Menu

Menu
Prompts
Contests
Stories
Blog
Featured stories
Activity feed

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.

10880+ 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 725 of 726

The First Wedding

Submitted to Contest #28

I can’t remember his name. Most of the minor details, yes. Her dress (beautifully cut satin but much too shiny to be elegant), the bouquet (pink and white roses, even though she was slightly allergic), the church (which still smelled tragically like moth balls, despite her mother’s best efforts to air the place out the night before).But I can’t recall the groom’s name. Donnie maybe? Ronnie? I know that in those years there was definitely a Ronnie and a Donnie, but I don’t know which was the groom. I am tempted t...

10 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

Mom Had One Job!

Submitted to Contest #28

My cousin’s wedding was the most family-involved wedding I’ve known so far. The day my sister and I were invited to be part of it, we were all having dinner at our favorite burger place. The occasion was actually a mash-up of a birthday celebration and wedding planning between my cousin, her fiance, and my dad, an ordained minister and the officiant of their wedding. The birthday celebrating was for my cousin’s mother, whose birth date was close to our dinner date, although me and my sister had ours coming up in a few weeks. With that in our...

10 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

A Train Story

Submitted to Contest #27

The first step was always the hardest. The problem did not lie in the step itself: it was a large enough step for one to place their foot comfortably upon it. It was also the proper height; not so high as to make you trip when you'd try to reach it, and not so low as to make your heart skip a beat when you thought for a second that you were falling through the floor. Ergo, the problem did not lie in the step itself. The problem did not lie in the doorway either. It was a fine, regular-looking doorway: the sas-like entrance to any mode of tra...

2 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Holding

Shortlisted for Contest #26 ⭐️

He wakes up in an empty bed. A pang of hollowness stabs him. It will take a long time before he’s used to this, the raw ache of missing. It’s a familiar feeling. It feels like losing a limb. For a minute he lies there, crushed by the weight of a thousand empty mornings stretching out before him. He doesn’t want to get out of bed, to face the loneliness of the future that yawns like a gaping mouth. How can he bring himself to move forward into a world without her? He will not think of the future. Not yet. Today is for remembering. He forces h...

8 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Haunting in E

Submitted to Contest #26

Iris stepped in shoulder-first, a cardboard box digging into her palms and a new silver key hanging from her finger. “Let me know if your mail key doesn’t work,” called the landlord, already retreating. “My number’s taped to the fridge.”“Okay—” called Iris, as the landlord vanished down the stairs. She carried her box through the dusty little entry and turned the corner to greet her empty, new, sunlit, blissfully-hers apartment—and stopped dead at the edge of the living room. When the landlord had emailed her two weeks ago to let h...

3 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

The Last Gift

Submitted to Contest #26

It had been when I was young that everyone told me that I would grow up to be a doctor—that, in language that five-year-old me could understand, I would fix people and make them better. Pretty much change the world, they had made it seem. It didn’t seem much too difficult of a job, from the way Grandfather worded his experiences in medical life. All you were required to do was to come in after the nurse had seen the patient and taken vital signs down, discuss what it was exactly that the patient was suffering, and then prescribe whatever med...

8 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

Festival of the Bear's Hand

Submitted to Contest #26

I am the woman who sits at the café edge, the one with bluish curled hair, the one who writers her Ls all cursive, the one who only loves men named Martin. I am she. I sit. I watch. The café belongs to me within my soul. I live here. I sit under a viney shade with a cup in my raw-rubbed fingers, blue curls hiding my eyebrows, sitting, watching. They call me Mademoiselle Sorcière. The witch-lady.I do this every day, here in this café. I drink the same tea, smile the same smile, sit in the same place. But the people that I watch are different....

41 likes 3 comments 3
Read story

Remembering Down Under

Submitted to Contest #25

Sunshine streamed in through the bookstore windows, the late afternoon light falling through the slatted blinds and onto the short gray carpet. Barely a sound could be heard in the small bookstore but the padding of footsteps several aisles towards the back. A tall man with striking gold-blond hair strode back and forth in the row, his gray-green eyes scanning the shelves and roaming across each and every spine of each book. Inhaling a deep breath, Lachlan blinked several times to clear his finally blurring vision and shook his head. &n...

13 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

The Old Ennui: Or, The Refusal to Enjoy Anything

Shortlisted for Contest #25 ⭐️

Cole is pleased to admit that he’s never before found himself in the self-help section. Never needed it. Would hate to stoop so low, he thinks, dragging a superior eye over those brushing their fingers over all those bright-coloured titles. He’s not here for self-help. He’s here for help. Because just being in a bookstore will help. The culture of it all. The majesty of the written word, finely curated. He’s lucky he reads. Unlike all those sheeple out there who’ve forgotten how. Poetry, Cole thinks. Surely. This is his regula...

9 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Zenobia Harsch Has No Idea She's Dead

Shortlisted for Contest #23 ⭐️

The snow’s out again. Like a huge stupid blanket that insists on suffocating all mankind. Zenobia Harsch has always hated the weather. Winters, she wants the heat and the lemonades. Summers, she begs for snow and hearths and haute chocolát. Pull and complain and do it again, that’s Zenobia Harsch’s motto. She is a tall and imposing woman with raven hair and smeared eyebrows that pull on her face and make her look a constant frown. She noticed people’s feet first rather than their smiles or the way their noses crinkled. Zenobia Harsch used to...

65 likes 5 comments 5
Read story

Not So Cozy Cabin

Submitted to Contest #23

Winter had come in with a vengeance. Somehow, I made it up the road. Visibility was bad, but I could see the cabin in front of me. I hoped that there would be roaring fire, and I could settle in for the night. Finally, I made it to the door.  I knocked. “Hello?” I called. She had said that the door would be open. She was supposed to be here. I reached for the doorknob, and thankfully the door opened. But there was no roaring fire waiting for me. And she was not waiting. I stepp...

8 likes 3 comments 3
Read story

Of soulmates and one-night-stands

Submitted to Contest #22

When Jason turns twenty years old, he goes to his best friend’s New Year’s Eve party. He does that every year without fail, but this year, Jason has a new best friend, and so the party takes place in a different house, with different guests. That’s how he gets to meet Eva.Between them, it’s love at first sight. He sees her, she sees him, and they both instantly decide that they like one another. Jason is wearing a white T-shirt and a green cap – backwards, obviously – and Eva has chosen a green dress and a white scrunchy, which probably mean...

7 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Secret Message

Submitted to Contest #18

Southern Living is about more than home-cooked Sunday dinners, church and being raised with good strong traditional morals. It's about tradition, family, bonds, holding on to the memories of our past and keeping the memories of our ancestors alive. No matter if you're southern-born or have just moved into the south the heritage and our simple southern ways just seem to take a deep root inside everyone it touches. A warm feeling of being at home fills them to their core after they have experienced our small town hospitality first hand. Among ...

5 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

If Only Three Months Earlier

Submitted to Contest #18

“It was just here!” I said again, fighting back the tears that threatened to overflow my eyes. I reached a shaking hand down into my white lab coat pocket and closed my eyes while hoping for the feel of cold glass meeting my fingertips.The crisp touch of the sterilized lab coat pocket was what my fingers slid against and nothing more. Swallowing the hard lump that was rising in my throat, I forced my eyes open and stepped back over to where I had been sitting at my desk which housed several microscopes. For more than three hours on end, I ha...

9 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

To our past stories

Submitted to Contest #14

“In the past?”, Elizabeth Williams repeated in a tone that did not particularly imply that she found the twist to be incredible. “But why?”David cleared his throat, taken aback by the unexpected question. What is that supposed to mean, he didn’t ask, and instead chose to let his eyes wander around the small office, just in case the cold, dead, empty walls would like to provide him with an answer.“Well”, he started, horrified at how blank his mind was, “because it changes things, doesn’t it? Makes you consider the story from a different persp...

5 likes 2 comments 2
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.