Ririro.com - Short Stories

"The Story of an Hour" is a short story by Kate Chopin that follows Louise Mallard, a woman with a heart condition, as she processes the sudden news of her husband's death in a railroad accident. Alone in her room, gazing at a spring sky through an open window, she feels something unexpected rising within her — not grief, but a fierce, almost terrifying sense of freedom. What unfolds in that singl...

"The Lost Ghost" is a short ghost story told by Rhoda Meserve to her curious neighbour, recounting the years she boarded with two gentle sisters in a house with a terrible secret. A small, pale child in a nightgown appears without warning, hands purple with cold, repeating the same heartbreaking words: "I can't find my mother." As the story of the child's fate slowly surfaces — neglect, abandonmen...

Hamlet, the short story retelling of Shakespeare's great tragedy, follows Prince Hamlet of Denmark as he uncovers a devastating truth: his father was murdered by his own uncle, Claudius, who has since seized the throne and married Hamlet's mother. Torn between grief, doubt, and a deep reluctance to take a life, Hamlet delays his revenge while those around him — Ophelia, Polonius, his mother — are...

The Lady of the Fountain is an Arthurian legend in which Owen, a knight of King Arthur's court, sets out to find a mysterious black knight who guards a magical fountain deep in an enchanted forest. After defeating the knight in battle, Owen falls in love with the beautiful countess who rules the fountain's lands — and chooses to stay, neglecting his duty to Arthur and his promise to return. Loyalt...

"The Jogi's Punishment" is a short story by Andrew Lang set in the ancient city of Rahmatabad, where a rajah places his trust in a seemingly holy hermit — a jogi whose piety masks dangerous obsession. When the rajah's beautiful, sharp-witted daughter secretly visits the shrine and sees through the jogi's desires, his wounded pride turns to calculated vengeance. He convinces the rajah that his own...

"The Fairy Nurse" is a short Irish fairy tale in which a farmer's wife near Coolgarrow is spirited away in the night by fairy folk, leaving her husband and children behind in grief. The story unfolds through a brave midwife drawn blindfolded into a fairy rath, who glimpses the captive woman and learns of a desperate chance for rescue — a moonlit roadside encounter where one man must hold fast agai...

"Abdullah the Fisherman and Abdullah the Merman" follows a desperately poor fisherman who, after forty days of empty nets, hauls up a mysterious creature from the sea — a merman who offers him a life-changing pact: daily fruit for baskets of precious jewels. As Abdullah's fortune transforms his world, a deeper bond forms between the two men, drawing the fisherman beneath the waves into a breathtak...

"The Story Of A Very Bad Boy" is a short story by Andrew Lang following Touéno-Bouéno, a lazy French village boy whose mother doubts he could ever catch a wolf by the tail — until one day, hiding in a hollow tree, he does exactly that. What follows is a chain of audacious schemes: a wolf sold as a prized ram, a fake resurrection whistle, and a sack tossed into a river. Each time the farmers think...

The Shifty Lad is a free short story set in the land of Erin, following a widow's son who chooses thievery as his trade despite his mother's warnings that he will "hang at the bridge of Dublin." Apprenticed to the notorious Black Gallows Bird, the boy quickly surpasses his master in cunning — stealing sheep through clever misdirection, outwitting an entire royal court, and ultimately dispatching t...

"The False Prince And The True" is a short story by Andrew Lang in which a young nobleman faces execution after striking the royal prince during a tennis dispute. With his trial just days away and no legal defence in sight, a mysterious old woman offers him a lifeline — but her price is marriage. What begins as a desperate bargain unravels a web of hidden births, secret royal marriages, and a deca...

"The Rich Brother And The Poor Brother" is a short story in which a disinherited man, cast out for a secret marriage, spends years in grinding poverty while his brother inherits everything. When a greedy sister-in-law drags the family into a bitter legal dispute over a gift of unfinished houses, the poor brother's journey to court spirals into a chain of fresh accusations — a poisoned onion, a tai...

"Sun, Moon, and Talia" is a dark fairy tale short story in which young Talia falls into an enchanted sleep after a prophecy about flax comes grimly true. She awakens to find herself a mother of twins — Sun and Moon — without understanding how. When the king who fathered the children returns, his jealous queen sets a deadly trap: she orders the children killed and Talia burned alive. Talia's fate h...

"The Rose Elf" is a short story by Hans Christian Andersen in which a tiny elf, small enough to sleep inside a rose petal, accidentally witnesses a brutal murder when a young man is killed by his beloved's jealous brother. Trapped in a world of grief and secrecy, the elf carries the terrible truth to the grieving girl through her dreams. As sorrow slowly claims her, the jasmine she tends over her...

"The Schoolboy's Story" by Charles Dickens unfolds through the voice of a sharp-tongued schoolboy recounting the strange fate of Old Cheeseman — a lonely, mild-mannered figure who grew up at the school as an orphan, became a despised Latin master, and was branded a traitor by his fellow pupils. Sustained only by the quiet loyalty of Jane, the school's wardrobe woman, Cheeseman endures mockery and...

Nobody's Story follows an unnamed labouring man living beside a great, ever-flowing river — a symbol of time's indifferent current — who works tirelessly, raises his family in poverty, and asks only for education, fair governance, and simple human dignity. When the powerful "Bigwig family" quarrels endlessly over politics and doctrine, his children fall to ignorance, his neighbours die in a pestil...

"The Child's Story" by Charles Dickens follows a lone traveller on a magic journey through life, meeting companions at every stage — a joyful child, a learning boy, a young man in love, a busy father, and finally an old man who only remembers. Each companion is lost in turn as the seasons of the wood deepen from spring green to autumn gold. Dickens captures the tenderness and quiet grief of time p...

"The Christmas Tree and the Wedding" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky opens at a children's New Year's ball where a narrator quietly observes the powerful and self-important Julian Mastakovich. Among the guests is an eleven-year-old girl with a dowry of three hundred thousand rubles — and Mastakovich is already counting. What the narrator witnesses in a quiet side room is deeply unsettling: a grown man's col...

The Curse of Yig draws readers into the dust-choked plains of 1889 Oklahoma, where an ethnologist's search for snake-god folklore leads to a locked asylum cell — and something inside it that defies easy explanation. At the story's heart are Walker and Audrey Davis, Arkansas homesteaders whose fragile peace unravels when Audrey unknowingly destroys a nest of rattlesnakes sacred to Yig, the half-hum...

"A Ghost" is a chilling short story in which the elderly Marquis de la Tour-Samuel confesses a 56-year-old secret: a single errand to a dead woman's locked room that left him permanently scarred by fear. Sent to retrieve private letters from a grieving friend's abandoned château, he encounters a tall woman in white who asks him, in a soft and plaintive voice, to comb her ice-cold hair. What unsett...

"Young Goodman Brown" follows a young Puritan man who leaves his wife Faith one night to walk a dark forest road outside Salem village — and meets a sinister stranger bearing a serpent-carved staff. As the journey deepens, Brown recognises faces he trusts most: his minister, his deacon, his childhood teacher. At a hellish midnight gathering, even Faith may not be who she seemed. Hawthorne builds s...

"The Scarf Of The Lady" tells the story of a noblewoman who opens her harvest field each year to the poorest peasants of the land. One stormy afternoon she meets a serene young woman and her golden-haired child gleaning among the grain. When the sky darkens and thunder rolls in, she leads them to shelter beneath an oak and gently wraps her cherished silk scarf around the child's small shoulders. W...

A Midsummer Night's Dream retold as a short story follows Hermia and Lysander, two lovers who flee Athens to escape a law that would condemn Hermia to death for refusing her father's chosen husband. Their flight into a moonlit forest sets off a chain of magical disasters when the mischievous fairy Puck mistakenly enchants the wrong sleeping lovers with a spell that makes them fall for whoever they...

The Candle in the Forest tells the story of a poor but loving family who make the most of a simple Christmas with imagination, gratitude, and affection. While their wealthy neighbors have abundance but little happiness, the Small Girl’s family finds joy in small things—a homemade tree, a chocolate mouse, a candle in the forest, and time together. Their warmth and kindness touch a lonely neighbor b...

"The Poor Relation's Story" by Charles Dickens follows a quiet, overlooked bachelor who takes his turn at the Christmas fireside and confesses that everything the family believes about him is wrong. What begins as a portrait of shabby solitude — cheap lodgings, aimless days, a threadbare existence — slowly reveals itself as something far more poignant. Through his tender bond with young Little Fra...

The Other Wise Man follows Artaban, a Persian Magian who sells all his possessions to buy three precious gems — a sapphire, a ruby, and a pearl — as gifts for the promised King. But before he can join the other Wise Men, a dying stranger, a mother's terrorised child, and a girl facing slavery each claim a jewel in turn. With every act of mercy, his offering diminishes and his arrival is delayed —...