Title: Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings. Author: Jorge Luis Borges. Year of Publication: 1962. Publisher: New Directions. Pages: 260. Genre: Short Story, Essay

I once heard a quote that described a particular artist’s creative process as “taking something ordinary and looking at it backwards.” This happens to be a perfect summary of the approach of Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. I’ll illustrate this with the examples of my favorite three stories in this collection.

The Lottery in Babylon

This story is an allegory. It takes something fundamental and ubiquitous, chance, and imagines its origin in a way that explains the role it plays in our lives. The story is set in Babylon, where all ancient, cruel, and decadent events occur in literature. It describes the rise of the Lottery which begins as familiar dice games with money as the stakes. The participants soon demand more exotic and encompassing results. The stakes rise to prison sentences and physical maiming. The fever for the Lottery leads to public outcry over participation fees and they are eventually abolished. Participation is made mandatory for all. Folk methods of skewing towards favorable outcomes are developed: rubbing a certain statue, whispering into a specific stone fissure. Gossip abounds over the influence of the shadowy organization that runs the Lottery (“The Company”) which holds the drawings in complete secrecy and enforces their rulings with seemingly limitless power.

Three Versions of Judas

This story is a dialectic. It evolves a series of arguments to frame Judas, the most reviled figure in the bible, as the actual savior of humanity. First, that Judas was the savior because he was the most instrumental in putting the events in motion that led Jesus to the cross. Second, that Judas made the ultimate sacrifice by renouncing his own spiritual salvation. Third, that Judas most completely fulfills the prophesies about the savior by being capable of sin (and therefore fully a man) and being hated by the world for not just one lifetime but the rest of eternity.

Borges was tremendously well read in theology, philosophy, and history. His erudition comes across in many of his stories which are often written in the style of scholarly articles. This story is quite similar in format to Soren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, which also examines the story of Abraham and Isaac from multiple perspectives.

The House of Asterion

This story is a puzzle where a well-known figure is described in an increasing degree of detail until his true identity is revealed. So as to not spoil the story for anyone interested in reading it I’ll only give the initial clues that Borges puts forward. The character lives alone in a mysterious house. The house has seemingly infinite rooms and courtyards. He is the son of a queen, but he is shunned by the common folk for reasons unknown to him. He receives only a select number of visitors although the doors of his house are open to anyone. Who is Asterion?

As part of writing this review I looked up the source of that quote, “taking something ordinary and looking at it backwards”. It was from a video about Junji Ito, another uniquely inventive writer who created horror manga about time, mysteriously alluring objects, and the blurring lines between story and reality. I suppose all roads lead back to infinity.

Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges: Review was originally published in Story Lamp Reviews on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This story is part of the Story Lamp Reviews Halloween Fiction Special 2026.
Genre: Psychological Horror

Sleep was elusive. It needed to be tracked carefully through narrow ridge lines bordered by anxiety spirals. Among peaks of hyperactivity and valleys of excruciating boredom. More often than not it could only be found on the level plain of physical exhaustion. Today was one of those days and Natalie fell into a fitful slumber.

“Double-declining balance,” a voice whispered. She did not stir.

“Double-declining balance,” the voice repeated more insistently. Natalie frowned in her sleep and turned onto her side.

“Double-declining balance.” This time it was close and loud enough that she could feel the vibrations on her earlobe and the breath catching her hair. She awoke in a blind panic, fighting to throw off her sheets. They were impossibly heavy, as if weighed down at the corners by large boulders.

Natalie craned her neck to look around the room but she was utterly alone in the darkness.

The team gathered for lunch in the kitchenette on their floor. They brought colorful bowls of turmeric rice, pesto, beetroot, and roasted red peppers. Purchased from the nameless multitudes of trendy fast casual concepts in the vicinity of the office. Blanched by the overhead lights and rendered tasteless by the dry recirculated air.

Natalie’s project was not going well, at least as far as she could tell. What was most excruciating was the total lack of signal. Every meeting and progress update was met with a noncommital nod from her absentee manager who was somehow always present at the office but never available. She had no idea how the others were doing, because the kitchenette seemed to pull them all into a liminal space restricted to minor complaints and farflung hopes and trifling small talk.

“Is everyone excited for the Halloween party?” one of the other new grads offered.

Their most outspoken member rolled her eyes. “Another networking event, this time with apple cider instead of cheap canned rosé.”

Scarcely listening to the conversation, Natalie tried to balance a stringy piece of pink pickled onion on her plastic fork.

At that moment the senior associate on their team put down her phone with a dull thud.

“Have you guys heard the story yet?”

“We used to have an MD who was really into Halloween. The party was his baby, basically. He managed all the decorations and catering himself. This place looked like a legit haunted house.”

“They thought it was just one of his props at first, a bedsheet ghost hung from one of the ceiling beams. When the event staff realized it was real HR rushed everyone out and tried to hush the whole thing up.”

“That MD ‘retired’ and they’ve toned down the party ever since. The girl was depressed I guess.”

Someone managed a “that’s awful” in the awkward pause that prevailed.

Awful and probably fake, like everything else at this company, Natalie thought.

The senior associate smiled wryly.

“No one stays for long on this team. It’s either up or out.”

“Up or out.”

Next Steps, Next Steps. The last slide Natalie had to prepare before she left for the day. The lights shut off an hour earlier, plunging the section into a soft darkness that only made the pale glare of her computer monitor all the more jarring.

A swift succession of keystrokes rang out into the empty room. She examined the new title.

“Basd Ratcs”

She frowned and erased it. She typed again, this time more deliberately.

“Cilp Thrvw”

She brought her face up close to the screen in disbelief. The familiar despair crept up. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Once more she erased the title and started again.

“Next Stpes”

She hit the power button, grabbed her jacket, and left. She could still hear the faint chatter and clanking of plates from the Halloween party. It would take the last stragglers, drunk or ambitious, another hour to shuffle out.

The elevator lobby was somehow comforting with its light freckled sandstone and warm lighting. A soft ding announced the arrival of one of the six, the far left. She stepped in and sighed at the prospect of being back in the exact same spot in a few short hours.

The doors closed. As they met she saw it in the contours of their burnished metal. The sloped curves of drooping shoulders. The rounded shape of a veiled head, inclined at a sharply unnatural angle.

The elevator started down with a heavy groan.

New Grad Blues was originally published in Story Lamp Reviews on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“There’s my daughter!” a hearty voice boomed from the doorway.

“Quick quick, come in. It’s cold out there.”

Laura’s father sized her up.

“She’s all grown up now. Ivy league scholar,” he said proudly.

“You have to tell us all about what you’re learning, although your mom and I probably won’t understand it. Oh, but if you’re tired you can take a nap first. I vacuumed in your room and put on a fresh set of sheets. Everything else is just how you left it.”

Laura walked into the dining room. Every spare surface held a dish. Roast chicken and peppery gravy. Cinnamon sugar crescent rolls. Tater tot casserole topped generously with melted cheddar.

Her mother popped in from the kitchen with her flour dusted apron still on.

“I made all your favorites.”

“Thanks mom,” Laura said quietly.

Her mother smiled awkwardly.

“Of course, dear.”

Friday Flash Fiction Prompt

Homecoming was originally published in Story Lamp Reviews on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The diver double checked his equipment on the dock. He tested the inflator on his buoyancy control device, then the exhaust valve. The three partial pressure readings matched on his wrist-mounted dive computer. He felt around his neck for his back-up regulator, confirming it was securely fastened within a second’s reach.

He was motioning a thumbs up to the safety diver in the water when his fiancee ran up to him. She’d begged him not to go. Had nightmares of his body floating, lifeless, out of the reach of the sun and the passage of time.

She pressed a cloth sachet into his hand.

“For luck.”

She rubbed her thumb against the palm of her hand the way she always did when she was nervous.

“It is borrowed. You’ll come back now. I’ve always been lucky.”

“I met you after all.”

Friday Flash Fiction Prompt

The Record Attempt was originally published in Story Lamp Reviews on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“So how’s civilian life been treating you?” asked one retired astronaut to the other.

“It’s weird man. Being here” — Jay gestured at the ruddy sandstone and bleached scrub of Utah canyon country — “is about as comfortable as I’ve felt in months.”

Grant sighed sympathetically. “It’s cause you have too much free time. You gotta get a dog or something.”

They were hiking steadily up a steep rocky spire. The sky was a boundless sheet of blue, of a vivacity impossible for the thin atmosphere of the planet from which they’d returned. When they reached the top Grant handed Jay his camera.

“Could you get a picture of me? For the family to see.”

“Sure.”

Jay maneuvered around to get the best angle.

“Gimme a sec — ”

He jumped from one boulder to another.

“Watch out — ”

But Jay, having misjudged the strength of Earth’s gravity, was already gone.

Friday Flash Fiction Prompt

Mars, I never left was originally published in Story Lamp Reviews on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Touches of frost tipped dry grass on a chill late autumn morning. A soft blanket of grey fog settled over hills squared by crooked fenceposts and potholed roads. The disquieting stillness was broken by the dull roar of a sleek black car passing through.

“I heard this area’s known for witches,” said the man in the driver’s seat. “There’s meant to be a stone circle right in one of these sheep pastures.”

The woman in the passenger’s seat was skeptical. “All I know’s if you drive into a ditch going around a tractor again I’ll show you a witch!” She laughed.

“Hehehe hahaa!”

“Baaa! Baaaaa!”

The man looked at her sharply. She stared back.

“What are you looking at me like that for?”

The man hesitated. “You made a weird noise.”

“No I didn’t.”

He settled uncomfortably back into his seat.

“Maybe I was just imagining things.”

Friday Flash Fiction Prompt

Interference was originally published in Story Lamp Reviews on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Title: The Mystic Poets. Author: Rabindranath Tagore. Year of Publication: February 2004. Publisher: SkyLight Paths. Pages: 134. Genre: Poetry

Sometime in early 2020 I checked out a copy of The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy from the Pittsburgh public library. The book hitched a ride with me home for spring break. A week away from my college campus stretched to a month on into indefinite due to the global pandemic. I ended up mailing the book back long past the due date. In the chaos I hadn’t finished it.

There was one quote that stuck with me though, part of a story within the main story. “To see God everywhere is to see Him nowhere.” As I was reading I imagined the winds and waves of a hurricane, snapping trees like twigs and submerging houses up to their rooftops. In the face of such overwhelming force how can there be the same meaning in the falling of a single leaf, even if they are both of God? It seemed a repudiation of such vacuous statements as everything happens for a reason. But when it comes time for us to comfort another through a loss or grapple with a terrible tragedy other words escape us and an everything happens for a reason slips through our lips.

The simplicity of Tagore’s poetry belies the effort involved in giving shape and language to the spiritual world without devolving into empty platitudes. Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) was an artist in diverse disciplines from music to literature to painting, a reformer, and a mystic. The selection I read comes from two larger collections, The Gardener and Gitanjali. The latter was first translated into English by the author in 1912 and was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature the following year.

By all means they try to hold me secure who love me in this world. But it is otherwise with thy love which is greater than theirs, and thou keepest me free.

Lest I forget them they never venture to leave me alone. But day passes by after day and thou art not seen.

If I call not thee in my prayers, if I keep not thee in my heart, thy love for me still waits for my love.

- Gitanjali Poem 32

Some of the poems are parables, some outpourings of emotion, and some reflections after much meditation and soul-searching. They all exhibit an encompassing universality. The metaphors he reaches for are legible across cultures. The tone is not overly prescriptive and avoids a sectarian bent.

It is the pang of separation that spreads throughout the world and gives birth to shapes innumerable in the infinite sky.

It is this sorrow of separation that gazes in silence all night from star to star and becomes lyric among rustling leaves in rainy darkness of July.

It is this overspreading pain that deepens into loves and desires, into sufferings and joys in human homes; and this it is that ever melts and flows in songs through my poet’s heart.

- Gitanjali Poem 84

To evoke God in a falling leaf is a much more formidable accomplishment than to evoke Him in a hurricane, I guess.

The Mystic Poets : Tagore — Review was originally published in Story Lamp Reviews on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Outside a neighborhood bar near closing time. Moody lamps cast a warm glow onto the pavement outside, illuminating a series of figures who can only be seen vaguely, in shadow.

MALE VOICE: [Disgusted]. All you do is disrespect me. I must have been having a stroke when I agreed to take you back after your last “little slip-up”.

A brief strain of music emanates from a passing car, which revs its engine and speeds away.

SINGER: Wanna get me with no money oh no —

FEMALE VOICE: [Plaintive]. Where are my glasses? Oh hell, where are my glasses? Where are my glasses?

Scene is overtaken by the overwhelming din of an ambulance, flashing orange and red lights, diminishing to a low drone before disappearing entirely.

MALE VOICE: [Coughing violently]. Where’d you get this stuff? It smells even more like piss than usual!

Thanks for reading! This piece took inspiration from The Dining Room by A.R. Gurney, in which a group of actors and actresses rotate through various parts in a collection of vignettes all set in one respectable looking dining room.

Friday Flash Fiction Prompt

Cheers was originally published in Story Lamp Reviews on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

She awoke to the morning sunlight weakly filtering through the blinds in dappled thin strips. A breeze softly beat down from the dark wood tines of an overhead ceiling fan. Whoom, Whoom, Whoom.

She threw off her blanket and rolled upright, pausing to catch her breath. A searching hand found and lightly tapped the phone charging on her nightstand. Her heart sank at the sight of the notification bubble.

She quickly stuffed swollen feet into fuzzy slippers and shuffled down the stairs to her laptop.

“Due to changing business conditions we have made the difficult decision to pursue a reduction in force. We regret to inform you that your role has been impacted.”

She closed the lid with a muted thud.

“How come?”

“How come it had to be me?”

Friday Flash Fiction Prompt

6 AM on a Tuesday was originally published in Story Lamp Reviews on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Title: Some Can Whistle. Author: Larry McMurtry. Year of Publication: 1989. Pages: 376. Genre: Contemporary Western

Danny Deck is a T.V. writer who stumbled into success with a hit show after hitting rock bottom. After throwing his unfinished novel into the Rio Grande, becoming estranged from his wife, and being cut off from his newborn child he ironically became the brains behind a sweetly comedic sitcom of idyllic suburban family life called “Al and Sal”. Some 20 years later Deck has retired from show business to a sprawling estate in the Texas plains where he spends his days calling old girlfriends and watching old movies. His peaceful retirement is rudely interrupted when his now grown daughter T.R. comes barreling in to break his complacency, seeking refuge from a murderous ex named Earl Dee.

Disorder and early sorrow, of a very average kind, thrust me out and propelled me westward where for many years I failed at everything. All that time I missed Houston and missed it keenly…I missed it as much as I’ve missed certain women — and there are women I’ve missed so much that I’ve become afraid to see them again: it becomes too big a risk, because if you miss them that much and then see them and they turn out to not like you anymore — or worse, you turn out to not like them anymore — then something important to you is forever lost.
[Pg. 73]

Danny Deck has a very relatable sort of petrification, an inability to cope with the vicissitudes of life. He is as hapless in Houston where he goes to find T.R. as he was in Hollywood. Some Can Whistle asks a series of questions: is it possible to make up for lost time? All the missed birthdays and milestones of a kid growing up. Is it possible to recapture old memories? Of places and people we loved and never went to again. The novel seems to posit the answer is no. But maybe we can make something new if we have the will and the time and the oft callous world doesn’t get in the way.

The rules of happiness are as strict as the rules of sorrow; indeed, perhaps more strict. The two states have different densities, I’ve come to think. The lives of happy people are dense with their own doings — crowded, active, thick — urban, I would almost say.
But the sorrowing are nomads, on a plain with few landmarks and no boundaries; sorrow’s horizons are vague and its demands few.
[Pg. 368]

Other Notes

• The ruthless editor in me thinks the novel would improve with the following cuts: T.R.’s coworkers Dew and Sue, 3 or 4 of Danny’s less mentioned girlfriends, Pedro and Buddy the security guy, Elena and her 3 sisters, and the entire fourth part, among others.

Some Can Whistle by Larry McMurtry: Review was originally published in Story Lamp Reviews on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.