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Discover weekly, the best short stories

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

11110+ Contemporary Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. All the newest modern day stories to thrill and inspire, all in one place.

Contemporary Short Stories – Page 680 of 741

A Matter of Wife and Debt

Submitted to Contest #75

Tuesdays were supposed to be our chill days. Ren running around the tiny, studio apartment, vacuuming like her life depended on it was not chill. I peeled open one eye to see the vacuum abandoned, Ren now opening the blinds.  I groaned, ending my nap.  “The hell?” I yawned. “It’s your day off, why are you cleaning? Is your mom coming over?”  “If my mother was in town; I would have woken you up three hours ago. And you would’ve had some pants on.” She eyed my checkered boxers and I shrugged.  Ren shooed me off the bed,...

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Intertwined Destinies

Submitted to Contest #75

Trigger: Suicide, violence I wake up on a hard bed, a bright fluorescent light blinding me for a second. As I try to blink the spots out of my vision, I notice that there are many people in the room. And all of them are looking at me. I ignore them and try to sit up. I immediately regret it. A sharp pain runs up my arm and my head feels like it’s about to split. I check my hand, finding an IV attached a vein, dripping liquid into my body. Those people are still looking at me. I recognize my parents standing there, looking...

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Tide

Submitted to Contest #75

"You really don't remember a thing, do you?" The white wash crashed at our feet, the water speckled my trousers. It was cold. Freezing, in fact. I don't know if I've ever felt the ocean this chilled, if I did I wouldn't remember. "No," I said to her. She was toeing the sand, making little smile faces and letters for the sea to come and claim. The breeze was relentless and salt-filled, and it tossed her short brown hair around her face. It was a quite lovely face. "Not even my name?" she asked. "Not even my own." She held her hands behind her...

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Victim of Drug Lords

Submitted to Contest #75

Disclaimer: Talk of drug abuse. He clutched onto his mother’s arm tightly and staggered out the sliding panels. His mother seemed to be sighing and kept casting her amber eyes downward, as if embarrassed.  “Jason, I’m telling you that it happened.” “Don’t be daft mother, of course, it didn’t,” he said with a short, almost-nervous chuckle. He stole a sideways glance at his mum, only to be met with lowered eyes. Jason’s dirty blond hair whipped around his ears in the wind. It hadn’t been cut in a while and he desperately needed ...

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Our Little Treasure Cove

Submitted to Contest #75

Life on the island was a pure one, simple and complete. Dr Small lived with his wife Joanna on one of these islands in the Caribbean. It was business as usual to them as well as a way of life, generating great amounts of income, but this was no ordinary resort for those to get away, and it wasn't a holiday, it was something more or less to recharge the human body back to normality. The island was situated in the middle of the Caribbean sea on the Atlantic side, it was very self sufficient, with its' own airport, medical centre, restaurant ...

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Mental Loss

Submitted to Contest #75

  I was always tall and slim. Until my mental health deteriorated and I had to take drugs to help myself feel well. The drugs took a toll on my figure making me gain a lot of weight. At one point I was fifty pounds heavier and feeling badly about all the weight I was gaining. It wasn’t really what I was eating it was the drugs. So would exercising really work. I made my doctor change the medication I was on and got the green light for exercise.    At first it was not easy because I was h...

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Lucid_Dre@mer_: Ashwin and the Lightbringer

Submitted to Contest #75

Amara walked to the mirror on her wall. She was the same girl-- violet headphones, messy blue hair, a white-with-salmon-stripes men’s t-shirt that she was wearing as a tunic with jeggings, high-tops on her feet. The only sign of the adventure was the green symbol on the underside of her wrist-- a longsword, or some kind of fantasy-looking sword drawn in a few minimalist lines. Amara sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. She knew that if she told her mom, she would think she was crazy and take her to a doctor. If she tol...

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RESOLVE AND OUTCOME

Submitted to Contest #75

As the New Year approached I was seated with my wife discussing the resolution to be made for 2021. She said “Before we go to that let us review how you did in 2020. You had resolved that you would cut down on swearing. You remember we kept the swear jar with coins near it in case you breached the resolution in the year 2019, but the swear jar was soon filled as you hadn’t kept up your word not to swear. You again decided to keep that resolution for 2020.” “Don’t you think I had largely overcome swearing?” She laughed and said “Let’s review ...

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Pride and Joy

Submitted to Contest #75

Trigger warning: description of sexual assault I press the buzzer, hoping that the light outside the door works. Thankfully, it appears that it does still work, as my next patient walks in, his eyes looking down. Wearing a black hoodie with the hood up, covering most of his face, he shuffles slowly towards me and stops awkwardly. “Hey,” I say, smiling at him kindly, although his eyes are focused on the tips of his sneakers.“I’m Dr Ellman. What’s your name, honey?"“Don’t ‘honey’ me. I know you don’t even give a crap about me, so don’t pretend...

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A Picking Problem

Submitted to Contest #74

1/01/21 A Picking Problem 11:00PM New year, new me. Yeah right. With the year I’ve had, it’s hard to believe that any more muck can get caked onto the windshield of my car as I speed home down some back-country roads to a place I can only affectionately call Home. But where is Home these days?  I finger what can only be considered a scabby snail of blood clot out of my nose into a tissue—except I can’t find a tissue so I fling it out the window. But then my problem persists. I can breathe now that the little guy is gone, but...

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A Rip in Time

Submitted to Contest #74

I kept tapping my watch to try and get the second hand to start ticking again. I didn’t know when it stopped, I woke up to it stuck. That made me nervous, I would be stuck in this dimension until I got it ticking again. The watch allowed me to jump around from different dimensions, I could escape what others couldn’t run from: Reality. Nervously I clicked the side button, they would find me soon. “They” were creatures that slithered in and out the various planes of existence. Shape shifters that cause a ripple in the fabric of realities...

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Disposition

Submitted to Contest #74

In the rumbling of all the crowd gathered in the house I could hardly listen to new year's eve concerts. New year eve and birthday of the eldest person in our family, my grandmother, to be on the same day. Ahh! What else one could ask for. Heaven. Absolutely heaven. But. . . did I forget to mention,"not for me". The only thing I would wish on the new year is a little time of my own, and if possible, a room of my one. But when your maternal and paternal- aunts, uncles, cousins all ACCUMULATE together on that one very day, I shouldn't have...

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Not Tall

Submitted to Contest #74

It’d begun drizzling and rain droplets freckled the windows of my car, slowly covering my windshield and hindering sight of anything outside. I sat in the driver’s seat, taking slow sips of the black coffee I bought an hour ago and stared at the sixth-grade classroom door. I’d gotten here earlier when the forecast showed high chances of a thunderstorm today and parked in the spot across the classroom that other parents usually got to first.I exhaled an espresso-filled breath when the door opened. Kids streamed out and ran to their cars, thei...

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The Earth Will Tremble

Submitted to Contest #74

I've known about the deadline long enough, so time is no excuse. When I’d begun it felt like I had an endless abundance of time. I thought that it could never run out and yet I knew it would. I’ve never had an issue starting something and my initial push into a new writing project is full of inspiration and courage. Courage is important because without it no one would dare sit down to do the work. Once the first line is written it has to be finished, and the trials ahead can be daunting.  The last few hours of a writing deadline is ful...

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The Final Goal

Submitted to Contest #74

Lord Almighty, what have I gotten myself into? Greg thought as he looked around his living room. Chickens were running loose around the house and pecked anyone who tried to grab them and put them back in their cages. Smoke was coming from the kitchen where he could only assume that some kind of food was burning. Gemma, Vicky, Taylor, and Damian were fighting over which form of entertainment would be used at Aurora's party as each of them brought their own. And then there was the giant puddle in the middle of the room where, just three hour...

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RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

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