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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.

37550+ 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 2 of 2504

No Choice

Submitted to Contest #303

I align my arrow with its target and pull back the string of the bow.If only Astro knew.If only he knew how much this decision hurt me.But I had no other choice. I don't want to die, true love or not. I'm a coward. I don't understand what he sees in me.Yet here I am, hesitating.Maybe I should just turn around and go back to the castle. Or perhaps I should just speak to him and ask him for help with my troubles.That won't do me any good though, would it?I take a deep breath and steady my hands, which have been shaking throughout this whole in...

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Red Riding Hood : Beast Hunter

Submitted to Contest #303

Red riding HOOD: beast hunterBy Chris Ashline Jilleen made her way along the road. She wasn’t familiar with this region. She had been a traveler most of her life, going from town to town, taking what jobs came upon her. Primarily she was a hunter, a bounty hunter. Going after whatever creatures were preying upon the locals. The rain started to come down hard. She pulled her cloak closer around her. She had worn that cloak most of her life. Over the years, it had become worn and as she had grown, the garment didn’t fit as it once had,...

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Battle of the Hedge

Submitted to Contest #303

<Note: This story contains alcohol use and physical violence.> When Ann Dennison looked out the window and frowned at Joan Hancock, Joan maintained a steady grip on the clippers. Her heart thumped with the fervor of her Revolutionary War ancestor. Protect your liberty and land, she thought, as Ann stepped out on the porch.Clip, clip, clip. “You’re a Hancock,” she reminded herself, teeth clenched into a fake smile she hoped to God would make her neighbor go back inside. But it didn’t. Instead, Ann raised her coffee cup in a good mornin...

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Heros

Submitted to Contest #303

Mind control feels like the wrong word for something that has nothing at all to do with your mind.There’s a whole slew of super powered individuals in this city, breathing the same foul smelling air as me. All of them think they have the right to do whatever the hell they want. These people all call themselves superheroes, but there’s an endless debate about which of these really are heroes, and which of these aren’t. One of these people is named Brainwasher. The idiot in question hovers in the air above me, held aloft by boots with small...

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I Am Not Anne Frank

Submitted to Contest #303

I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are really good at heart-Anne Frank.I have read The Diary of Anne Frank more times than I count. I went through a period between the ages of 10 and 15 where I was obsessed with books about the Holocaust. I was fascinated with how the world could have let it happen. How so many could just sit and watch and accept the cruelty happening in front of their face. I was mostly amazed by Anne. How she kept her faith and her goodness even while she was living in hell.Anne Frank and I have the same ...

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Righting the Wrong

Submitted to Contest #303

The farmer’s market was far from small, but it was nowhere near large enough to conceal a private conversation. Allona shook her head. This was ridiculous. Why was this the meeting spot? “To mock you,” Morrissey, her companion rat, whispered from his spot nestled against her neck. He was hidden in the high collar of her shirt, which had them both sweltering in the scorching sun, but he’d insisted on coming along. He couldn’t help directly if trouble started, but he could run into the nearby meadow and get reinforcements. Yes, Allona agreed...

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Some Kind of Hero

Submitted to Contest #303

I’ve always known I’m a superhero. I’ve just wondered what kind of hero I am.“How could you do this?” I ask, facing someone I’ve known my whole life. Someone I guess I never really knew.“Because I was the only one who could,” he says, sighing the words. “The only way I could give you what you want.”“You think I wanted this?” I gesture at our surroundings, the motion encompassing so much more than what we can see.Because what we can see is bad enough. This used to be part of the City, a place where people made homes and ran businesses, a plac...

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SORRY

Submitted to Contest #303

Jake and Haley huddled together at the rear of the bus. Neither one of them glanced out the window at the passing sights. “What are we going to do?” asked Haley tearfully. “I don't know! I can hardly think now. I never expected this,” sighed Jake. “What did they say I have again? After a while, my brain just shut down while the doctor was talking. My mind just went blank. I think I was in shock.” “He said you had COPD, there was a longer name.” Jake pulled a crumpled pamphlet out of his jacket pocket. “Ok, it's Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary ...

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Forget

Submitted to Contest #303

“I’ll miss you.” “I know.” “I just want to make sure you do.” “You’ve said that like thirty times in the last hour.” “I know.” Lenore sat on her floor, folding another skirt, the green one with the gray stripes. I was cross legged on her bed. I had offered to help her pack, but she insisted she could do it herself, that she would have to while she was away. “I’ll write,” she promised, again. The conversation of the past hour had cycled through many times and I was getting tired of it. “Every day, if you want. I’ll write you silly letters...

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Embrace

Submitted to Contest #303

I’m scared. I’m scared of what I’ve become. The crimson substance dripping down my torn straitjacket is cold, and my hand is trembling with the knife still enclosed within my fingers. The sharp blade appeals to my neck, calling to it. Attracting it like a magnet. I want to relieve this pain. The psychological pain that’s been tormenting me for so long. I’m not sure my mind can handle this any longer. This blood isn’t mine. This knife isn’t mine. “Don’t let him out,” they said. “We all know what’ll happen,” they said. Well, it turns out they ...

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Desert Gravesite

Submitted to Contest #303

Tony scuttled around the boulder, desperate for the shade on the eastern side. He breathed a lungful of hot desert air that he convinced himself was slightly cooler than the air on the western side. He slumped against the rock and scooched under it like a scorpion with its tail curled around its delicately armored body.He heard the shouts of the man pursuing him, far, then closer. As his heartbeat slowed from a bass drum beat to a tom-tom, he heard what he was saying, “It was you who dunnit, it was you Tony…it was YOU!” The words were spoken...

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The Creature

Submitted to Contest #303

The broken floorboards creak under his feet as Victor eases the door open and enters the room. He’s faintly aware that the house is crumbling, but he doesn’t care enough, or has the time, to fix it. His eyes immediately find Marie, and there she is, lying in bed, looking like a withered plant in winter—embodying the smell of sickness swirling in the confines—despite the sunlight streaming through the fluttering curtains.“Marie”, Victor calls out, but she doesn’t open her eyes. Her lips keep moving silently, like she’s praying to the gods—mor...

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Exit

Submitted to Contest #303

Paul surreptitiously looked left, then right, for any onlookers. Seeing the coast clear, he gingerly placed the tape dispenser into the file box on his desk. Another quick glance around, and in went the stapler. No one would want to disinfect these when he was gone, he reasoned, and he wasn’t the first to take their desk supplies when they’d quit. He felt no guilt at his kleptomania. It took him longer to clean out his desk than he would have imagined. After an hour of file shredding and clashing with his sense of nostalgia, his desk was ...

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Franks

Submitted to Contest #303

Connie was used to Franks going out at funny times. Franks knew that, because after ten years of marriage he could feel her every thought, awake or sleeping. He had no belief in telepathy, but he nevertheless enjoyed certainty that two people could get to know each other so completely that each might as well be inside the other’s head. Like siamese twins sharing a brain, he thought, loving the way her dark curls fell and spread themselves so naturally over the pillow’s smoothness. Deeply, beautifully asleep, she stirred slightly, exhaled, th...

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Put In Your Place

Submitted to Contest #303

(Summer 1995)The crowd huddles close together as the priest and undertakers struggle to bring the coffin out of the church. The rain is lashing down, angrily, urged on by a strong wind that has already whipped backwards any umbrella opened to shelter people from the rain. As soon as the coffin is loaded into the hearse, the rain and wind stop. The hearse slowly nears the graveyard gates, there are no words like “DAD” or “DARLING” spelt in flowers in its windows. My mother disliked them and so do I. They seem almost insincere. As the priest b...

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RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

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