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Write a story set during a heatwave.

Posted in Short Story on Aug 1, 2025

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✍️ 72 stories

The Gathering

Shortlisted for Contest #314 ⭐️

Eddy runs out to the parking lot, ahead of the others. It’s flat and hot, like Grandma’s frying pan when she turns the burner on high. Letting it warm up just before her butterknife slices off a waxy square of yellow butter and chases it around the pan. Round and round the butter goes, the square losing its sharp corners and the butter slip-sliding in a greasy puddle, getting smaller and smaller until it vanishes and there is only hot brown grease in the pan.Eddy always ducks his head near the pan to smell the browned butter. And Grandma, la...

25 likes 8 comments 8
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On Blueberry Hill

Submitted to Contest #314

I press the washcloth to my forehead. Lukewarm now, but still cooler than the night air. We pumped the water from the well before sundown, when it still ran cold and sharp. It felt good then. Now it’s the temperature of spit, but I keep it there anyway. It’s still better than nothing. Behind me, the fan hums, offering little more than noise. The porch has been dark for a couple of hours now, but the heat hasn’t budged. It hangs thick in the air, like it’s got nowhere else to go. I wanted to sleep out on the lawn, but Ma said no, we’d get eat...

25 likes 4 comments 4
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Dog Days, 2009

Submitted to Contest #314

The mattress was thin, just enough to lift me from my grandmother’s living room floor, but it was mine for the night. My cousins were sprawled nearby, shuffling through their card collection, their voices low and competitive. The heat clung to everything — to the cotton of my blue pyjamas, to my damp skin, to the air itself, thick and unmoving like syrup. The fan spun lazily above, doing little more than stirring the warm stillness. My thighs still stung from chafing after the day’s long walk, and the sweat on my back soaked through the fabr...

21 likes 11 comments 11
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Bombweed

Submitted to Contest #314

In the early ‘50s I went for a walk with my mother. It was heatwave hot, and she wore a pastel blue tea dress. We lived in Vauxhall, and when we took that walk, and for many decades afterwards, the capital was hollowed out by the blitzkrieg. It’s fair to say the Germans made a mess. I remember that her hands were sweaty, and all those cockney sparrows scavenging in the rubble, sweating in their unseasonal winter rags, reminded me what a mummy’s boy I was. I remember trying to slip out of her grasp, but in the end, she just let me go. We were...

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Where grass no longer grows

Submitted to Contest #314

The lost man stands on the hill, looking down into the once green valley. As the sun pushes through a thin blue sky, the morning mist gently dissipates, revealing the shape of the countryside for miles around. “Blessed,” murmurs the lost man as he wipes the ground’s dewy moisture from the side of his face. Behind him, on the plateau, a solitary tree shifts slightly in the small breeze that has drifted its way from the beck below to join the lost man on the hill. Its companion looks at his hard, calloused hands, holding them aloft to the sky....

16 likes 16 comments 16
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The Vigil

Submitted to Contest #314

DISCLAIMER: This story contains depictions of captivity and extreme heat exposure. STORY: They should have come by now. Helen pressed her ear to the door, listening for footsteps, but heard nothing—only the hum of the radio. Through the static, she caught fragments: “—dangerous heatwave—crackle—temperatures above—buzz—stay hydrated—” The words faded in and out through the basement. The morning feeding was three hours late, and for the first time since her capture, she hoped to hear their voices. Three hours became four, then five. She's been...

14 likes 9 comments 9
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Yellow

Submitted to Contest #314

It was day six of the heat wave when Mr. Jacob's funeral procession approached. But just as they could hear the tires of the pick up truck nearing the house, Matthew's mother shooed him into the shed and told him to watch from there. He was grimy, his mother said. No place for grimy children up front. He hadn’t meant to get dirty, but it was hot and thick outside and all the dust and loose blacktop stuck to his sweat. Besides, he really didn’t want to be up front. All the commotion scared him a bit and from the way the other kids were talkin...

11 likes 5 comments 5
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The White Sock

Submitted to Contest #314

The unremarkable white cotton tennis sock had lain on the edge of the honey wood back deck for two weeks and two days. Paige knew because she had been counting and noting the faint ring of dirt growing around it. Shaking her head, she shut the back flyscreen with a snap then closed the glass slider against the suffocating heat trying to claw its way inside. Through barred vents, air conditioning swirled into the kitchen but sticky tendrils of heat still lingered. She took a cold can of sparkling water from the fridge, flicked it open and swa...

10 likes 2 comments 2
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Whiskers and Max : Dog Days Disaster

Submitted to Contest #314

The heat had teeth.It gnawed at the little yellow house on Maple Street like a chew toy left in the sun. Curtains drooped. The sofa sagged. The air felt like soup someone forgot to season—thick, hot, and lazy.By the second day of the heatwave, Whiskers the cat had declared the hallway tile his personal throne. He stretched himself into the longest possible shape, chin down, tail tip twitching now and then like he was ticking off grievances. Moving, he had decided, was a crime.Across from him, Max the puppy flopped on the wooden floor, legs s...

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Letters in The Sand

Submitted to Contest #314

Potter County’s last water witch was not what anyone had expected nor wanted. Anna was small, far too small for the Knoblauch’s which boasted tall, willowy women, all of whom possessed an alluring combination of strength and grace. What should have been golden hair that fell gently into waves was instead a shocking white blonde that washed-out Anna’s plain features. Her light brows were always screwed together in exasperation, and her thin mouth rarely produced a smile. Her demeanor was even more inexplicable to her family than her looks. N...

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I Don’t Control the Sun, Son

Submitted to Contest #314

The end of life as New Yorkers knew it came on June 30, 2028.That was the first day of the heat wave that never ended.***By 9:30 a.m., the temperature in New York City has crept up to 96 degrees. The sun is so bright that the sky appears snow white, making it difficult to look at without sunglasses.Within an hour, the thermometer hits 106 degrees.At 11:30, the President of the United States, the Vice President, members of Congress, and members of the Senate receive the same cryptic email:Deditionem! Sexaginta dies habes!The message is passed...

9 likes 13 comments 13
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Sugar

Submitted to Contest #314

I must've died and gone to Hell.The marquee display on Main Street reads: 117F. Local news calls it a record-breaking heat dome, advises everyone to stay indoors unless someone is dying. As if the whole world isn't on its last legs.So here I am. Charging along the sidewalk directly for the house at the end of the block. Because some asshole left their pit bull locked in the back of a vermilion Ford Bronco with the windows rolled up. A major No No where I come from.Soon as I hit the driveway (ribbons of heat rising like evil spirits), the dog...

8 likes 2 comments 2
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Libby

Submitted to Contest #314

For as long as I can remember, I have been hot. Not in body temperature–though that is usually also the case–and not in physical appearance–though I would like for that to be the case–but inside. I feel this cactus-scorch prickling just beneath my skin, pebbling out like goosebumps, and there is no remedy. I hate wearing pants. They make the heat worse, even when it’s cold outside, and always somehow make my legs look chubbier than they actually are. Mostly, though, they restrict me. When I wear pants, I feel something about me being reigned...

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No Way Out

Submitted to Contest #314

I'm barely paying attention as I rehearse what I might say to a customer. The Sizzle Burger would be closing early from an unexpected heatwave warning. The staff consists of me, twin siblings Janie and Oliver, our friend Tim, and the only non-college student, Joe Hanley. He is our head fry cook and the type of manager our sorry asses won the lottery with. When my PTO was used for the week I took off (in advance) while recovering from a torn ACL, Uncle J as we call him, took over his immediate staff's scheduling from the regional team. He eve...

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The Unraveling of Lucian Crowe: As Below, So Within

Submitted to Contest #314

The Unraveling of Lucian Crowe: As Below, So WithinThe ThresholdThe air wasn’t just still—it was spent, like the breath of a dying man left to rot in his own lungs. Lucian Crowe adjusted the cuffs of his Jason Arasheben dress shirt, the silk sticking to his wrists with old sweat. Five thousand dollars of tailoring, wasted in this place that stank of mildew and something sharper beneath it—ozone, maybe, or the metallic tang of dried blood.He’d been here before. Not here, exactly, but places like it: the back rooms of courthouses where deals w...

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