Menu

Menu
Prompts
Contests
Stories
Blog
Featured stories
Activity feed

Discover weekly, the best short stories

Looking for a steady supply of black short stories? Every week thousands of writers submit stories to our writing contest.

780+ Black Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. Discover the best new stories by Black authors, written to themed prompts and curated by our judges.

Black Short Stories – Page 2 of 52

Into the void of the real

Submitted to Contest #291

I found myself walking through a throng of pedestrians. I push and shove through the invisible faces, and the riptide of random bodies swarming against my every movement. Claustrophobia and agoraphobia envelop me, swallowing me into paralysis. I can feel my lungs seize, and the panic chugging at my chest with adrenaline. My knees weaken at the endless drove of bodies. The crowd surges like a school of anchovies darting from predators, and evading attacks. This archaic event smothers me in waves of moving flesh, and petrified thoughts. I want...

7 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

Stormy hearts

Submitted to Contest #290

It was the beginning of a rainy season. The first rain in the new year. As usual, the weather forecast had wrongly predicted a sunny day. It started with a drizzle, startling the passersby. Within minutes, they were shuffling for the nearest stall, the closest shelter, as the rain poured heavily down.They pushed, shoved and scrambled on their way past. As they did so, Tara tumbled over and fell face first into the dirty puddle, almost choking on it.“Oh, my…” She bit back the curse at the person who’d presumably pushed her when she saw t...

16 likes 10 comments 10
Read story

Lora was a Dog

Submitted to Contest #289

Lora was here. Lora, was a dog. At least she imagined herself to be in this moment. Lora barked, she played, she spun, she laid. She did all this when they told her too because she was the dog. ‘They’ being the girls: Joe, Latoya, and Ashton encircled her, looking down at her while she playfully obeyed. They were all a family. Joe, the daughter; Latoya, the mom; Ashton, the dad; and Lora, the dog. She looked up tongue out, wagging her tail. She was a dog and she believed it.  “LORA, SIT! ”Joe shouted playfully. Lora Sit was her new nam...

6 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

The True History of England's Favorite Colony, as I heard it

Submitted to Contest #289

Trigger: written in the fat thumb grammar to avoid data miners over-borrowing any more labor.Grandpa was dragged out by his neck and forced to sign his property away. The crows thronged hard and threw their gnatty green tomatoes, their wooden shear sticks fanning about in the hazey morning. It was like a thunder strike as this tassled leash went around his neck and someone slapped a horse on the hind and the cobblestones went bumpety bumpety. It’s rough to have this awesome guy, this King of royal blood in your line, but you can’t brag ...

19 likes 16 comments 16
Read story

Fallacious Tranquillity

Submitted to Contest #288

The Countryside  The countryside belies the notion that in its embrace, tranquillity reveals her purest essence. She is often envisioned as flawless, serene, and undeniably righteous, drawing both the inspired writer and the retired elder into her gentle fold. Silent in her ways, she possesses a nurturing spirit, knowing precisely how to mend a wounded lamb back to health. With tender care, she feeds it, and in return, the price of her attention is revealed. The Writer  In pursuit of motivation amidst silence, a writer fi...

10 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

To Be Great

Submitted to Contest #288

Years and years ago, in a lesser city somewhere beneath the eternal rain and amidst the blue plant life of Rainland, is a young man, only five years old at the time, and with Rai blood flowing through his veins. His name is Windel Rai, and his dream is to become the next General Rai. An ambitious goal for a child his age. Women thought him cute, the way he’d follow his father around, training with him as if doing so would make him a general by the time that he was a teenager. No one took him seriously, no one had to, he was just a toddler af...

11 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

In My Sister's Shoes

Submitted to Contest #287

Edie bit her bottom lip, her eyes darting over the metal keyboard panel beside the door, fingers trembling as she punched in the seven-digit code. She'd already called the police twice since starting at Pilgrim's Loan Bureau, and each time, the pregnant office manager, Michaela, had been summoned. Another call would mean blowing up her temp spot, and Edie couldn’t afford that—she wanted a permanent position. When the door finally clicked and the lock released, a shudder of relief rippled through her, though the tension still coiled in her ch...

6 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

The Dog License

Submitted to Contest #287

“I’m telling you, this isn’t right. What do you mean I have to file an 18-1B? And then wait in another line?” I ran my fingers through my hair. “Sorry, sir. That’s the policy.” She played with the pearls that she wore around her neck. “Policy? Are you kidding me?” I pushed my finger and thumb across my moustache. “Do I look like I’m kidding you?” Her eyes bugged out, and she recoiled her neck.  “No reason to get testy.” I straightened out my tie.  “Testy? You think I’m being testy? No, sir.” She sat upright in her chair. “I beg you...

9 likes 6 comments 6
Read story

a neighbours madness

Submitted to Contest #287

in an old housing complex in a sydney suburb ,which not such a quiet little suburb like once a few years back ,for changed over years gone by with more loud cars driving through day in and day out,as a book reader of a woman of the housing block didnt seem to be be bothered by the heavy sounding of the traffic,ratchel a middle aged woman just read books day in and day out of her own collection she had stolen over years from local street libraries,now down below ratchel second floor unit lived an old sixty year old scraggly haired woman with ...

7 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Frederik's Room

Submitted to Contest #286

It has been two weeks since the funeral. Now all that was left was a skeleton of a home. The ghastly white sky perfectly mirrors the experience of the inside. Moving boxes for one and dishes that need to be washed for the other. Both preparing for a life without him.  Patrick shifted his boxes from his room to the downstairs foyer. These were the last remaining semblances of the life he had with them.  His soon-to-be ex-wife Loretta washed her mug in the kitchen. Doing her best to avoid contact with the man who was once the love of...

5 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

NANNY'S LEGACY

Submitted to Contest #286

Deep within the lush hills of Jamaica's Blue Mountains, a small village nestled, hidden from the world. This was Nanny Town, a community born from the blood, sweat, and tears of the Maroons, descendants of enslaved Africans who fought for their freedom. Queen Nanny, Granny Nanny, or Nanny of the Maroons,(1686 – 1760), was an early-18th-century freedom fighter and leader of the Jamaican Maroons. She led a community of formerly-enslaved escapees, the majority of them West African in descent, called the Windward Maroons, along with their chil...

6 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

The Meeting

Submitted to Contest #286

The meeting was held at the San Sebastian National Trust Public and Private Meeting Facility Room. The sign above the door stated this and I was still a bit fuzzy in trying to put all of those words in context. The afternoon turtle hangover-remedy stuffing my insides created a lethargy that put the fluorescent lighting of the hallways into a venue that could not be on some Caribbean island but maybe somewhere in the Midwest. The night’s blackness outside the tinted windows isolated my thinking even more in mixing up my geographical fix. I ha...

7 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Flickers of Summer

Submitted to Contest #285

The first time I saw Camilla, she was sitting on the hood of a beat-up car, a cigarette dangling from her lips and a sketchbook balanced on her knees. Her eyes met mine, and it felt like she had already unraveled me. I should’ve walked away then—maybe everything would’ve turned out differently. But instead, I walked toward her.“You always stare at people like that?” she asked, not looking up from her sketch.“Only when they’re sitting on cars that might explode any second,” I shot back.She smirked, closed the sketchbook, and extended her hand...

4 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

Slobbering Oatmeal into Her Sweater

Submitted to Contest #285

Our virtue or excellence does not drive our actions but by the act itself. "We are what we do," ~Aristotle. Saliva mixed with cooked oats and brown sugar dripped in small streams from the wrinkled corner of her mouth onto her hunter-green cable-knit sweater. The kitchen emitted the aroma of cooked oats. Still, the scent of brown sugar dominated the ambiance, making it more attractive, reminiscent of when my parents lived here many years ago. The creek on the floor next to the archway notified me of Dad's approach, and Ada and I separated the...

12 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

The Christmas Date

Submitted to Contest #283

It all started with a phone introduction from a mutual friend. I agreed to go on a date with a tall, young man from my department. He was my senior but not directly in my team, so I didn’t have any HR concerns. I had heard that he was a Christian, and as a practising Catholic, I didn’t see any issue in dating a Pentecostal man. This was our first date— a Christmas date, to be exact. On Christmas Day 2015,  I slipped into my white V-neck shirt, which hugged my chest just right, and paired it with a jean skirt that clung to my hips before...

4 likes 0 comments 0
Read story
RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

Bring your short stories to life

Fuse character, story, and conflict with tools in Reedsy Studio. All for free.