The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

Flowers for Algernon, that was thought provoking but also way too heavy for a 7th grade English class.

“The Yellow Wallpaper”

It was quite scarring for most of the kids in my 7th grade class.

Also I’ve only just now realized that wallpaper back then could have contained arsenic so going insane from being in contact with it constantly enough to stain your skin is a very real possibility.

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin is the one that came to mind for me.

The Veldt, by Ray Bradbury.

They didn't make everyone read it though, just us "gifted/advanced" kids. It was one of several short stories that were in a special program book that I had to read.

I still think those kids were brats.

Edit: just looked it up and this was supposed to be 9th grade English??? We fucking had to read that as 5th graders.

Edit 2: I need to stop thinking about this, they also made us read All Summer in a Day, Flowers for Algernon, and The Tell Tale Heart in that class

The Hatchet when he kills the rabbit.

We had to read a story in 10th grade about this family that's out on a road trip when their car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. A car pulls up and the driver steps out to assist the family. However, the grandmother (who up to this point was doing nothing but bitch and whine about everything) recognizes the stranger as a wanted criminal she saw on TV and stupidly points this out to everybody. Which naturally results in the entire family being executed one-by-one because they're now witnesses.

A whole family erased, just because granny couldn't keep her fat mouth shut for 5 minutes.

The Most Dangerous Game

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K Leguin

Not short stories, but I have two books that I read in high school that have stuck with me more than most:

1. Where the Red Fern Grows
2. Fahrenheit 451

"A modest proposal" by Jonathan Swift, I still occasionally think about it

I remember a story about a dying woman who predicted that she would die when the last leaf of a plant outside her house falls. But the leaf actually did fall, and her friend put up a fake one there. The woman gets better but her friend dies because of pneumonia. This was from back when I was maybe 10-11yo and I remember it for some reason. I think the moral of the story is that willpower is strong, but idk about that ending.

Hmm, for short stories, it's probably "The Most Dangerous Game."

The themes are pretty disturbing if you stop to think about it, and even if you don't, there's a fair amount of violence.

The Library of Babel by Borges melted my brain as a teenager.

A retiring teacher at our school had his class read a story that lit a fire under a bunch of parents. It was The Star by Arthur C. Clarke

"The Darkness Out There" by Penelope Lively.

In short, a "nice old lady" tells a couple of young kids about what they did to a young German who survived a plane crash over Britain during WW2.

I think it was there for the "the nice old lady was actually nasty and cruel and the evil nazi was actually just a scared, fairly innocent boy".

Fall of the House of usher

“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce.

how about steinbecks the pearl

scarred for life from a 7th grade shortish story

1984 for me. This was back in the early 80's so the book was a bit of a deal at the time. So very very glad I was introduced to this book at such a young age. Disturbing, but a good preparation for the world I was going to be living in as an adult.

To Build a Fire by Jack London

Wow a lot more diverse than I was expecting, I figured 50% of these would be the tell-tale heart by Poe

Most of the stuff we read in class was fine, or we knew was going to be fucked up as it was Gifted and Talented class.

The book that fucked me at the time more than those was reading Maus. At like 12. And if I bring it up with mother, she'd say it was my fault for reading it, instead of, you know, maybe she should vet the book instead of going "oh cartoony of the holocaust, that's fine"

Holocaust was fine, every Hanukkah one of our 7 gifts works be a book, and you'd run out of noob holocaust books that relayed to judiasm real quick. But most were written for kids so.

Not Maus

Harrison Bergeron

I had to read "Speak". It was basically a short story about a girl getting SA'd and then treated like crap by everyone till the last couple pages. I do not think it had the intended effect they were going for.

In my fifth grade English class the four term themes were Civil War, Holocaust, dog books, and choose-your-own. For the first three units, my parents read all four options ahead of time and had me assigned to the least traumatizing. For the last term I picked Julie of the Wolves, a dog book disguised as a Wolf book; I'd always wondered why my second grade teacher suddenly stopped reading it to us at story time.

The two short stories that have really stuck with me are the Ray Bradbury one about the automated home and the Edgar Alan Poe one about the beating heart

I was assigned The Westing Game no led than three times from K-12

My favorite report I wrote was when I got to pick Terry Pratchett's Night Watch in my dual-credit community college English course and the red pen in the margins of my report was all compliments

The Veldt. Also, All Summer In A Day.

"The Cold Equations" kinda fucked me up not gonna lie.

It wasn't a short story, but a book that told a story in poems. The mc struggled with writing poetry and then he watched his dog get hit by a car and that made his poetry good or some shit. A room full of 5th graders wept. Book is called Love that Dog

We also read Old Yeller and cried collectively.

My 5th grade teacher loved that reoccurring theme, I guess? Dude was weird as hell.

From high middle-high school timeframe, probably The Yellow Wallpaper, I just think about that one at least a few times a year. And I only read it the one time in school.

The less well known one I remember from elementary school was My Brother Sam is Dead. It's about a family during the American revolution, where the father just wants to stay out of all of it and live their lives, but the eldest son wants to join the revolution. The whole story is just the hardships the family has to go through after the son runs off with the only gun to fight and ends up dying, and how that affects the family and the youngest brother, who the story is told from the perspective of.

None of my friends remember My Brother Sam is Dead, but if I'm remembering right, the ending is kinda dark for a bunch of 3-5th graders.

The one that stuck with me is The Cask of Amontillado.

There's a story called "Time Safari" that ends in a dude just straight up killing another dude. This was in a kid's literature book.

Also I think Casque of Amontillado is funny.

Mine is the one where the soldier returns from WWI completely desensitized to murder and fucked in the head.

He starts stabbing little girls, just like in the war. "Poor people" by Móricz if anyone is interested.

“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

I’ve been trying to find this ridiculous sci-fi story I read in elementary school. I thought it was Ray Bradbury but then I recalled it was, I believe, from a collection edited by and/or with a foreword by Bradbury.

The scenario was that people in the future had become so dependent on mechanized transportation that their legs atrophied. Walking around normally was seen as very strange as everyone used these hovering personal transport devices. I think the story basically just described the protagonist walking around town and taking strolls at night and how odd everyone else thought it was.

A Modest Proposal was quite memorable

There was a short story I read by one of the great Russian authors (name escapes me atm). A young man made a bet with a banker that he would spend 10 years in solitary confinement and be provided with any reading material he asked for. If he could endure it the whole 10 years, the banker would reward him with a handsome amount of money.

Fantastic story, thought about it pretty regularly throughout college.

If this rings any bells, I'd love to be reminded of the name!

Edit: Nvm, I found it! The Bet by Anton Chekhov

“The Savage Mouth” by Komatsu Sakyou, which involves

Or “Cogwheels” by Ryuunosuke Akutagawa, which

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.

An occurrence at owl creek bridge - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/375

And then “The Cold Equations” https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/...

Both are downers and have stuck with me for 35 years

I remember reading The Sniper by Liam O'Flaherty sometime in late middle school, I wanna say.

teacher let us know after that it was about the Irish civil war, and that things similar to the story had actually happened.

For me that is 'The Dreams in the Witch House', but that was 100% self inflicted.

Same answer i had on tumblr.

The Jaunt

A separate peace was a book we got in highschool where a kid possibly has homosexual feelings for another and throws him out of a tree which shatters his leg and eventually kills him.

I still often think about "Flowers for Algernon."

It wasn't in English class but I will never forget a book we read in another class I can't remember the subject of that class for some reason. The book was "A Child Called It" that just describes horrid child abuse.

I liked The Yellow Wallpaper

The Scarlet Ibis by James Hurst

The short story that sticks with me from junior high, that I have not been able to track down in the last 40 years or so, was if I remember right another lottery style tale. I think it was just the husband and the one chosen was eaten by the rest of the community - the twist was that the eatee got to choose the method of preparation, and in the story, he chose to be served raw. Anyone recall this story? I'd love to track it down.

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.

Is no one going to say they don’t have this experience? I can’t remember a single short story I read in any English or literature class ever. I can barely remember any of the books I was forced to read. On the contrary I can remember numerous books I was not forced to read, like Hitchhikers guide.

Touching Spirit Bear

I vividly remember passage describing in great detail of the main character nearly and slowly dying on the island. he was covered with mosquitos and the book dives headfirst into describing in great detail of this guy chewing into a live mouse/rat and then swallowing it.

A Rose for Emily.

It was about some old lady hermit. She had some relationship with the town and after she died they went into her house. >!Emily had been sleeping next to the corpse of her dead husband for probably decades!<.

A Child Called It and The Lost Boy by David Pelzer. That did some heavy desensitization in the future.

"And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.’’

The Book of Sand. Not fucked up, just mind-blowing.

I was behind in my literature class in like, 7th grade. The books were boring as hell and I couldn't make myself read the chapters at night.

Our teacher gave us a list of bonus titles to catch up for like, 1.5x the points of a normal book, so I jumped on the first one on the list.

I don't remember the title of the book unfortunately, but about one or two chapters or so, the either the main character or their neighbor or something...

Proceeded to put the book down and hand it back into the teacher and ask for a different one. I don't think she was aware of the content of the book

"A Country Doctor" by Franz Kafka. The whole thing is just one disturbing nightmare.

I remember "To Build a Fire" and another one I can't name about a sniper duel during the Irish Civil War. The ending was wild.

Edit: Was literally called The Sniper feel kinda dumb about that.

There Will Come Soft Rains

Someone already said it, but The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

The Bet, by Anton Chekov. That story has given me my existentialism

I was a senior in high school when we read the short story "Rape Fantasies" by Margaret Atwood out loud in class. I was 18 and still not ready for it.

I don’t remember the name of the short story, but I remember that it was about a town that abused someone they kept in a dungeon, and through their abuse they stayed unified. The teacher said it was a lesson in utilitarianism.

Top of mind for this subject: Flowers for Algernon.

Of Mice and Men might qualify, but weighs in at 100 pages. I'm not sure what the threshold is for "short."

On my own time in High-school, I read: I Have no Mouth and I Must Scream.

Nobody else for Equus?

The Chaser by John Collier… that ending … still gives me chills

Blood Music absolutely terrified me as a freshman in high school

Harrison Bergeron, in like 7th grade

i figured the tweet was about The Lotterry and everyone would go "Oh it's obviously a tweet about The Lottery" but nope.

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce. Someone did a great adaptation to film as well.

The one that sticks out for me is On The Sidewalk Bleeding. Wasn't even the most effed up thing we read in 9th grade, just had the most memorable name.

• "Gentlemen, your verdict" by Michael Bruce - trolley problem on a submarine (attention: weird vertical formatting)
• "Just Lather, That's All" by Hernando Téllez" - a barber during a civil war

The second one actually gave me half of a mental breakdown, but not because it was too violent for me.
One analysis that I read made the exact opposite conclusion that I made, and it showed me this: in the subject of English, two diametrically opposed points can both be equally correct! Nothing is fixed! Reality is mutable!

Also The Lottery, The Veldt, Harrison Bergeron (which others have already mentioned)

My senior year in high school, my English teacher started the year by having us turn in a list of all of the books we had read. My list was much longer than most of my classmates. He then assigned us books to read and report on based on some criteria (hypothesis: books that would make us miserable). I got assigned two existentialist plays, "Waiting for Godot" and "No Exit." I think those plays did permanent damage to my psyche.

(Sidenote: a classmate who didn't read very much got assigned Virginia Wolff. She thought it very unfair that I only had to rea d couple of plays.)

Tsunami survivor realizes a part of him died with his friend that day. Messed me up. Don't remember the name

Been looking for this book for a long time, maybe someone here can help? It was in french, no idea if it was ever translated. The whole story is a guy in room alone with his dad, the dad is in a coma and expected to die (I believe the familly decided to unplug him). The guy is bitching to his dad, telling him how much he hates him for being an abusive asshole or something. It was really crude and emotonial. At the end, instead of dying when he's unplugged, the dad wakes up. Maybe it was not a novel, but a part of a book, and maybe the title had the work Duck in it.

For me the school book short story that grabbed me was The Smallest Dragonboy by Anne McCaffrey. Not super scary, just sticky.

During online school we had to read about the "Edmund Fitzgerald" and there was a cringy song too. We were constantly being accused of skipping classes because zoom was under too much load and never loading, or would make 2 separate calls for some reason. Whole society under collapse and we had to uproot all of education just so we could learn that a fucking boat sank. THATS ALL THE UNIT WAS. Just a stupid boat sinking.

The egg by Andy Weir

That one with the little girl and mr beasly her "imaginary" friend

Alan and Naomi by Myron Levoy

It's a novel, but not a very long one.

The Tell Tale Heart.

Though it did spark a lifetime interest in video games featuring necromantic main characters.

Harrison Bergeron

Not in english, but we read Anne Frank's Diary in grade 8, Andorra by Max Frisch in grade 9 or 10.

But the most disturbing was "Der Sandmann" in grade 11 and "Der gelbe Vogel" (originally "Alan and Naomi") in grade 9.

gonna show my age here but the novel I am David by Anne Holm is still with me several decades after reading it for English Lit.

Zapped while zipping...