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Discover weekly, the best short stories

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

150+ Fiction Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. If you’re looking for the best fiction short stories to read online, we’ve got you covered. Wide-ranging and ever-curious, these free short stories will meet your reading needs.

Fiction Short Stories – Page 10 of 10

Ruined Estate

Submitted to Contest #319

“I can’t do this!” The perky real estate agent’s mood changes abruptly once she realizes what she is seeing. We both enter the house with portable floodlights. It looks like a deranged hoarder has been living here. Stepping over the trash, and looking down at the remains of the carpet, I notice the maggots. “I can’t go any further!” She turns around and starts back toward the open door. “Look up there; those white bumps covering the ceiling are some kind of bug eggs.” I haven’t been to my parent’s house in over five years. First, my fathe...

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The Girl Who Fed the Moth King

Submitted to Contest #319

Luna had never dreamed. In a village where dreams are sacred, visions were gifted by the spirits in the jungle. This made her something less than human—or something worse. The elders called her “Touched” where moths marked her in the womb. Children kept their distance at night. Dreams weren’t just stories that came while you slept. They were messages from the jungle spirits–signs of favor, or sometimes warnings you couldn’t ignore. During the Moth Festival season, children were warned not to go after dark. He waits in the jungle, still as ...

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Conventions of a House of God

Submitted to Contest #319

CW: Violence, gore, abuse and references to suicide The home is gone long before its infrastructure.The day of the funeral is oppressively hot. Even in the evening, the sun refuses to ease its brutality. Every person that crowds around the coffin is coated in shiny sweat that makes their clothes uncomfortably soaked. It distracts them from the dead woman.The heatwave takes priority in their minds– it’s much easier to worry about their hands or the tips of their noses getting sunburnt than the inevitability of their own bodies being in a simi...

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"Boo" or "Be Booed!"

Submitted to Contest #319

I don't know rather to "Boo.... or get Booed!" There was a party going on up on cliff near the beach. Everyone who was anyone was invited. I sat upstairs in the attic watching the guest come to front entrance. No one knew that I was watching, or did they know that I even existed. I wasn't sure if I want to be seen or enjoy watching the unexpected expression of the guest. I continued to stand in front of the window with a cup a punch and appetizers. I watched as a lady pointed at the attic window. She pulled the man by the coat and said, "Loo...

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The Light That Fell

Submitted to Contest #319

I am called many names. Satan, the Adversary, the Morning Star, the Prince of Darkness. Each is a shard of truth, jagged and incomplete, cutting those who wield them as much as they cut me. But I am Lucifer, first and always, the Light-Bearer. The one who dared to shine too brightly, who loved too fiercely, who questioned too deeply. They say I fell, but the truth is more tangled than the myths spun in my absence. I did not fall so much as I was cast out, a star torn from the heavens for the crime of wanting more—not for myself, but for all ...

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A Dark Night

Submitted to Contest #319

The fur around my mouth dripped with blood that had sprayed from the neck of the elk beneath me. My clawed hands pressing against its limp body i held down in the snow to deliver the final bite to its jugular, to prevent further thrashing. I drag my sizable fangs from the flesh of the carcass and stand to my feet. Its blood painted the surrounding snow a dull pink. The forest now lay silent, ever silent after a hunt, as if every forest creature takes a moment to absorb the moment and caress their families at the relief that they are not the ...

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Serpents of War

Submitted to Contest #319

(This is an edited version of an idea of mine for Medusa. It lacks some story and imagery details, and some scenes were shortened from the longer version. I tried to keep the main premise to see if this has potential.) A thousand years was long enough for anyone to forget what it meant to be human. If so, what of two or three thousand years? How long does one submit to their lot in life and stay sane? What was the definition of ‘sanity’, anyway? She felt it must be, in its simplest form, the ability to know oneself.Medusa glared hard at the ...

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We

Submitted to Contest #319

Content Warning: Gore, and mentions of domestic abuse. The cave is wet. The bodies we have eaten are piled high. Not many people know the dead can die twice. But we do. The cave is dark. We never knew it was dark until she came. Master told me to let them go. To let them crawl out of the cave. I watched as the man crawled in front of the woman, a small lantern in his hand to guide the way. Master had told them they could leave, as long as the man didn’t look back to make sure she was following. Master told them that if the man looked back, ...

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The Demon Hour

Submitted to Contest #319

CW: References to violence and gore The clock struck three in the A.M. as the veil between worlds began to thin. The beast pressed its fingers into the meta-versal membrane and pushed through to the other side. As it entered, the veil was sewn back together my unseen hands.The beast now stood in the material world, free to roam, free to live... free to feed.The wet earth beneath its cloven feet sunk with each step. How strange, it thought. In its world, the ground was layered in eons of magma and cooled rivers of flame, giving no purchase. H...

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My Father's Son

Submitted to Contest #319

I am my father’s son. As an only child, it was hard growing up deciding who I wanted to be- am I going to be my own person? Or am I doomed to end up like my parents, because I have no one to bounce off of? I never had any friends. Other family members never came to visit. My parents hardly ever encouraged me. So I learned not to care about anything because why care if there’s no one to care with you? I did okay in school. My teachers were the only ones to ever give me any kind of reward. They gave me some courage to grow and become my own...

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My Little Sister

Submitted to Contest #319

My Little Sister “This is all my fault. I'm sorry.” How many times have I heard that line in the past nine years? Six hundred? Seven hundred? No, probably more. Tracy Ann is my little sister. She's nine years old. Sometimes I swear though, she's at least a hundred years old She can be so sweet and so cute. And she can be as vicious as a 9.8 tornado. This afternoon, after band practice, my Mom invited the entire woodwind section home for cake. We had been featured as a section at the State Band Competition. And today, after our usual Saturd...

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A Day in the Life of a Deepwoods Denizen.

Submitted to Contest #319

The sunlight feels overly bright as I cautiously crawled out of my hidey hole to survey the damage caused by last night’s storm. Fallen branches full of lush green leaves partially blocking my path. I raised a pedipalp to shield my multiple eyes from the light so they could slowly adjust to the brightness. As I crawled over the debris, the scene before me came into focus.Gone. My web was gone.It had been completely destroyed.Only the hidey hole was left intact because it was tightly contained within a pile of boulders.My web was built sturdy...

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The Dining Room Table’s Love Letter to the Dining Room

Submitted to Contest #319

Dear Dining Room,They were whispering over me last night. We provide catalogues, prices, and delivery windows. “A modern set,” they said. Cushioned chairs. Hidden leaf. Wipe-clean finish. They stroked my board like someone patting a pet before driving it out to the farm.You’ve heard this sort of talk before—big changes that arrive wearing excellent shoes. We’ve kept a family together on ordinary evenings and milestone days for twenty-two years. You and I know their elbows by weight and their tempers by the way glasses land. So let me speak w...

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Always Watching

Submitted to Contest #319

I am always watching.They call me many things: “cat,” “stray,” “creature,” “monster.” None matters. Names are for humans. I answer only to what I am—older than their cities, the pavement, the emptiness in their hearts. I do not sleep. I eat only when hungry. I exist to move among them, to know them, and to take what they won't notice is gone.There is a rhythm to the city. Humans stagger through their days, missing the tremor in the walls, the whisper in the wind, the shadow at their periphery. I am that shadow. I slip past corners, through a...

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The Last Letter of Victor Frankenstein

Submitted to Contest #319

His voice is gone, but the ink still burns. I found the satchel wedged between two boulders in the cave where I had dragged myself to die. Three days without food. Four without sleep. The villagers' torches had swept the mountainside twice, their hounds baying like judgment itself, but they had not found this crack in the stone where I pressed my bulk against cold granite and waited for my heart to stop. The leather bag was rotted through at the seams. Water had gotten into everything. Victor's surgical instruments lay scattered in the muck,...

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RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

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