Which short story have you never been able to forget?

[Orca]

Short stories have a way of staying with us. A novel might take weeks to read, but a short story can hit hard in twenty minutes and then refuse to leave your head for years. Many of us first read them at school, in a collection from a charity shop or in a magazine on a train. Some we cannot even name, only remember

Some stories are famous for their endings, like The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, The Monkey's Paw by W W Jacobs or Roald Dahl's Lamb to the Slaughter. Others stay with us for their ideas, like the science fiction of Ray Bradbury, Ted Chiang and Isaac Asimov. Then there are quieter stories, about ordinary lives, that somehow say more than any big drama could

For me, it is The Last Question by Isaac Asimov. It follows humanity and a computer across billions of years, as people keep asking the same question about whether the end of the universe can be reversed. I read it as a teenager and lay awake afterwards thinking about it. I still reread it every couple of years

Please tell us the story and the author, and why it stuck, but avoid giving away the endings for anyone who has not read them. If you cannot remember the title, describe it, and someone here might know. Stories from any country or language are welcome

Which short story have you never been able to forget? And where did you first read it?