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I try to not remember The Veldt but I still liked it as a good read. I also hated Harrison Bergeron but I think I was suppose to?
I think Harrison Bergeron was just bad.
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The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin
https://archive.org/details/coldequationsoth0000godw
Or
The Veldt by Ray Bradbury
The Jaunt
Had to scroll to the bottom to finally find this. Scrolled longer than you think! LONGER THAN YOU THINK!
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Damn near anything Ray Bradbury wrote. I swear he just wanted to traumatize anyone that read any of his work.
I must need to read more, last short stories I read (maybe listened) were relatively tame about being on Mars I think, so possibly not the right collection. Maybe I didn’t quite get their message either. Did listen to Something this way comes, which has its disturbing parts but not overly but nicely geared for a younger audience for sure. That said I started reading Stephen King and watching horror movies much younger than is probably expected, think first Nightmare on Elm Street was before 10 heh, King books were later of course.
Oh my God thank you. I’d been trying to think back to an animated short story about a house with no living humans going about it’s programmed life that I saw in school in the 80s. On and off for the last 20 years I’ve searched for Asimov, Clarke, even thinking maybe it was Adams, never considered it was Bradbury. There will come soft rains. 20 years!
Mine was all summer in a day. I know the feeling.
That short story about the automated house that keeps going even though everybody is dead fucked me up pretty good. I can’t remember whether that was part of the martian chronicles or not.
There Will Come Soft Rains
Shoot, you beat me to it. I was going to recommend The Long Rain, which I read when I was 12 or so and it certainly traumatized me. (I love it now though)
The entire collection is fantastic though. I highly recommend!!
High school teacher had us read Survivor Type - thus began my love for stephen king
It might not be disturbing, but I think that anyone that is going into the Engineering field should read Superiority by Arthur C. Clarke.
Blood Child ild by Octavia Butler. Humans living on an alien reservation have the males implanted by the insect like alien’s eggs and they start burrowing out of your flesh when they’re ready.
SCP-093.
I only recently discovered Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, but I think that would need to be in the conversation.
Still think about this from HS. Years later. Such a good one.
This is the best answer. Iirc it was actually printed in one of my HS English books, and is actually a short story.
I read that in 9th grade and it didn’t phase or really scare me. In my case, I think it’s because I was used to more violent video games.
Either way, I would agree. Was a pretty good story, all things considered.
I discovered the book after the residents of Springfield went mad trying to win the local lottery, only to discover a chilling tale of conformity gone mad.
Lord of the flies
That was not short, but it was dark
I remember in high school our text book had some paragraphs from various literature books. One of the books was called zombie (or zombies) so of course I checked it out, even if the teacher skipped it. The section was just a description or something, nothing particular, but I decided to borrow the book at the library anyway, and the full story was basically (spoilers ahead, it’s gory):
Tap for spoiler
This guy kidnapped people (men, women) to give them a lobotomy, then kept them in his bathtub to rape them until they started to rot
I wonder if somebody did it as an Easter egg or what
Im still scarred by my english teacher enthusiastically reading certain scenes of Equus to the class.
The Dweller in the Gulf by Clark Ashton Smith.
All Summer in a Day isn’t necessarily scary, but reading it in 6th grade felt like a real eye opener on just how evil people can be, especially when they don’t even understand that they are.
