Menu

Prompts

Contests

Stories

Blog

Menu

✕

CONNECT

Editing Design Marketing Publicity Ghostwriting Websites

BLOG

Success Stories

APPS

TOOLS

Book Promotion Sites Book Review Blogs Booktube Channel Guide Book Title Generator Character Name Generator Independent Publishers Literary Agents Literary Magazines Pen Name Generator Plot Generator Publishers Directory Short Story Ideas Writing Contests Writing Exercises Writing Scholarships

ABOUT

About Reedsy Terms Privacy

CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

#206: Phobias

Have you ever had that nightmare where someone is chasing you, but you can’t scream or run away? It’s a pretty common (and terrifying) bad dream, and it always makes me wonder how I’d respond in a scary moment of crisis.

Fight, flight, or freeze? You never really know what you’re going to get until you’re in that moment, staring down the object of your fear — whether that’s losing someone you love, getting stuck in an enclosed space, being surrounded by a massive crowd, or just finding a cockroach in your bathroom.

Fear is a powerful feeling to capture in writing, so this week, join me to study this lightning-bolt emotion as it illuminates the actions of your characters.

This week's prompts

Write about someone facing their greatest fear.

Dramatic – 109 stories

Write a story that contains a flashback of a nightmare.

Horror – 63 stories

Start your story with a character seeing something terrifying.

Horror – 53 stories

Write about a character in a situation where they have to be brave for someone else’s sake.

Character – 61 stories

Set your story in an eerie, surreal setting.

Dark – 87 stories

Stories

“Trinity” by Chris Miller

Submitted to Contest #206

The thin hiss of a distant ocean rolled around the library’s barrel ceiling. I didn’t have long left to find her. We couldn’t miss our boat. I walked past an iron staircase that corkscrewed through the floor and up to a level above. Would climbing to the upper levels offer me a better view of the library and increase my chances of finding her? The shelves of the upper levels were partially visible from where I stood near the library’s heavy doors; they were empty. The books had been stripped from the age-bowed ribs that had hel...

Read story

“Social Proof” by Russell Mickler

Submitted to Contest #206

Ethan reoriented his phone and pushed his stocking cap back to reveal more of his hair before offering his audience a two-fingered peace sign. "Hey-hey, guys! Wazzup?" Aiden raked Ethan’s hand. “Dude, what the Hell?” “What’s gotten into you?” Sam chortled, recording both of them on his phone through a cloud of steamy breath. “Scared?” “No,” Aiden barked, glaring apprehensively into Sam’s camera. “I’m black, moron. Shit like this gets a brother killed.” In response to Aiden’s misgivings, heart, laughing, and smiling emojis floated up Aiden’s ...

Read story

“Rehab” by Daniel Fernandes

Submitted to Contest #206

"Hello my name is Mike not a host just a friend. We are here to help and assist it all depends. We don't judge or make fun of others. No need to anyways because we all know what it's like to suffer. Thank you all for joining to get cleaner than a bar of soap. I know the process is difficult I was once addicted to Coke. We learn from our mistakes and bounce the pain back with hope. Make a new path in life since we all fell down a brutal slope. So for those who don't know, we will go around the room. There isn't much of us here on a Friday...

Read story

“ Lost to memory” by Kevin Logue

Submitted to Contest #206

How did I get here? The question sounds new to my swirling fractured mind, yet I know I've asked it before. I must have. But how many times? Like memory, time has little to no stability in this place of shifting darkness, it flows as freely as the warm liquid that binds me. I can hear my captors through the constant, unending drumming. Is its purpose to torture me? Perhaps, but for what? What could I have done or know that I could possibly deserve this?They laugh, no doubt mocking my cramped confinement, the sound crashes over my head l...

Read story

“The Words Change” by Jack Kimball

Submitted to Contest #206

“The words change,” she’d whisper to me at night in our bedroom, winter sleet against the windowpane. “They shift," she’d say, her eyes runny, terrorized, hidden in shadow.I didn’t know what she meant.My wife would come down to breakfast, not eat, just pick at her eggs, red-orange yolks. The kitchen air would crackle, an electrical charge in her presence. The smell of burnt wire. Her nails were chewed to the hub; tattered band-aids wrapped her fingers, blood seeped through. She'd left her senses by then; her face waxy, white, glistening. But...

Read story

“The dangers of smoking” by Kevin Logue

Submitted to Contest #206

This is a true story.Ever been scared of the weather? Yeah, sounds stupid doesn't it? And I'm not talking about crashing thunder that rumbles mountains, or hurricane winds that take you to Oz. No, I'm talking about the start of summer, blue sky dotted with delightful fluffy clouds and a gentle breeze on your face type weather. What some might even call perfect. Well between the ages of thirteen and fifteen it scared the daylights right out of me.Probably best to start in the middle right?There I was ready for a night out at the local bowling...

Read story

“Night Shift” by Chris Campbell

Submitted to Contest #206

It all started one wintry night. I was waiting to cross a busy intersection on Oxford Street in London’s West End. My workday had just ended, and it felt good to be out of that stuffy office. I had been feeling warm all day and hoped I wasn’t coming down with a cold or flu that regularly permeated the office environment at this time of year. Joining the throngs of people heading for the underground trains on their way home, I breathed in the crisp air that usually had a ruffled chill to every month of January, and was looking forward to gett...

Read story

“Shadow Self” by Katharine Widdows

Submitted to Contest #206

Arthur Drake coughed a breath of acrid smoke from his lungs and took a few steps backwards, away from the heat and the stench and the shrieking. His stomach churned with bile and his eyes filled with tears. Tension dragged its way through his muscles, pulling his ribs tight around his lungs and his shoulders high up to his jaw. Might this happen to him one day?The jostling crowd shuffled backwards with him, expanding their circle away from the pyre as a wave of searing heat emanated from the burning wood. Evelyn Crow’s piercing screams scorc...

Read story

“Surface Tension” by Story Time

Submitted to Contest #206

As the raft made its way across the river, Emerson Carver forgot his own name. He looked down into the prized water of the Philipse and couldn’t find his face. The surface was coated with gray algae and there were disturbances from the paddles pushing through the tension. He sat back down and rubbed his hands over the life vest that was too small for him. Could it really hold him up if something occurred? He tried to remember his first name. He couldn’t. He knew the last name sounded like Shaver. He was close, but would never get any closer ...

Read story

“The Bourne” by RJ Holmquist

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #206

The BourneBOURNE: (noun) 1. a limit or boundary 2. a goal or destinationExcerpt from the personal log of Commander Alfred Livingstone Earth Year 2492—“I have always been afraid of death. The fear has driven me, kept me moving, forced me to explore. I have always felt that if I stop searching, stop pushing the boundaries, stop discovering, death will catch me.Earthside, death feels so near. The ground I walk on is made from bodies decayed eons before, the greenery and breathing things all around me rely on the death of something else to ...

Read story

“To Lay It As It Plays” by Mike Panasitti

Submitted to Contest #206

There’s something terribly pretentious about a poem, but there’s no better voice in which to tell us when it all started than a poet’s voice.It started with the joyful wisdom and some dismally smart hypochondriac who hypothesized the death of divinity as well as the related curious notion that everything recurs. It started with him, Freddie, and with Stevie, some wheelchair-bound brainiac, who wrote a book claiming that in the instant before time and space commence, all matter is undifferentiated.One numerological year before a brief hi...

Read story

“Painted White” by Steffen Lettau

Submitted to Contest #206

Fall came. Fall goes. And then, the fall comes back.It was a favorite time for the community, and the relief from the freezing cold brought by their last visitor was as abound as the falling leaves. The reports of the lack of Hunters brought even more joy, and it felt as if peace was going to be a mainstay. For Tholan, it brought about a familiar stage of paranoia.He was keeping an eye out for the spiders.This was a time for festivities, as the harvest brought about a bounty that would last them even through the winter as their storages were...

Read story

“FEAR ITSELF” by Susan Catucci

Submitted to Contest #206

“Where do you think you’re going?”“Uh, the library.”“You’re supposed to stay here and watch me.”“Camden, don’t you have homework?”“Don’t you?”“Um, library?”“You’re not that kind of . . .”“Okay, okay. Camden, if I tell you, you can’t breathe a word to anyone!”“Allie, you can trust me. I never told anybody about you and, who was that guy . . .”“All right, all right. Well, this is an even bigger deal than that.”“I’m all ears.”* * *Just my luck, my little brother has big ears; I can’t get away with much having him around...

Read story

“Samshoblo” by Sophia Gavasheli

Submitted to Contest #206

TW: death. I learned of my father’s death on a Sunday morning, while building a Lego pirate ship with my daughter. The house felt as sterile as a hospital that morning, sickly white light filtering through the windows, Cecilia’s giggling echoing around the freshly painted walls. We were sprawled on the cool tiled floor, bright Legos scattered all around us. I smiled at my daughter as I read the instructions and she grabbed plastic bricks, clicking them into place with a grin. Cici was putting the finishing touches on the hull of...

Read story

“Faces” by Dan Beattie

Submitted to Contest #206

It was the feeling of being watched in the night that I first noticed. I would awake in the night, the joy of getting older I suppose. The house was silent, but then living out here it always is. I’d stagger through to the bathroom for a pee, and just get the feeling there was eyes on me. I brushed it off as remnants of a dream, or a light paranoia of living alone and someone breaking in. The daytime never bothered me until later. But at night, no matter how hard I tried to rationalise it I couldn’t shake that feeling. I couldn’t hear or see...

Read story

Load more stories

$250

Prize money

373

Contest entries

130

Stories

Ended on 23:59 - Jul 14, 2023 EST

Won by Parul Shah 🏆

Title: Shameless

Submissions must be between 1,000 - 3,000 words and will be approved and published on Reedsy Prompts within 7 days of the contest closing.

Read the full terms & conditions or check out the FAQ if you have any questions!

Explore more writing prompt ideas:

Adults Writing Prompts ⭢

Adventure Writing Prompts ⭢

Angst Writing Prompts ⭢

Character Writing Prompts ⭢

Christmas Writing Prompts ⭢

Dark Writing Prompts ⭢

Dialogue Writing Prompts ⭢

Dramatic Writing Prompts ⭢

Dystopian Writing Prompts ⭢

Fall Writing Prompts ⭢

Fantasy Writing Prompts ⭢

Fiction Writing Prompts ⭢

Fluff Writing Prompts ⭢

Funny Writing Prompts ⭢

Halloween Writing Prompts ⭢

High School Writing Prompts ⭢

Historical Fiction Writing Prompts ⭢

Holiday Writing Prompts ⭢

Horror Writing Prompts ⭢

Kids Writing Prompts ⭢

Middle School Writing Prompts ⭢

Mystery Writing Prompts ⭢

Narrative Writing Prompts ⭢

Nonfiction Writing Prompts ⭢

Novel Writing Prompts ⭢

Poetry Writing Prompts ⭢

Romance Writing Prompts ⭢

Sad Writing Prompts ⭢

Science Fiction Writing Prompts ⭢

Short Story Writing Prompts ⭢

Spring Writing Prompts ⭢

Summer Writing Prompts ⭢

Teens Writing Prompts ⭢

Thanksgiving Writing Prompts ⭢

Thriller and Suspense Writing Prompts ⭢

Valentine's Day Writing Prompts ⭢

Vampire Writing Prompts ⭢

Winter Writing Prompts ⭢