di: I Maestri – Thomas Bailey Aldrich
A woman is sitting alone in a house. She knows she is alone in the whole world: every other living thing is dead. The doorbell rings.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich was an American writer, poet, critic, and editor, known for his semi-autobiographical book The Story of a Bad Boy, which established the “bad boy’s book” subgenre in nineteenth-century American literature.
Note by Underground: Have you ever heard of the shortest story invented by Stephen King? “The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door.” Well, it’s not really his own. Many suggest that he cited a short story written by Fredric Brown in 1948. But, if we look even deeper and in more ancient times, it seems that the true origin of that as short as terrifying story is to be found in the above microtale by T.B. Aldrich. So, this microtale is not only very captivating, but also has a very very special value…