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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.

8960+ 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 521 of 598

Panic, Schmanic

Submitted to Contest #60

I have two towels. I’m rich by today’s standards. Right now, they are pinned together to form a poncho that’s keeping me warm. It’s the end of spring. The first few generations after The Event, no one kept track of time, days or years. Heck, the world was so bleak and black that no one could keep track of the seasons. You couldn’t tell the difference between winter and summer. Someone in one of the larger settlements up north on the Upper Bay near Old New York, calculated the current year as 2520 OD (Old Date) or 500 ND (New Date.) They ca...

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MARGIN BOMB

Submitted to Contest #60

MARGIN BOMB by JOE HOLEK I guess now that time permits I should at least try to recount a small sliver of what happened. Not that it’s too important, its the future that matters, not so much the past. But it has been said before, ‘If we don’t take a lesson from history, we are doomed to repeat it.’ Those who said that are now the dust in my lungs, the grass beneath my feet, and the bacteria under my nails. Its odd how the tables turned. Is it sad to envy them? The earth has been ravaged by a holy war, nearly everyone lost their ass. The air ...

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The Thin Mint Line

Submitted to Contest #60

It was a new day.  I hastened to grab my supplies. Lead-lined hazmat suit, check. GPS, check. Potable water. I stared at the fine white ash that swirled in my canteen. That stuff was everywhere nowadays. Ugh, check. Weapons? A machete would do. I ran my leather glove over the blade ever so gently. I could see the fine fibers in the leather separate. Still sharp. I threw it in my red wagon. It better still be sharp. Who knew what I would run into.  I fastened my sash around my hazmat suit, loaded my wagon with my wares, and took...

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The Almost Breakup, Reese's Pieces, and a Baseball Cap (Part 2)

Submitted to Contest #61

Author’s Note: All of the sections inside of the italicized parts are the memories. This is a flashback from one of their dates! Hope you enjoy it!I sniff the candy Henry presented me with. I gasp and I am suddenly brought back to a memory I vaguely remember - the first time Henry brought me this chocolate. I was sixteen at the time, and I thought that our sixth date was going to be awesome. I was deeply disappointed. We were at a theater, and we had purchased tickets to a romantic comedy titled, "That's My Wife!" We entered the theater...

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Crater

Submitted to Contest #60

El Restaurante del Cráter is at the center of the largest crater in Mexico. The state of Guerrero, like the entirety of the globe is in ruins, desolation, and ash. The fires that have engulfed the vegetation of the world have mostly burnt out. The old refineries and destroyed pipelines still spit out their fuel like dying dragons across charred landscapes. The sky is black, the sun, blotted into a red orb is a symbol of what has become. The human population, decimated and delivered into the state of a previous era when the hunter gatherer ru...

8 likes 1 comment 1
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A Late Night Ponder

Submitted to Contest #60

The rat was back again. Derek clenched his teeth, back rigid and stiff on the cot. He could hear it clicking, its tiny feet padding up and down the kitchen, crawling on top of the pots and pans. He couldn’t even pretend it wasn’t there, because it was making more noise than the air filtration system. It was getting more daring, because the rat knew. They had lived in this constant battle for more than two years. The rat would clang around in the kitchen, rummaging for the non-existent rations, and he would lay rigid in bed rummaging for ...

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Not A Friend In The World

Submitted to Contest #60

(Trigger warning: body horror) Your twenty-first birthday is supposed to be a super fun night spent bar hopping with your friends, which is why I believe I deserve some sort of cosmic redo. See before I even had the chance to use my now legal ID, a bunch of aliens from planet who gives a shit, in a galaxy far, far away, invaded Earth and decided to use the human race for their transgenic experiment. Or something like that. The Alien’s gurgle voice boomed out of their spacecrafts and echoed across the world but I was too overwhelmed to really...

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Food Report No. 321

Submitted to Contest #60

From the files of the Dark Hunters (Hudson Walter X’s Reports):Since the crisis occurred, I have kept as accurate a record as possible of the changes that have taken place within the greater society and the world as a whole. Notably, I have seen the worst possible behaviour in my neighbours and friends and responded by trying to bring a level of sanity and decency back in our lives, with or without assistance. Naturally, this has been a very difficult task, especially for a man who once was responsible for nothing more challenging ...

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Doomsday Playlist

Submitted to Contest #60

To a certain extent living through the cacophony of explosions deep beneath the earth, huddled together for moral support should make you appreciate your family, but it’s a love that still ebbs and flows. Before the war to end everything, I’d gone as far away as I could from them so that I could get some piece of mind and build my self esteem instead of staying and deflecting the quips meant to keep me in that place. Once things started to get real and the carrot-toned leader with corn silk hair began to stir the masses in every wh...

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The Stash

Submitted to Contest #60

The wind whistled across the car park, rattling abandoned cars and tossing about the accumulated rubbish from the last six months, like a child discarding all the toys they were bored of. If the breeze carried a smell, Lizzie didn’t notice. After so many months, smells didn’t register like they used to. Now she panicked when the air smelt fresh, not when it didn’t. “Are you sure about this, Charles?” Rob asked. “Look, we’ve been over this enough,” Charles whispered back. “There’s a stash in there, and now’s the best chance to go and get...

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Organic

Submitted to Contest #60

“Ugh, Jack is being quite the nightmare today. Poor kid, though,” said Christine. “Poor kid?” replied Hellen. “I was helping Jessica find the right crayons for her drawing, but before she could make a choice Jack grabbed the whole bunch of them and flung them out the window. Not only that, but when I asked him to bring them back he launched the cello tape after them. Don’t you go poor kidding him.” They looked over at the mats next to the wall, where the children were fast asleep after a messy and exhausting lunch. Jack was at the far end, c...

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The Last to Die

Submitted to Contest #60

I am the last human to survive the Apocalypse. An accomplishment I am most proud of.  Now I know you have many questions, so I'll try to answer most of them as best I can.  The First and Most Obvious Question: How could you be the last human to survive the Apocalypse?  Answer: Well, I have to explain a few things first.  Okay. What I say next, you must promise me you won't laugh or sneer. Okay?  I'm a time traveler, the only one as far as I can tell. I haven't really bumped into anyone like me durin...

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Rosy Blushes, Rose Gold Tails, and the End of the World

Submitted to Contest #60

Soooo… the world has pretty much gone to hell. If that wasn’t already obvious by the fact that I’m using a trash can as a bout, it was now.Sweat built up my noodle-estic arms as I paddled with a stop sign. My eyes kept a close watch on the ocean's surface, waiting for the mermaids to find me and try to drown me like they did with any humans brazen enough to island hop.My destination? Zillowburg’s main headquarters. Er… rather the top of Zillowburg’s main headquarters. After the ice caps melted thanks to, drrrrrrrrrrrruuuuuum roll, please? Ba...

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Warmth in the Cold

Submitted to Contest #60

Warmth in the Cold Prologue The year is 2031; the earth just witnessed a Geomagnetic Reversal, causing a shift in the earth’s orbit around the sun leading to an instantaneous massive drop in temperature. In the blink of an eye everything froze up. Only a few humans who happened to be in an isolated space survived. In the example of our protagonist Mark: a computer science nerd who locked himself in his mother’s basement, offline, coding his time away and only realizing that an Apocalypse took place when his electrical generator ran out of ...

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Send in the Clowns

Submitted to Contest #60

  Send in the Clowns Hello, my name is Graham. I am writing this down for future generations because the history books are going to be really warped and maybe even unbelievable.   It all started with this virus that wouldn’t go away. The authorities tried everything and the concentrated effort was tremendous, but in the end failure was the inevitable result. So they took all the humans that were left — less than a ten thousand -— and they were put in isolation. While this was going on, a d...

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RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

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