What is the saddest short story you've ever read?

[Kevin]

The Kolyma Tales by Shalamov. All of them. Beautiful and utterly hopeless.

[Frater_Tsalal]

"Snapper" by Leonid Andreyev. Depressed me so greatly the first time I read it that I wrote a happy ending on the remaining blank space of the page following the original ending.

[paeng]

James Joyce's "The Dead" Dubliners, by James Joyce : The Dead

[Karnos]

It isn't exactly a sad story, rather bittersweet, but I almos cried by the end of Ray Bradbury's The Rocket, collected in The Illustrated Man

[ToALonelyPeace]

Quote Originally Posted by Karnos

It isn't exactly a sad story, rather bittersweet, but I almos cried by the end of Ray Bradbury's The Rocket, collected in The Illustrated Man

I like his story The Long Rain, +5 years after reading I still remember it vividly.

[Ramsey Campbell]

The one that immediately comes to mind is "A Dark Brown Dog" by Stephen Crane, which haunted my childhood even more than some of Hans Andersen did. For some reason I recalled it for decades as the work of Arthur Morrison and assumed it was from Tales of Mean Streets.

[Zaharoff]

Mmm, I just remembered "San Diego Lightfoot Sue" by Tom Reamy.
Sad tale of the bargain, and the spell, gone awry.

Reamy died young, collapsing on his typewriter whilst working on a story.
He may be less remembered today.
For a brief surge in the 70s, his bittersweet tales stood apart from almost everything else from that heady period.

[Druidic]

The saddest short story I've ever read? The first one I wrote at the age of 14. Hands down the saddest.

No wonder I took a 40 year vacation.

[Acutely decayed]

Carcinoma Angels sobering at least, at a young age

[cannibal cop]

Quote Originally Posted by Ramsey Campbell

The one that immediately comes to mind is "A Dark Brown Dog" by Stephen Crane, which haunted my childhood even more than some of Hans Andersen did. For some reason I recalled it for decades as the work of Arthur Morrison and assumed it was from Tales of Mean Streets.

Talking about sad dog stories, don't forget Ramsey's own "The Whining" which, in a few potent images, evokes the desperate lonely existence of a shabby stray dog haunting a public park.

And in classic Ramsey Campbell fashion, things only go from sad to worse.