Much as I hate to admit it, I only recently discovered the macabre genius of Saki (H. H. Munro). Those of you who know him, please bear with me as I ransack Wikipedia for synopses of a few of his twisted short stories; and all who don't know him yet are encouraged to read those stories (I just found that Amazon offers several of his works on the Kindle for free; PDFs can be downloaded here):
"The Schartz-Metterklume Method" (he had a knack for outlandish names!)
At a railway station, an arrogant and overbearing woman mistakes the mischievous Lady Carlotta (who has been inadvertently left behind by Carlotta's train) for the governess Miss Hope she expected. Lady Carlotta, deciding not to correct the mistake, acknowledges herself as Miss Hope, a proponent of "the Schartz-Metterklume method" of making children understand history by acting it out themselves, and chooses the Rape of the Sabine Women (exemplified by a washerwoman's two girls) as the first lesson.
"The Toys of Peace"
Rather than giving her young boys gifts of toy soldiers and guns, their mother Eleanor instructs her brother to give the children innovative "peace toys" as an Easter present. When the packages are opened, the boys are disappointed to find models of a school of art, a municipal dust-bin and a public library, as well as little toy figures of John Stuart Mill, poet Felicia Hemans, and astronomer Sir John Herschel, not sure how to extract fun from these.
Youthful inventiveness finds a way, however, as the boys combine their history lessons on Louis XIV with a lurid and violent play-story of the invasion of Britain and the storming of the Young Women's Christian Association. The end of the story has Harvey report failure to Eleanor, explaining "We have begun too late."
"The Open Window"
Framton Nuttel has come to stay in the country for his health. His sister, has given him letters of introduction to families in the neighborhood who she got to know when she was staying there a few years previously.
Framton goes to visit a Mrs Sappleton, and while he is waiting for her to come down, he is entertained by her fifteen-year-old niece. The niece tells him that the French window is kept open, even though it is October, because her aunt's husband and her brothers, as well as the fathful dog, were killed in a shooting accident three years ago, and Mrs Sappleton believes they will come back one day.
When Mrs Sappleton comes down she talks about her husband and brothers, and how they are going to come back from the shooting soon, and Framton, believing she is deranged, tries to distract her by talking about his health. Then, to his horror, Mrs Sappleton points out that her husband and brothers are coming, and he sees them walking towards the window, with their dog. He thinks he is seeing ghosts, and runs away.
Mrs Sappleton can't understand why he has run away, and when her husband and brothers come in, she tells them about the odd man who has just left. The niece "explains" that Framton Nuttel ran away because of the dog; "he is afraid of dogs since being hunted by a pack of pariah dogs in India". The last line summarizes the story, saying of the niece, "Romance at short notice was her speciality."
+++
I need to inject more romance at short notice into my life, seems like!