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Discover weekly, the best short stories

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

19040+ Drama Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. Being one of the most popular genres among the submissions to our weekly contest, the drama short stories collected below include riveting works you won’t want to miss.

Drama Short Stories – Page 56 of 1270

A Chance Encounter on the Corn Belt Rocket

Submitted to Contest #293

He stepped onto the train just as the last whistle mournfully blew, signaling the train pulling away from the station. Both the gray briefcase, containing his quarry, and the loaded Roscoe in his harness weighed on him. He could head to his compartment, but he needed a drink. He asked the conductor the way to the bar car, and reached it before the train fully pulled out of the station. “Highball, and a side car.” “Yes sir. Right away.” The whiskey hit his lips when he saw her. A dame, her legs went all the way to Tuesday, strolled into the c...

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The Phantom Hitchhiker

Submitted to Contest #293

The road stretched endlessly in front of them, two pale yellow lines dividing the dark asphalt under the hush of the moon and the midnight air The only sounds inside the car were the hum of the tires and the rhythmic slap of the windshield wipers against the glass of the window. The rain drizzled down in a misty haze, catching the glow of the headlights turning the night into a soft blur.  “You still awake?” Daniel asked, glancing at his daughter in the passenger's seat.  Nina blinked her eyes awake and lifted her head from where i...

5 likes 0 comments 0
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Cart 23

Submitted to Contest #293

She swallows hard. Her throat is tight, raw, like she’s been screaming, even though she hasn’t made a sound. The train keeps jerking, the metal frame rattling like it’s barely holding itself together. The flickering lights drill into her skull, buzzing, humming, never stopping. The voices around her blend into a shapeless mass of noise—too loud, too sharp, too wrong.It never stops.The fluorescent hum is under her skin, vibrating in her bones, needling its way through her skull like a drill boring into her head. The artificial brightness sear...

7 likes 2 comments 2
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The Last Time

Submitted to Contest #293

               My knuckles are white still gripping the steering wheel, even though I’m safely in park. I stare straight ahead through the rain lashing my windshield, the wipers struggling to keep up. Thunder clashes in the distance. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a storm like this, even longer since I’ve driven in one. When I set off from home, the now-familiar trek across town to the county jail, I told myself it would be worth it, that I had no other choice. My ...

9 likes 6 comments 6
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The Sound Between Us

Submitted to Contest #293

Martin Weiss had the same face I remembered, now framed by gray hair at the temples. I watched him approach down the airplane aisle, checking his seat number—next to mine. My fingers, which hours earlier had danced across ivory keys for an audience of a thousand, now twitched nervously on the armrest. I closed my eyes, pretending to sleep. I wasn't prepared for this encounter. Not today, when each applause still sounded like an accusation in my ears. The tour had been a success in everyone's eyes but mine. Six countries, eighteen concerts, e...

11 likes 3 comments 3
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Little Men

Submitted to Contest #293

January 1985; Somewhere over the .... You were a thousand miles into the Atlantic when the aircraft rutted violently against your controls. Barely a shiver in the airframe at first, like a deep sigh running through the metal bones of the 777, then unloading at once. You felt it beneath your hands, fingers curled around the yoke, a pulse of tension radiating from your own chest. And you thought that perhaps the bottom of the ocean was where you belonged. There was a darkness there, a pressure so strong it would stop your body from behaving ...

5 likes 4 comments 4
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Funerals Are for the Living

Submitted to Contest #293

“You really shouldn’t have checked it.”  Rosa’s voice is dripping with recrimination, and I’m eight years old again, looking up at her shadowed figure striking a superior pose.  After the most stressful travel experience of my life, I don’t respond well. “Yeah, right, it’s all my fault,” I snap back, crushing the papers provided by the crematorium in my fist. “Must be so hard being surrounded by idiots when you’re so perfect.” A pleasant female voice above reminds the public to not leave any items unattended, and to inform security...

9 likes 9 comments 9
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ROAD TO FREEDOM

Submitted to Contest #293

As I peer out the car's windshield, my heart is plagued with the sadness of yesterday. I have no idea where I'm going, the only thing I do know is I couldn't stay in a repulsive marriage any longer. I needed to escape. I knew there was more to life than misery.We shared fifteen years in a loveless marriage, before I became strong enough to leave. First I had to brust the fairytale bubble I was living in, before I I couldn't see the whole picture. My husband, Diego, had been cheating on me for years but I couldn't accept it. Always my thought...

4 likes 0 comments 0
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And It All Comes Tumbling Down

Submitted to Contest #293

When I wake, my world is filled with smoke.My eyes are filled with water and there is a ringing in my ears that fills my head, and I wonder if my brain has melted.It is so hot.And I realize that my room is filled with fire.I can barely feel my mother’s hands on my shoulders shaking me; shaking me awake; shaking me to make sure that I’m alive. Her mouth is blurry through my tears, but I can see that it is open.Open wide.She is screaming.She is screaming at me that we have to go.We have to leave now.There is a rumble beneath the ground, a...

5 likes 2 comments 2
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In a Holding Pattern

Submitted to Contest #293

     Jackson Tillman anxiously waited for the 747 to lift off from the runway so he could begin his flight to Chicago and the most important meeting of his career. His fingers itched to open his laptop and begin calculating the final figures on what probably would become the largest software sales contract of his life.      While aggressive competition from foreign products had caused earnings figures for his other colleagues to remain in a permanent deep freeze, Jackson had found the ma...

6 likes 1 comment 1
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First Flight

Submitted to Contest #293

Missy was jumping on the inside but trying to remain cool on the outside, after all sixteen year olds were suppose to be cool , right?She found her assigned seat next to an elderly, white haired couple, “Great old folks! Two and half hour flight and no-one to talk to.”The couple, after learning it was her first flight. smiled, “ Here you take this seat by the window, we fly all the time.” Missy smiled and thank them. “Maybe they are not so bad after all,” She leaned against the window, noticed it was an emergency ext. She star...

7 likes 3 comments 3
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Fourteen Hours to Tokyo

Submitted to Contest #293

 The high-pitched whine of the airport PA system sliced through the haze of my thoughts, a constant, irritating buzz that mirrored the static in my own mind. JFK was a mess of people—families hugging goodbye, suitcases screeching across the floors, the occasional garbled announcement calling for a missing passenger. It was the kind of chaos that made my ADHD brain fizz with nervous energy. I tried to ground myself in the details. The way my sneakers stuck to the grimy floor with each step. The flickering fluorescent lights overhead. Th...

4 likes 0 comments 0
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THE MATATU CHRONICLES

Submitted to Contest #293

I was standing by the roadside, watching the sun struggle to break through the early morning haze—sluggish, half-hearted, and full of regret, just like me after ignoring my alarm five times. It was 8 AM, rush hour, the time when the city turns into a chaotic ballet of honking, shouting, and people sprinting after public transport like their lives depend on it—because, let’s be honest, they do. I was about to board a matatu, the legendary East African public transport system that operates under the philosophy of faster, louder, and slightly i...

26 likes 13 comments 13
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Sitting with Broken Glass

Submitted to Contest #293

Sandra pressed her forehead against the cracked glass, watching as raindrops raced each other down the window. The blurred past, this manifestation of her reflection in the cracks, but she barely registered it. Ten years of her life, gone. Just like that. As the train rocked gently beneath her, Sandra's mind drifted to those pivotal moments, the ones that had shaped their decade together. Some were bright flashes of joy, others quiet revelations, and some were fractures that could never quite be repaired. Looking in these splinters were like...

7 likes 2 comments 2
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The Long Drive

Submitted to Contest #293

The road stretched ahead, endless and gray. Bordered by skeletal trees that seemed to claw at the sky. The highway is nearly empty with just the occasional headlights passing before they fade into nothing. The persistent hum of the tires against the asphalt is broken only by the occasional splatter of rain on the windshield. I haven’t turned the radio on. I don’t want music or to hear voices. Just the sound of the car, the rain, and the low hum of the heater working to keep the cold at bay.I could have flown and maybe should have. It wo...

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RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

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