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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 688 of 745

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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L’orinne Loves…New Year’s Looks!

Submitted to Contest #74

“Write a top ten NYE party looks and beauty must-haves list”, the last minute brief went, landing into my inbox on a Wednesday morning where my only plans had been continuing to eat chocolate for breakfast. Yes, that’s right. We’re in yet another lockdown and the government is fining people who meet up with others, yet Glimmer remain resolute that you, dear reader, want to squeeze into a tiny sequinned something and spend hundreds painting your eyelids to resemble fireworks. Fine. Let the cosmetics countdown begin. 10. (Also the number...

17 likes 6 comments 6
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Summer holidays

Submitted to Contest #74

“No way! I hate her! Why do you always make me go there?!” shouted Patrick, landing his fork on the table with a loud bang and leaving a greasy stain of white sauce on the polished surface.“Don`t even get me started, young man,” his mother lifted her index finger with that warning look on her face that Patrick knew all too well. “You will stay at Debbie`s and then we all will go to Spain.”Patrick was furious. His mother just ruined his whole day by announcing that he was going to spend the whole month of July at his aunt Debbie`s place in a ...

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Lotte Hollow's List of Lies: a Lotte Hollow Story

Submitted to Contest #74

LOTTE HOLLOW'S LIST OF LIES A list by Lotte Hollow, Witch-in-Training Lie #10: The Time I told Billie Manchester I Was a Vampire Self-explanatory title. Billie Manchester was teasing me for being creepy and living in a dark, shady, tree-surrounded house where the plants bloomed toxic purple in the middle of winter, where the paint was peeling and black, where strange lights poured from the windows, where wispy-looking, transparent "ghost-girls" with soulless black eyes seemed to be spied every halloween, where the gnarled, eerie tree...

28 likes 17 comments 17
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cloudy skies

Submitted to Contest #74

Her world is ending.  She stares down at the phone in her hand, the horribly familiar feeling of numbness flooding through her bones. The same feeling when her uncle got the call from the hospital. The feeling when her boyfriend told her that they needed to talk. The feeling that’s caused by the three simple words on her screen. He’s dead. Overdose. This numbness feels different somehow. Not slowly creeping up her spine, freezing her body until it’s choking her. Not sudden and ice-cold, hitting her like a surge of water. It’s more s...

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Tallying Dreams

Submitted to Contest #74

TALLYING DREAMSFaith lies on her left side staring at the only thing she convinced herself understood her, the wall bearing tally marks which she is never late to update. Today is day 646, another new day that no one knows what it will bring forth. Regardless, Faith is as energetic as always to write a new story, perhaps one that will inspire, teach or for once bring her good luck. She gets up picks a piece of chalk on the drawer and adds a mark on the wall then takes a step back and stares at it. 646 days of dreaming, hoping, laughing,...

14 likes 12 comments 12
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10 Reasons to Get a Girlfriend

Submitted to Contest #74

Top 10 Reasons You Need A Girlfriend By: Min Yoonki You're annoying. You're probably annoying because you're lonely but ....... still. You seem to have nothing better to do with your time than annoy me. I'm a busy guy. Just because we're friends doesn't mean that you can prance into my house and into my room on my anniversary to congratulate me. May is still embarrassed by that! My wife can't even look at you without remembering what you saw and getting embarrassed. I just can't believe you weren't more ashamed by that. Also, the fact tha...

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The Transience of Being the Sky

Submitted to Contest #74

It took ten seconds to be in the sky.Nine seconds to notice that I was flying. And eight seconds to realize that I was not.The birds that flew past me tipped their heads to the side. Red, nebular eyes blinked at the illogicality of my being, wondering why I was in the air, and yet couldn’t soar. But birds carried on like a dash of breeze. They left me for the stratosphere. They couldn’t do anything for my wings that only had ten fingers.But in the quadrillionth of a second, I was neither flying nor falling. There were moondust and heliu...

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Ten Seconds

Submitted to Contest #74

It’s early on a chilly December day and I’m riding my motorbike to work. I’m easing off the speed, getting into the filter lane for the turn off the A10 to my office. After twenty-nine years of riding motorbikes, I know I can’t rely on other drivers being aware and respectful of my space on the road. I’m watching the driver behind me and the driver alongside me, making sure they see my indicator and know what I intend to do. The next ten seconds pass at a surreal pace. I see the white Mondeo in my peripheral vision. Suddenly, the driver’s ...

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Under the Midnight Sun

Submitted to Contest #74

As a musician, the moment of resistance for me is when I am able to float on the stage and explode all my colors right there in my artistry. I always carry a light of hope for that explosion to happen somewhere that will blow my mind away.And then it happened… I was offered an opportunity to do a music tour in Siberia.It is such a beautiful thing to see past the front garden of your own lawn to see first-hand what the manicured gardens of another land like Angarsk look like. Or to see what the rich green algae overlaying a foreign body of wa...

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End of Days

Submitted to Contest #74

Soft light cascaded into my cavern that had lit up my wall of tally marks. I took in a deep breath of salty air and added one more tally to it. One year, two months, and twenty days since my boat capsized in the treacherous storm. Luckily enough I was able to find land. The day I took off I was so pissed that I did not turn on my boats tracker. I just wanted to leave everything behind and not be disturbed by anybody, I didn’t tell a single person I was taking off either. So, off I went by myself into the mysterious big blue. The beer and l...

24 likes 5 comments 5
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Something at First Sight

Submitted to Contest #74

In that moment, I saw everything: The drops of rain as they dripped off my turquoise umbrella, changing my view of the scene in front before me. I saw the 1999 lime-green Dodge Stratus zooming pass. I saw the rowdy football players inside as they sped past me, laughing and whooping with the joy that can only come from being king of a world that you believe will never change. I saw the leader of the group, not the driver, because driving by that point in their lives had already become something for an underling, not for the leader. No, the le...

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The Interior Wall

Submitted to Contest #74

If the brick wall could say anything to the being that insisted on scratching marks into its length, it would note that the being was hindering the wall’s capability to do what it did best: stand in one place. It would comment that although the marks’ effects were almost inconsequential to the wall’s constitution, that the scratches provided several, nay, three hundred and twenty seven malicious opportunities for decay, which was potentially a serious threat to the wall’s primary function. But it was a wall, so it weathered the marks like...

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Top Ten Things to Try Before I Toss Off

Submitted to Contest #74

1.     Have Fun Terminal cancer is probably the definition of not fun. So the first thing I have to try before I die is to have as much fun as possible. For me, that looks like doing all the things I held myself back from doing before, out of fear, out of embarrassment. Because now, what the hell do I have to lose? I’ve never played Twister before. Never with my cousins or classmates. Never with my friends. Never with boys…one boy in particular. I always looked exciting on TV. Sure, it’s a game for little kids, but I...

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Never Plucked Apple in the Garden of Eden

Submitted to Contest #74

The beauty she holds yet she does not realize. The spell she has over me that she will never recognize. Her smile that freezes my world—that makes me realize that the luckiest man on Earth would be the man that will capture her heart. In this small space, in a ferris wheel carriage, has been the best moment of my life. It is ending soon but I will lavish the last ten seconds of this ride where she and I are alone—where I can pretend we’re a couple and not simply friends. Where I can pretend that I have captured her heart, and we feel the s...

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RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

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