an incomplete list of unsettling short stories I read in textbooks
the scarlet ibis
marigolds
the diamond necklace
the monkey’s paw
the open boat
the lady and the tiger
the minister’s black veil
an occurrence at owl creek bridge
a rose for emily
(I found that one by googling “short story corpse in the house,” first result)
the cask of amontillado
the yellow wallpaper
the most dangerous game
a good man is hard to find
some are well-known, some obscure, some I enjoy as an adult, all made me uncomfortable between the ages of 11-15
add your own weird shit, I wanna be literary and disturbed
The Tell-Tale Heart, The Gift of the Magi, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calavaras County, Thank You Ma’am
the box social by james reaney. i remember we all had to silently read it in class, and you would hear the moment everyone reached the Part because some people would audibly go “what”
wHat did I just put my eyes on
“The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury
Not quite a short story, but read in class: “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” from The Twilight Zone
Harrison Bergeron, Cat and the Coffee Drinkers
“Where are you going and where have you been” by Joyce carol oates
“The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury
the lottery by shirley jackson
i can’t believe Roald Dahl’s “The Landlady” wasn’t already mentioned
and also it’s not so much unsettling as more absurdist but “The Leader” by Eugene Ionesco definitely made me go wtf
Ett halvt ark papper. I cried so much.
Ночь у мазара, А. Шалимов
A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury
I Have no Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury
Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby, by Donald Barthelme
We read lots of good disturbing shit in hs or in the writing groups I joined in hs but somehow the top of the heap for shit that haunted me’s still indisputably Ethan Canin’s “The Palace Thief”. It’s not horror as such but it freaked me the fuck out.
There was another O. Henry short story we read that was also really alarming but I had to google a major spoiler (which is also a warning) to recall the name – “The Furnished Room”.
there will come soft rains by bradbury was very unsettling for middle school me
I had no idea so many were all written by Ray Bradbury, why did he do this to us
“Emergency” by Dennis Johnson – not entirely disturbing but really weird and there’s one Bad Part
“A Small, Good Thing” by Raymond Carver – again not all that bad but sad and kind of creepy
Bradbury wrote a lot of weird shit. But, “The Book of Sand” and"The Library of Babel" by Luis Borges.
“It’s a Good Life” – Jerome Bixby
“The Little Black Bag” – Cyril M. Cornbluth
“The Cold Equations” – Tom Godwin
“The Nine Billion Names of God” – Arthur C. Clarke
“Mars is Heaven!” – Ray Bradbury
“Born of Man and Woman” – Richard Matheson
“That Only A Mother” – Judith Maril
“The Country of the Kind” – Damon Knight
“Mimsy Were The Borogroves” – Lewis Padgett
“Lamb to the Slaughter” – Roald Dahl
“We Can Get Them For You Wholesale” – Neil Gaiman
“BLIT” and “Different Kinds of Darkness” – David Langford (set in the same universe) (there are a couple of other “basilisk” stories and they’re worth checking out)
“The Secret Number” – Igor Teper
“The Hospice”, Robert Aickman
“Eumenides in the Fourth Floor Lavatory”, Orson Scott Card
“Last Contact”, Stephen Baxter (this fucked me UP, highly recommended)
Seconding “Lamb to the Slaughter”. Honestly any short story by Dahl probably qualifies, but Lamb is the best one. Also, I think I read Sandkings (George RR Martin) for class. SF, great, creepy as fuck.
The Life You Save May Be Your Own by Flannery O’Connor absolutely destroyed me in high school…
Most of the short stories we read just didn’t stick.
‘The Scarlet Ibis’ didn’t exactly stick, since I could only vaguely outline the premise, but I remember I found it very, VERY upsetting. I was already kinda pre-depressed so it shouldn’t take all the blame, but, um. Very upset.
And I remember ‘The Veldt’. That one was upsetting, but also… idk frustrating?
back when I was 11 or 12 there was this “reading room” with a selection of
youth
books ranging from small children to YA. While browsing there I found a short story compendium called “Para Gostar de Ler” (To [learn to] enjoy reading) #17… i think?, and when I compared it to other small-numbered compendiums, the stories looked way longer. I’m 100% sure that #17 was way above my age range, because one of the stories in it completely fucked me up. I don’t remember what it was called and I’m kind of scared of googling it, so I’m writing down my memories of it behind this cut.
if only I knew how to work photoshop or add an unholy amount of jpg artifacts to things, then I could produce some REAL dumbass reaction images
Hello and welcome to Captain Snoop’s tutorial on how to really FUCK UP pictures.
Step 1: Open Photoshop and open the image in question
Step 2: Just go straight to “Save As” and be sure to save as a jpg
Step 3: in the compression options, slide the lil slider all the way to the left, compressing the fuck out of the image
Step 4: Screenshot your fucked up image and cancel saving
Step 5: Past the screenshot, adjust your image, and Save As again
Step 6: same as before, just slide that shit all the way to zero quality and screenshot again
Step 7: Repeat until you get the desired amount of compression scum
Step 8: grab yourself the magic want tool and start select a random part of the image
Step 9: Go in to Effects > Sharpen > Sharpen Edges and repeat this effect on different parts of the image
Step 9: Add another few layers of compression scum for good measure.
Congratulations! You have now officially turned this:
In to THIS:
But sometimes that isn’t enough. Sometimes you gotta go the extra fuckin’ mile.
Find yourself a website with a “meme creator,” Imgur has a nice one. Put your stupid shit of choice in there,
Ah, but that’s still not good enough. Let’s do some more shit to it.
oh yeah thats the good shit. let’s keep going. let’s find an this picture would look nice with some “enhancements.” Let’s upload it to Imgur again and use their in-browser image editor to fuck around with it.
Stick some of the enhancements like color correction, brightening, and “high def” on it, and slap one of their filter effects on it. Holy shit. It looks good.
Not done though. I made an unfortunate typo. I need to correct it.
Will never get tired of drawing androgynous women. Didn’t have time to colour this one so a greyscale wash would have to do, hope you all still like! 🙂
SquireofGotham 