Ririro.com - Short Stories

"The Bet" by Anton Chekhov opens with a wealthy banker recalling a reckless wager he made fifteen years earlier: a young lawyer bet his freedom against two million rubles, claiming he could endure fifteen years of solitary confinement. As the final night approaches and the banker faces financial ruin, he creeps through the darkness to the garden wing with murder on his mind. What he finds instead...

"The Moonlit Road" unfolds a single act of murder through three harrowing accounts: a son who watches his father vanish on a moonlit Tennessee road, a guilt-haunted wanderer who cannot escape the memory of strangling his wife, and the murdered woman herself, speaking through a medium from beyond death. Each narrator holds only a fragment of the truth, and Bierce arranges those fragments so that ho...

"The Open Window" by H. H. Munro (Saki) draws readers into a tense country-house visit where nervous Framton Nuttel calls on a stranger, Mrs. Sappleton, armed with letters of introduction and a fragile constitution. Before the aunt appears, her self-possessed fifteen-year-old niece Vera spins a chilling tale about three men who vanished into a bog three years ago — and why the French window is kep...

"A Wireless Message" by Ambrose Bierce follows William Holt, a Chicago manufacturer estranged from his wife, who sets out one evening for a solitary walk in rural New York. Lost in thought and in the countryside, he encounters a spreading red light that casts no fixed source — then a vision of his wife, clutching their child, floating in midair with an expression "not of this life." The image vani...

"A Haunted House" by Virginia Woolf follows a ghostly couple drifting silently through a sleeping household, searching room by room for something they left behind long ago. The living narrator half-wakes to their presence — curtains drawn, doors softly shutting — sensing them without ever quite seeing them. As past and present blur, separation by death, a journey far away, and a joyful return all...

"The Hand" draws readers into a Parisian salon where a judge recounts a case that never left him. At its centre is Sir John Rowell, a mysterious Englishman living alone in Corsica who keeps a dried, chained human hand mounted on his wall — a trophy, he claims, from a defeated enemy. When Rowell is found strangled, his neck marked by skeletal fingers, the judge faces a crime with no rational soluti...

The Legend of St. Christopher follows Offero, a giant of extraordinary strength from Canaan, who vows to serve only the mightiest master on earth. His search leads him from a powerful king to Satan himself — until each time he discovers a greater power still commands fear. Guided at last by a holy man, Offero stations himself at a raging river, carrying travellers to safety. One dark night, a chil...

"The Cold Embrace" is a chilling Gothic short story about a young German artist who abandons his betrothed cousin Gertrude after falling for another woman in Florence. When he returns to Brunswick and discovers Gertrude has drowned herself the night before her forced wedding, he flees in guilt — only to find he cannot escape her. Across Cologne and Paris, cold, unseen arms wrap around his neck, an...

"An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street" plunges readers into a decaying Dublin townhouse where two medical students, Richard and Tom Ludlow, are plagued by escalating supernatural horrors. Richard suffers nightly visions of a malevolent portrait — a hook-nosed old man in a crimson dressing-gown whose gaze seems to follow him into waking life. Tom endures something worse: a rope...

Silver-rod is a quiet nature sketch about the soft, moonlit afterbloom of the goldenrod, when blazing yellow fades to silver. The narrator stirs a tufted stalk and watches a cloud of down drift away, carrying next year's seeds. Alongside ironweed and life-everlasting, the faded plants wear their seedy fortunes with grace. On a chilly November day, the mood is serene and contemplative, and a faint...

Filagranata is a fairy tale about a girl raised by a witch as punishment for her mother's parsley theft, locked in a doorless tower with only pigeons for company. When a travelling prince discovers her window and learns to call up her golden hair, a daring escape begins — but an innocent goodnight kiss erases every memory of love and promise. With quiet courage and a baker's ingenuity, Filagranata...

"The Pot of Rue" opens with the youngest daughter of a merchant making her father promise to bring her a single, peculiar gift: a pot of rue. When he forgets it, the ship cannot move until he turns back — and fulfilling the promise costs him a terrifying audience with a king who punishes the request with death. But the real danger begins at home, when jealous sisters destroy the pot and sever the...

"The Munificence of Prince Borghese" opens in Rome, where a proud servant is dismissed from the most generous household in the city — and finds that reputation has shut every other door against him. As months pass, his family loses furniture, clothing, and finally food itself. Driven to a breaking point no decent man reaches lightly, he steps out of the shadows with a knife. What he takes, and wha...

"Giacinta Marescotti" tells the story of a proud, hot-tempered noblewoman who rails against being sent to a convent while her quieter sister is married off — exactly the opposite of what both had wanted. Giacinta transplants her aristocratic lifestyle behind convent walls, treating the other sisters with barely disguised contempt. When a bishop pauses outside her lavish cell and utters just two wo...

"The Beautiful Englishwoman" opens in Rome, where a wealthy, accomplished woman has vowed to marry only the man who matches her ideal portrait exactly. When a sharp-witted suitor turns her fastidiousness back on her with equal wit, an unexpected love blooms — and quickly becomes a secret marriage. For thirteen years the couple live devotedly in a hidden villa, until a titled father's ruthless inte...

"The Princess and the Satyr" tells the story of a young princess who, after becoming lost in the forest during a hunt, is taken by a selvaggio—a half-man, half-goat creature from the deep woods—who loves her fiercely though she can never love him in return. Ten years pass. When she finally sees a ship and her chance at escape, the selvaggio confronts her with devastating choices across the water....

"The Foolish Woman" is a wry folk tale in which a husband, exasperated by his wife's absurd blunders, sets off to find three people in the world more foolish than she is — or return alone. What he discovers along the road is a princess baffled by a hat brim, a man who has knotted a rope into uselessness, and a widow swindled out of her firewood by a charming stranger. Each encounter is funnier and...

"The King of Portugal" opens on a frail monarch whose vulnerability invites a scheming prince to seize power through calculated cruelty — imprisoning the old king on bread and water, waiting for nature to do his work. What baffles the prince is that the king grows stronger each visit from his daughter, not weaker. Guards watch, searches are made, and still no explanation comes — until it does. At...

"The Old Miser" delivers a sharp, darkly comic portrait of greed meeting its match. A clever young woman targets a notorious miser, convincing him she lives on air alone — thin enough to be believed, shrewd enough to exploit his obsession with cost. Each visit to his home, she walks away richer, with coins stuck to pitch-coated soles. The scheme unfolds with deadpan precision until a single gleami...

Doctor Grillo is a biting fable about a resentful servant who steals his master's identity—his gown, his name, and his reputation—and sets himself up as a celebrated physician in a distant land. When two lucky cures cement the impostor's fame, the real Doctor Grillo arrives to reclaim his name, only to find that truth is no match for a crowd that has already made up its mind. The story builds towa...

"The Happy Couple" is a sharp fable about a devoted husband and wife whose unshakeable love draws the devil's envy. He enlists a witch to drive a wedge between them — planting a dark rumour in the husband's ear, and tricking the wife into standing over her sleeping husband with a razor. When he wakes to find her there, blade in hand, the moment teeters on the edge of disaster. Everything depends o...

"What Happened in the Room of a Hotel" opens with a count and countess whose bond rests on a solemn mutual promise never to think ill of each other. When the countess arranges a playful prank involving her brother — a stranger to her husband — a single glimpse through a window is enough to shatter that promise. The count vanishes into grief; the countess follows on foot, city to country, until cha...

"The Wooing of Sor Cassandro" drops readers into the streets of Rome's Panico quarter, where a stiff, powdered-wig gentleman decides to court a frying-shop girl half his age. Determined to prove himself worthy, Sor Cassandro dons a white apron and learns the trade — and surprises everyone by excelling at it. Gifts follow: earrings, a necklace, fifty scudi. But no amount of effort or money can win...

"The Marriage of Signor Cajusse" is a short comic tale of love, deception, and quick thinking. When a farmer refuses to let his daughter marry a charming but nearly penniless count, the bride devises an audacious scheme: she funds a tour of the Campagna, bribing tenants and servants to greet him as the wealthy landowner "Signor Cajusse." The ruse works beautifully — but once the money runs out, th...

The Daughter of Count Lattanzio is a sharp, comic tale of wit triumphing over parental control. Count Lattanzio locks his daughter away to stop her from marrying the lawyer she loves, but while he tends his vineyard, a small band of disguised conspirators puts his orders to the ultimate test. One by one — a bootmaker, a tailor, and a very authoritative "lawyer" — they talk their way past a fluster...