, gentlest, most caring men I know. Pastor John, on the other hand, is the coldest, meanest, most hateful man I know. According to Pastor John, everything I am, and almost everything I do, God hates.

Later by Michael Foster

It 's strange, the things you remember. When life has crumbled suddenly, and left you standing there, alone. It's not the big important things that you remember when you come to that: not the plans of the years, not the love nor the hopes you 've worked so hard for. It's the little things you that you remember then: the little things you hadn't noticed at the time. The way a hand touched yours, and you too busy to notice; the hopeful little inflection of a voice you didn't really bother to listen to.

John Carmody found that out, staring through the living-room window at the cheerful Tuesday-afternoon life of the street. He kept trying to think about the big, important things, lost now and the years and the plans and the hopes. And the love. But he couldn't quite get them focused sharply in his mind just now. Not this afternoon.