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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 6 of 10

The Quiet House

Submitted to Contest #310

Content Warning: This story contains themes of intrusive thoughts, obsessive-compulsive behaviour and psychological distress. It also includes references to guilt, self-doubt and graphic imagery. Reader discretion is advised. The Quiet House The house is still. Not quiet, but still, like breath held for too long. Like something waiting to be found. It creaks, but only when I stop listening to it. A soft groan in the ceiling beams, and a subtle tick in the pipes that still need to be fixed. I always make sure to check the locks before I go t...

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Marketing Genie

Submitted to Contest #310

Another day, another client to satisfy. Working at a marketing agency should be fairly routine; the agency gets a new client, figures out what they want, provides a price, and it’s a done deal. I, however, signed onto a fairly new agency that was still building up its clientele, leading to days full of- “Why hasn’t our profile gone viral yet?” “You promised us increased reach, how come we’ve only gotten a hundred new followers? It’s already been a week!” None of the clients seem to trust us, well, that or they expect completely unrealisti...

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The Rewrite

Submitted to Contest #310

The first time, Eli didn't even notice. He slumped over his shattered desk, his work area cluttered with half-full cups of coffee and rejection letters crumpled along the edges. The cursor on the computer screen was blinking mockingly. For the tenth time that night, he read the sentence through: She found the lost ring buried under the floorboards, where she'd always thought it would be. He sighed. Too tidy. Too step-by-step. But it was 2:47 a.m., and deadlines weren't interested in the quality of literature. He saved it, shut his laptop, an...

3 likes 1 comment 1
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The Murder Mystery Writers Club

Submitted to Contest #310

Maryanne received an email from her town’s library inviting her to join the next meeting of the Murder Mystery Writers Club. Hmm, interesting. I don’t remember asking to join it.She remembered that she had asked if there was such a thing, having read about a similar group in the town’s local paper. However, there was no time or day of the week listed for a meeting, so she decided to wait until her next visit to the library to ask about any writer’s club they might have.Maryanne had been writing short stories and novellas for three years and ...

2 likes 0 comments 0
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Ink and Ivy

Submitted to Contest #310

The rain was a steady whisper against the windows, tapping out a rhythm that could put a priest to sleep or drive a guilty man to confession. It was just past nine on a Tuesday night, and my bookstore was as empty as the promises on a politician’s lips. I was wiping down the counter, slow and bored, when she walked in.Red coat, soaked at the hem. A look like she'd just come from a funeral or was on her way to cause one. Her eyes flicked across the room, fast and cold, like they were looking for exits more than books. I pegged her for trouble...

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The Price of Ink

Submitted to Contest #310

What if a writer could create tangible reality by writing words, instead of a sensory one? That question popped into my head upon reading my latest rejection letter. “Aimless, boring, derivative” was the feedback. The accompanying $375 writing class pitch is salt in the wound. The letter burns in my pocket. Aimless.Boring.Derivative.The words chafe. My apartment mocks me. I have enough rejection letters to paper the walls. My notebooks and legal pads could build a fort behind which I hide in shame while my father wags his work-worn finger wi...

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Loophole to Heaven

Submitted to Contest #310

Loophole to Heaven I’ve often wondered about the reunion at The Pearly Gates. Are loved ones there upon your arrival to greet you, or do you have to wait around for them? Perhaps it’s like the airport where a guy is holding up a tattered sign displaying your name written with a Sharpie.What if no one shows up for you? While couples run to each other in slow motion, do you stand by and watch? You could take out your phone and idly scroll, pretending not to notice. Worse yet, what if your loved ones are actually terrible people? Are you stuck ...

19 likes 13 comments 13
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The Price

Submitted to Contest #310

1,003 auditions, fifty callbacks, zero bookings. Apart from loading boxes into a warehouse and all of these unbooked roles, that’s all that my time here has shown these past two years. I suppose I should be lucky, considering most celebrity-wannabes don’t even get the chance to make it to California, but it’s difficult to appreciate that since I’ve seen new stars tear their way through Hollywood with success after success. All while I’ve had none. My childhood was spent in movie theaters, much to my parents’ dismay. They sat through endless ...

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If Wishes Were Horses

Submitted to Contest #310

An aspiring author needs to write to get experience. I had a good name to write under, I didn’t even need a pseudonym. Sapphire Squires. A romance novelist’s name if ever I heard one. I decided to write in a journal about people I know, for practice on character development. No one would ever see what I wrote. Just wishing to improve.Be careful what you wish for. As the saying goes, there’s more tears shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones. I wonder. From my journal: My co-worker Peggy. I met Peggy a few weeks after I’d started my o...

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The Next Step.

Submitted to Contest #310

Odette was still wondering if this was really her next step. She had taken a step back from the rat race and her family for a week, due to her burnout and exhaustion. Her mother and stepfather were holding the fort at home, looking after Odette's three sons and the house. Odette had signed over a small fortune to stay at this Wellbeing is Us centre for the next seven days. The brochure had been so promising, she was planning to focus all her chakras, ground her soul in holistic and restorative meditative zen, then refresh with vegan meals, t...

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Mister Flesh and the Vending Machine Prophecy

Submitted to Contest #310

I self-published a book on a Tuesday.Not a meaningful Tuesday. Not a landmark-in-my-journey, personal-growth, coffee-shop-realization Tuesday. Just a microwave dinner, laundry half done, forgot my password again Tuesday. The kind of day that evaporates before you even notice it happened.My name’s Alex Dunning. I was bored and mildly caffeinated. In a fit of ego-flavored malaise, I dragged a document titled finaldraft_reallyfinal_trustme.docx out of my Downloads folder, uploaded it to Kindle Direct Publishing, and hit Publish with the kind of...

5 likes 1 comment 1
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Always Seen

Submitted to Contest #310

There was a time when Charles Danek barely existed. A fluttering presence in backlit rooms. A man in transit between chain-store coffee and an open browser tab. His job was spectral—content audits for an influencer marketing firm housed in a WeWork copycat with glass walls and quiet sobbing in the restrooms. No one, not even Charles, knew what Charles did.He longed for more, but not in any grand way. It wasn’t ambition so much as ache. Sometimes he imagined someone calling his name in a crowd. He didn’t know what they’d want—a laugh, a momen...

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The Cypress Manuscript

Submitted to Contest #310

It was the kind of story she never meant to tell—let alone publish.When Petra Barić uploaded the manuscript to Amazon KDP late one sleepless night, she assumed no one would read it. She even used a pseudonym—"Mira Dalma," a name that held just enough shadow to comfort her. The book's cover was an abstract blur of sea green and rust red, a template she'd tweaked half-heartedly. The blurb was vague, poetic, promising introspection and mystery, revealing nothing of its actual content.And that content was… raw."The Cypress Manuscript" was never ...

15 likes 8 comments 8
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His Best Theft

Submitted to Contest #310

An old man walked into my book store yesterday. He shuffled slowly forward with a book held close to his heart like it was some kind of paper pacemaker or friend. “Mister Brown, Sir,” he said in a voice a little above that of a whisper, “I have written a book, and I would like you to sell it in your store. I have been working on, it for years, and now it is finally done. No local publisher seemed interested in it, so I self-published a number of copies. It contains a revealing story concerning something that happened repeatedly in our to...

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A spark in the wires

Submitted to Contest #310

Even at the age of nine, I knew there was something inexplicably different about Eugene Westcote. To all intents and purposes, he was a typical boy of our generation. Grubby knees, snotty nose, with a particular fondness for semolina pudding and lead-painted soldiers. But all that aside, a peculiar air would sometimes sweep over the boy, seemingly out of nowhere. His nature would take on a disturbing sort of other-worldliness. He would become ridiculously perpendicular, gaining inches in height, or it would appear so at least, and he would a...

25 likes 22 comments 22
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RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

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