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Discover weekly, the best short stories

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

150+ Funny Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. The world can get dreary and overwhelming, so when you’re looking to have a good laugh, take a scroll through our free collection of funny short stories.

Funny Short Stories – Page 2 of 10

7-Eleven Jesus

Submitted to Contest #310

Trigger Warning (Author's Note): This is not intended to offend Christians, but it might. Have faith in God's sense of humor. Jesus was chilling with the 7-Eleven attendant Marcus, teaching him how to play rummy and kicking his ass at it, when he saw the group of three setting up in front of the store. He saw them through the glass: a clean-shaven middle-aged man with a shiny, bald head, wearing a red button-up and black slacks; a younger male wearing the same, except his button down was white and he wore sneakers rather than black leather d...

16 likes 5 comments 5
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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...

8 likes 2 comments 2
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Redactions

Submitted to Contest #310

Dr. Greg McIver has an awful lot of things he’s been putting off. Situation normal, he would say, except that it’s a bit worse than usual. He would win Olympic gold if running away from your problems was a sport. Forrest, his long-suffering best friend and seasoned anthropology professor, has got it into his head that Greg ought to write up some kind of academic memoir. Greg's experiences are compelling, Forrest had said. And informative, too. He didn’t specify how.“You take notes, don't you?” Forrest had asked, long ago. “About important th...

15 likes 11 comments 11
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A Margo Peabody and Winston the Menace Goose Mystery

Submitted to Contest #310

Chapter One: A Mystery Most Middle-Aged Margo Peabody’s day began, as all great disasters do, with optimism.She flung open the creaky doors of The Whispering Tome, inhaled the scent of aged paper and Mr. Fitzgerald’s latest hairball, and declared, “Today’s the day, Fitz! No drama, no chaos, just books.”The cat, sprawled atop Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, blinked slowly—a gesture Margo chose to interpret as solidarity.The shop was its usual cacophony of charm and mild hazard. Sunlight strained through dust to illuminate the “Local Lore”...

15 likes 5 comments 5
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THE INFERNAL BARGAIN

Submitted to Contest #310

‘So you want to sell me your soul,’ said the demon. ‘What do you want in return? Power? Riches? World domination? A woman?’ ‘I want to go viral on social media.’‘What’s that?’‘Have you heard of the internet?’ asked Max.‘Vaguely. It’s some kind of electronic thing, isn’t it? Or something to do with spider webs?’‘No, the World-wide Web. It’s a means of communication. You know what a computer is, don’t you?’‘Someone who works with figures?’ The demon was looking progressively more baffled and he obviously felt out of his depth.‘No, it’s a machi...

2 likes 2 comments 2
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A Perpendicular Universe

Submitted to Contest #309

"Sleepwalking!” the absurdly young cop exclaimed. “Maybe you sleepwalked into Mr Johnson's house”Translation: I don’t want to put the handcuffs on this nice lady wearing a floral nightdress and arrest her for trespass.Flo Evans took a breath as was her custom when forced to repeat herself multiple times.“This is my house. I was asleep on my sofa.”Lionel sniggered, shaking his head.“It is my ex-husband who is the intruder,” she said without pause for breath this time, because if she were in the habit of exercising pause where Lionel was conce...

8 likes 1 comment 1
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Cat Leaves

Submitted to Contest #309

“Why are you leaving, Cat?! I don’t understand…” “I’m taking the sofa, too.” “Please don’t take the sofa. That’s my favorite piece of furniture. And… and I paid for that! Take the bed. The lounge chair! Just not the sofa. Please Cat…” Two muscly men in tight “Mike’s Movers” t-shirts walked in like mindless robots, as if Cathryn had complete power over them via remote control. The villain bad boss and her cronies. Their blank facial expressions frightened Trevor, whose right hand was placed on the backrest as if to comfort his bel...

3 likes 1 comment 1
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(Dis)closure

Submitted to Contest #309

“Potential Spam,” reads Greg aloud, operating on instinct before the text registers to his eyes. The ‘Spam’ name shows up so much in his call log, he’s surprised he hasn’t been invited to the Mr. and Mrs. Spam wedding yet. But this time, it doesn’t say Potential Spam. It doesn’t say anything at all. The area code is local, which is promising and ominous. Greg doesn’t have time to search for the phone number. Something tells him he shouldn’t reject it. This isn’t the time to succumb to his anxiety-driven nerves. It’s never really the time, b...

12 likes 15 comments 15
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The Book That Wasn't

Submitted to Contest #310

Mark never meant for anyone to read it.He called it The Echo and the Sock: A Nonlinear Treatise on Perception and Choice. A joke title, for a joke book, written in a haze of caffeine, bourbon, and sleep-deprivation. It was a fever dream of metaphors and contradictions - a stream-of-consciousness wreckage filled with sentences like:"All clocks are liars, except the one in your belly button.""To become truly free, one must first befriend a duck and rename it Harold.""Hope is a sandwich left on a windowsill during a thunderstorm."He self-publis...

11 likes 3 comments 3
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So What If The Impossible Happens

Submitted to Contest #310

Content warning: This story contains gore and depictions of suicideAllen Rubinstein dangled from the ceiling fan, a bedsheet around his neck, contemplating his failures. Even this suicide note isn't original, he thought, looking at the paper pinned to his shirt. "'The words don't come anymore'—didn't some folk singer use that line?"After years of writing and six finished novels, he still couldn't find an agent or publisher. Maybe death would finally make him a bestseller. His wife and kids would get the profits, those bastard publishers woul...

8 likes 1 comment 1
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Cold Brew Coffee

Submitted to Contest #309

The package said it was “Cold Brew Coffee”, but it was just coffee made with cold water. Lucy touched the screen on the machine to make a cup of cold caffeinated water.Regardless of the time of year, the office was always hot in the afternoon. Strict rules were in place forbidding any unauthorized person changing the office’s thermostat – the locked box around the thermostat helped enforce the rule. The heat combined with the work duties of filing sales tax returns were a perfect recipe for Lucy falling asleep at her desk. “Cold Brew Coffee”...

3 likes 0 comments 0
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God Sent Me a Message… and Then Blocked Me

Submitted to Contest #310

A modern tale of divine ghosting and emotional roaming I don't quite remember when I lost faith. Maybe it was the day Aunt Lilian gifted me a Bible wrapped in greasy salami paper. The pages still smelled like peppercorn for weeks. Or perhaps it was when my ex said, "It's not that I don't love you, I just like you better when you're quiet," while buttering toast like nothing had happened. Or maybe it was one lazy Sunday, the kind where the air feels thick and lukewarm, when I made myself a watery coffee, sat down in pajamas with a pâté stain ...

9 likes 13 comments 13
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St. Christopher(still)

Submitted to Contest #309

You may have heard rumors that St. Christopher was demoted and lost his sainthood; nothing could be further from the truth. That St. Christopher medal in your glove compartment is still valid. In 1969 the Church decided there were too many saints with feast days (there are over 10,000 saints), so they updated the calendar. Unfortunately, St. Christopher lost his feast day so that St. James the Greater could shine that day. (James may have been a bit jealous due to the fact that so many non-Catholics have St. Chris medals in their cars.) Jame...

3 likes 3 comments 3
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Goodwill Hunting

Submitted to Contest #309

Tina’s breath rasped through her mask. Her skin itched under the rough fabric of her Carhart jacket, and her hands sweat within her rubber sanitation gloves. Even through the mask, she could smell the sickly-sweet odor of unwashed bodies and hot garbage. The florescent tubes cast a harsh, migraine-inducing light, and Tina’s rubber sneakers squealed whenever they so much as touched the stained concreate floor. Other shifty-eyed scavengers scuttled around her, casting about in the bins stacked widdershins all throughout the warehouse, each stu...

3 likes 1 comment 1
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The Wet Floor

Submitted to Contest #309

A group of three smartly dressed young men exited the office building lobby. Nan had seen them before, but the staff were usually long gone when she arrived to start her cleaning shift, and she had no idea which office they worked in. They left a trail of dirty footprints across the newly mopped marble, oblivious to the wet floor signs. Gritting her teeth, Nan wrung out her mop and started again. None of them glanced in her direction, much less apologized. Glaring after them as she finished mopping, she stretched to relieve her aching back. ...

4 likes 2 comments 2
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RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

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