$1.98 - Arthur Porges
The best 4 or 5 page story I’ve ever read.
Where Are You Going And Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates. I first read it in middle school and it’s stuck with me over the years.
Other favorites:
The Elephant’s Child by Rudyard Kipling. All of the Just So stories are fun, but this one just sings.
Any of the single episodes from James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small.
I’m also a big fan of stories with unreliable narrators:
The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Rape Fantasies, by Margaret Atwood
Why I Live at the P.O., by Eudora Welty
Gene Wolfe’s “The Fifth Head of Cerebus” is a story that has stayed with me for a long time.
Every time I read about human cloning, I am reminded of the story.