So far, all the stories on this list have been morally ambiguous—this one is decidedly not so. It’s also not technically a short story, but a song. I included it on this list because it has the arc and narrative twists and turns of a great short story, not to mention attention to detail that becomes even more impressive when executed in the meter of song lyrics (“Stinky Bohoon and his friend with the pumpkin-sized head”). Cave paints a whole small town (blood red) in this murder ballad about the teenage Loretta, who kills according to an adage her mother relayed to her: “All God’s children/they all gotta die!” There’s something sickeningly delightful about an antihero who has no qualms about the violence she commits, a point that gets hammered home in the final moments of the song:

They ask me if I feel remorse and I answer, “Why of course!
There’s so much more I could have done if they’d let me!”

From Murder Ballads, Mute Records, 1996