Cafe Dissensus Everyday

The Blog of Cafe Dissensus Magazine – we DISSENT

Posts from the ‘Short Story’ category

The Less Fortunate

By Haris Ahmed
The man was shivering; a young lad shoved him down on his knees. Another man loaded his rifle. Before the crowd could react, the man lay lifeless in a pool of blood. The crowd began cheering and roaring in frenzy.

The Ripples of Life

By Lopa Banerjee
Her thoughts glided between her life, then and now. Life had threatened her with its clarion call, which she tried her best to dismiss with her arrogance, her vitality, her quest to live. Her mother’s death had pushed her, vehemently and mercilessly, to a bottomless pit from which she pulled herself out slowly.

The Gift

By Anna P. Monaghan
Pickard glowed in private memory of his kindnesses, but he desired greatly for a new language of love. This was not just kindness, he thought – this was a man’s right to feel! To feel and express his feeling! Would his snobbish relatives ever understand? How would they react if they knew François was in his will? A man has the right to pass on his legacy – it is his right! And François was safe.

The alternative ending: Stepping over the line (Part-5)

By Achyut Dutt
Oblivious that the traffic had now started moving once again and some very angry folk were blaring their horns behind him, Arjun kept his foot jammed on the brake pedal and stared back at the lovely face of Nandini Shyamrao. She had known he was in Pune but hadn’t told him she, too, had connections with Pune. Far as he knew, her folk were spread over Bangalore and Chennai.

Shalik’s story: Stepping over the line (Part-3)

By Achyut Dutt
He had then taken her by the hand, up the grassy slope, onto the narrow walkers’ path that ringed the lake. Exactly ten years from that day, they were married. He had a few conditions that she had respected. That she’d walk into his home with only one suitcase filled with just the things dear to her.

The day after: Stepping over the line (Part-2)

By Achyut Dutt
In the beginning, she’d been reserved, hesitant about talking of herself. He was just an unknown strange man who wrote outrageously funny notes that made her burst into laughter. As the days went by, though, the levee she’d hurriedly constructed seemed to look like it was made with cotton candy.

Holiday

By Rabindranath Tagore
The other boys were overjoyed to see these results almost before the games had started in earnest, but Photik became very anxious. Makhan scrambled up immediately and attacked Photik, hitting him with blind rage.

Short Story: Is that you darling? Are you home?

By Achyut Dutt
The years have flown fairly quickly after that. After moving to the west, Rani and you had one more child, a son, Arnav. He is going to Stanford since last August. Tina lives with her husband Dieter in Schwedt. They have a cottage by the Elbe. And Rani. It’s now a year since the very light of your life, your Rani, passed away, consumed by the cancer which had galloped unchecked through her thyroids.

Short Story: Union at Christmas

By Achyut Dutt
The ritual thereafter began predictably. Like hundreds of other evenings. I gave Sally a quick peck on the cheek at her door and walking down the length of the hallway to my apartment. And she waited till I reached my doorstep and gave me a tiny wave.

Short Story: ‘Death by Snow’

By Mosarrap H. Khan
The compartment stank of stale booze and urine. He saw the bundled figure in the corner seat. The patched rug, the crumpled clothes, a pair of torn shoes, a crooked bottle of water, and a pile of old newspapers heaped in the cart. He felt repulsed when he first encountered these people in train. He no longer felt the same nauseating feeling as the stench became bearable in a few minutes.