Menu

Menu
Prompts
Contests
Stories
Blog
Directory
Contests
Magazine
FAQ

Write a story about someone seeking forgiveness for something.

Posted in Dramatic on Apr 11, 2025

Submissions are closed

Make sure you don't miss our next contest by creating your free Reedsy account.

Sign in with Google
Sign in with Facebook

Or use an email address:

Why not check out our active contest?

✍️ 75 stories

Where The Green Things Grow

Submitted to Contest #298

Sensitive Content Warning!! : Mental Health / Suicide or Self Harm Where the Green Things Grow The rot started in Eli’s fingertips. At first, he thought it was just dirt—black crescents tucked under his nails, stubborn smudges along his knuckles. It made sense. He hadn’t touched a garden in years, but muscle memory was powerful. Maybe something in him had gone back to digging, even in his sleep. He tried scrubbing it off with vinegar and steel wool, but it only got darker. Then it spread. His skin softened, paled, flaked. The scent—earthy...

37 likes 13 comments 13
Read story

The Corpse Flower's Bloom

Shortlisted for Contest #298 ⭐️

Content notice: this story contains allusions to dementia.Clare watched Rupert looking down at the snake plants, an expression tender as the Virgin. He wouldn't know they were hardy little blighters. The only thing he regularly nurtured was his investment portfolio. The plants lined the entrance walkway, emerald leaves edged in chartreuse, a row of cobras en garde. He regarded them with hand on heart.‘Of course, we’d have to put in a reinforced walkway, and some kind of barrier, maybe a Security Guard.’He motioned down the glasshouse pathway...

23 likes 19 comments 19
Read story

The Art of the 7am Trade Tariff

Submitted to Contest #298

Oval Office, 7amA groggy Donald Trump squints at a one-page intelligence brief entitled ‘Emerging Asymmetric Iranian Threats in the Persian Gulf.’Waving the page in the air, he shouts to Natalie Harp in the hallway. "How does anyone expect me to read all of this?"Natalia leaps up with the eagerness of a poodle about to receive a treat from its owner. “I'll be right there to read it for you, Mr President.”Down the hall, Melania overhears the familiar sound of her husband's voice. She's maintained an open-door policy in the West Wing—except wh...

20 likes 11 comments 11
Read story

I Made Her Wait

Submitted to Contest #298

I made her wait far too long.I was staring off into what once was. I had purposely avoided this place for far too long. It’s the kind of place that makes you feel small, weak, horrified. This is where the demons creep in, the kind that show up in the quiet moments, when your hands are still. When you’re surrounded by silence, and your phone screen goes dark. It pulls you back without asking, dragging you to the place you’ve worked so damn hard to forget.I was standing in that place, surrounded by overgrowth and God knows what else might be h...

19 likes 3 comments 3
Read story

Eggshells

Submitted to Contest #298

**Author's note** This story contains the death of a child and suicide. Words cannot put Humpty Dumpty back together again and neither can superglue.Even if every puzzle piece of shattered eggshell was perfectly placed back to its correct spot, the cracks would remain visible, and even if by chance the cracks were no longer visible, Humpty Dumpty would not be structurally sound. The glued bits make him weaker, susceptible to breaking all over again, although my wife and I have not even attempted to put him back together; we haven’t sought ...

18 likes 20 comments 20
Read story

A strong act by a strong person

Submitted to Contest #298

Olya took her own life at the end of May, right before exams—on the twenty-first—and almost immediately, they canceled them for us. No one said it out loud (after all, we were expected to perform the tragedy), but deep down, we were relieved. Maybe we were even grateful for the gift she unknowingly gave us. We didn’t care how it happened or why. The news was met with the same calm indifference as if someone had announced we’d have seven classes tomorrow instead of six. A whisper passed through the desks—and that was it. It felt inevitable, u...

17 likes 4 comments 4
Read story

Weekend Pass

Submitted to Contest #298

He came in through the wrong door.Nobody ever used the east gate—too dramatic.But there he was: robe torn, wrists leaking light, eyes like dawn after a hangover. I almost laughed.“Lost?” I asked, flicking ash off my tongue.“Or did Daddy send you to clean up His mess?”He didn’t answer. Just stood there, taking it all in.The sulfur pits, the screams, the centuries of rot.The way time here folds like broken wings.And me. The one He threw out like a dog for asking questions.And now the golden boy’s here, looking sorry. He finally stepped forward...

13 likes 10 comments 10
Read story

The stolen staff.

Submitted to Contest #298

He was not a thief, far from it, he had only stolen the staff from the grand wizard Alphonse to save his village from the goblin hordes invading. Zaraff didn’t realize when he first stole the staff that it would lead to the world collapsing. He sought the wizard now more feverently and earnestly seeking the mage’s forgiveness. That reality was not going to collapse and fall into the void of space. The wizard’s magic kept the world of Elohim from dissolving it seemed as Zaraff traveled he began to see trees melt into nothing, rivers dissolve ...

12 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

The Invisible Weight

Submitted to Contest #298

They lay on the cold concrete floor, shoulder to shoulder, a single candle burning down between them. The flicker of the flame danced across the low ceiling, casting long, tired shadows. The air was still—almost too still—and the silence pressed down heavy, broken only by the occasional creak of the shelter settling or the quiet rustle of fabric as one of them shifted, searching for a slightly more forgiving patch of floor. “Are you asleep?” Lily whispered. Hep let out a soft snort. “Do I look asleep?” “No. You look like someone trying reall...

12 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

The Reunion

Submitted to Contest #298

This whole block is a wind tunnel, he thought, as he stood outside of a fairly new apartment building. He knew he shouldn't be there…knew how she would react. However, he had to try and make her listen to him–somehow. He had been waiting a full 10 minutes, hoping someone would open the door so he could sneak inside. He sipped his black, yet sweet, coffee as he peaked at the sun overhead. The coffee wasn't helping. The weather was neither cold nor warm, humid nor dry, but it was windy and he considered busting out hand warmers. Finally, a tal...

11 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

The Art Fair

Submitted to Contest #298

The Art Fair “How much?” The middle-aged man in the COLUMBIA sweatshirt, pointing to the painting of the Montauk shore, had been at Paul’s booth for about five minutes, which was unusual at an outdoor art fair. Paul could usually determine the likelihood of whether or not there would be a purchase, and sometimes he’d adjust the price if he felt the prospective buyer was close to a decision. “Two hundred,” he replied. “Thanks, I’ll be back.” This was a refrain Paul heard often. Many people come to an art fair with no intention of buying anyt...

11 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

In the Dark

Submitted to Contest #298

When the lights turned on, a slow drip dropped down into a spreading pool of melted ice cream. Pastel confetti in pinks, yellows, and blues cheerily swirled across a lazy river of French vanilla and chocolate sauce. Whorls of whipped cream deflated in a weary sigh, subsiding from the ruptures in the crumbling Oreo frame. The still face resting in the soft-serve pillow could have been dreaming in sugar-spun sleep, except for the splash of hot red slashed across the pressed confection letters, the blue-tipped fingers scattered across the table...

11 likes 13 comments 13
Read story

Revenge: A Story of Modern Heartbreak

Submitted to Contest #298

TW: Alcohol, sex, teenage maniaI hexed my first boyfriend when I was seventeen. Although we hadn’t had sex by the time we broke up, I was still madly in love with him. So when it happened, I found myself more hurt than I’d ever been. The day he left me, we were supposed to speed around the back country roads to thrift shops, bookstores, and estate sales. Afterward, I’d drive us back to his place (he didn’t have a license), where we could make out and feel each other up, like we always had. But that day, he had something different in mind. My...

10 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

And for one night, the SOC ran this company. Not the boardroom.

Submitted to Contest #298

The hum of workstations and servers sounded like a low rumble in the brightly lit Security Operation Center. Screens lit the room with shifting shades of red and blue, each flash another potential threat. In the center of it all was Samir Khan, SOC Manager for AeroLink Global, his jaw clenched, heart pounding, gaze locked on an alert that had just breached every layer of defense.A zero-day exploit—surgically precise and terrifyingly intelligent—slithered through their systems like a venomous serpent in the dark. It hadn’t just bypassed firew...

10 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Between the Lines

Submitted to Contest #298

Although bright and sunny outside, it was a dark day when the texts flew back and forth that made our friendship trip and falter and sprawl like a centipede that had forgotten how to organise forward motion for each of those hundred tiny feet.Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.Mine the fault, mine the fault, mine the most grievous fault.Though I hadn’t seen the inside of a Catholic church for years except when attending essential family events and that one Christmas Midnight Mass when I was dating a devout Roman Catholic, the old Latin w...

10 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

🌟 Similar prompts

Write a story about someone trying something new.

Short Story – 47 stories

Center your story around someone finding acceptance.

Dramatic – 61 stories

Write a story about someone hoping to reinvent themself.

Short Story – 62 stories

Center your story around two (or more) characters who strike up an unlikely friendship.

Short Story – 74 stories

How to Write a Novel

Join Tom Bromley for a writing master class and finish your first draft in 3 months. Learn more →

How to Write a Novel