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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.

11160+ 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 687 of 745

Of Two Lines Crossing

Submitted to Contest #74

A year from now, she’d be married. She’d be curled up in bed with a stranger and a glass of champagne and the title of the next year as a crown atop her head. A year from now she’d be smiling and happy and loved. She’d have a stable job, a house with two stories, a stranger and a glass of champagne. She told herself this, with a hand wrapped around a cold glass. Whiskey, not champagne, but at least she had the crowd of strangers around her, like curtains on a stage, and her at the bar in her costume of a woman alone on New Years Eve. He wa...

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top ten mistakes you'll never make

Submitted to Contest #74

I want you to be my therapist. Yes, you. I don't care what you look like, what you think, or who I am at the moment. All I want is your guidance. Eventually, you'll ask me a question. You like doing that, thinking it'll lead somewhere. Maybe to the cure? Maybe down the rabbit hole. I tell you each little fucking detail, all in chronological order, all raising my hidden insanity higher and higher. 1. Enter drama club; you'll tell me you remember your days in the band, honking your way through a children's song. I'll nod, curl my hair, and o...

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10 New Years Resolutions

Submitted to Contest #74

1.     I can feel the nicotine travelling inside of me right into my lungs, and I can even feel it settle in and grasp my insides tightly and then flush out to my bloodstream. It’s like sucking on a twig made of pure euphoria and every time you breath it in you’re letting the tiny particles corrode you with their questionable ingredients. But somehow, amongst them you find the sweet hormonal release of oxytocin and I guess dopamine and all those other ‘happiness chemicals’. I watch the beautiful veil of smoke submer...

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Ten Seconds of Anxiety

Submitted to Contest #74

If you've ever been an athlete, you'll know what I'm talking about.  I'm a gymnast, a good one too. I won gold at the Canadian nationals and bronze at the Pan American championships last year. There's nothing more invigorating than standing on a podium, feeling proud of yourself and proud of what you represent. If it's a national event, I will be proud to represent my hometown. For an international, I'm pleased to show the competition that I'm from Canada.  I'm strong, and I know what I'm doing when I start my routines but know...

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Hourglass: Tempus fugit

Submitted to Contest #74

I could not move my leg. It was petrified by millions of invisible ants crawling over thighs. I could not feel my toe. That little bigger finger than others has gone together with the footprint of the hand of time. I was conscious but astray. It was only dark I could see without the power to feel the pain, I was lost. Then the darkness beyond the darkness knocked me to emptiness. Dragged me to the story I no longer remember.***The fog muddy on my glasses. The dawn greeted me with its last hello. I waved my finger to the cloud that dancing up...

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ten seconds, ten memories

Submitted to Contest #74

"10...9...8..." Upon hearing the countdown to the New Year, I can't help but recall what my mum said to me earlier today, "When the countdown starts, I want you to remember everything that you're thankful for happening this year". Scoffing slightly at the proposal that I could be thankful for anything that has happened this year, I raise my drink to my mouth. As I graze the glass with my cherry flavoured lips, I think back with a regretful heart, reflecting on the year’s adventures and conquests one by one. 10- January 1st 2020 Everything ...

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Ten Seconds to Midnight - Part Two

Submitted to Contest #74

December 31st 1999, 11:59pm, ten seconds to midnight… “Ten!” shouted the crowded dance floor. The DJ urged them all to scream the number loudly as it flashed up on the projector screen. The Escape Cruise ship New Year’s Eve crowd at the Naughty Nineties disco obliged with gumption and glee. Jamie moved through that crowd with purpose and precision. Sam was out there somewhere and deep down Jamie knew they were meant to be together. As the crowd hollered nine Jamie thought back to that day when the new job began at that accounting firm and ...

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The Show Must Go On

Submitted to Contest #74

I almost wish we hadn't volunteered. But every previous year on New Year's Eve, we'd sat in the audience, watching the magic unfolding across the neighborhood lake: the streaks of light rising into the night sky, the explosions of colors, shapes, and sound, and the clouds of smoke drifting slowly away. This time was different because the people who normally took care of it had moved away and everyone else said that they were too busy. Someone had to take care of it. “The show must go on,” as they say on Broadway. A week before New Year's...

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Ten Seconds to Midnight - Part One

Submitted to Contest #74

December 21st 1999Sam’s day pretty much started like any other at Gordon and Gordon Accounting. Login, clock on and attack the numbers. Sam liked numbers. Numbers were safe and dependable. It was close to Christmas and creeping closer still to that dreaded Millennium and the supposed bug that would wipe out technology and life as all knew it. Sam tapped the computer lovingly.“I’ll back you up, I promise,” Sam soothed.The day went on like every other, nine through to five with half an hour for lunch. Every Tuesday Sam had a salad and tuna san...

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Moon Water

Submitted to Contest #74

I think back to the five New Year’s Resolutions I had on 1 January 2020: “Lose 40 lbs.! Travel a lot! Start dating again! Stop drinking! Get Susanne to teach me about witchcraft!" Ha! How attainable those goals had all seemed at that moment, and how simultaneously silly and sad they seem at this one, on the evening of 29 December, annus horribilis finally drawing to its end.One of the goals, at least, has been accomplished – and ironically, it’s the one that I’d thought would be the most difficult. When I was sick back in March, the 40 lbs. ...

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TOP-10 Songs reminding me of you

Submitted to Contest #74

If I were to compile a list of every song reminding me of you, the number of them would surely come close to infinity. That seems somehow disproportionate to the amount of time we have spent together and would certainly decrease the chances of you ever giving this playlist a listen. After the Taylor Swift Incident, it became apparent that you have zero tolerance for long albums. So, naturally, I had to limit myself. Ten songs. Only ten songs to our story, not more, not less. I even arranged them in the appropriate order, judged by ...

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Cassie's Hall of Times

Submitted to Contest #74

Cassandra leaned over and scratched yet another tally into the slabs of polished marble. The marble was white, but fisured with streaks of navy and aquamarine. In her palace, there was a tranquil, cool air. It also consisted of long hallways, sometimes doubling back on themselves, at other times making you walk for a quarter of an hour but getting nowhere. Everything was in a cool, watery blue or a pale crystalline white. Controversially, outside the palace was a scorching desert, with red, powdery sand and mystical winds blew eerie tunes th...

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All For The Stygian Night

Submitted to Contest #74

Across the tarmac, or beside it, I walked. I was crying...laughing too. Someone had been gripping my cloak, I shook them off. Ouch— If it wasn't for the sharp ringing sound to my ear the next second, and the blurry cat's cradle my hands were playing, I would've never yelled a loud 'moteh-' and swung, throwing my head ahead. Day in, day out, night in, night out, they all went out. Yet, somehow, against my will, I was slammed against something cold, chilling. I cried, again. A hand like hers brushed me, fleecy. Or gripped me, I could...

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A Teacher's Top Ten Things to Do During Quarantine...a story of 2020

Submitted to Contest #74

A Teacher’s Top Ten Things to Do During Quarantine…a story of 2020#10. Scoff at the dire predictions, cancelations of events, and the mask debate while I get to stay home anyway because it’s spring break. Put toilet paper and Lysol wipes on the shopping list even though I already have enough. Get caught up in the mass hysteria of food hoarding—but too late to buy anything except the bulk-sized gallon jug of popcorn kernels and a matching gallon of vegetable oil. Be glad that I will happily survive a very long siege with that gallon of popcor...

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HH:MM:10

Submitted to Contest #74

Trigger warning: pet death   Ten. Panting, sweating, heart beating violently. I feel it in my throat. The motion is nauseating. A steady rhythm denoting the continuation of life, and forceful enough to make one sick. I pedaled frantically in pursuit of my best friend. The street a black velvety expanse of freshly paved road. This felt like the longest distance anyone could travel. The incline unrelenting as I was unable to keep up with her pace. Shadoe stops in the middle of the black sea and looks behind her. I call out her n...

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RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

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