2710+ Happy Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. A good story doesn’t need a devastating twist. Nor does it have to plumb the darkest depths of the human conditions. These happy short stories might be exactly what you’re looking for in these uncertain times.

🏆 Winning stories

“Love.edu: Courtship and Coincidence in Modern Academia” by Eliza Levin

🏆 Winner of Contest #237

Thursday, Jan 18 2:12 PMTo: eliserhodes@elliott.eduFrom: fredericklaird@greerstate.eduSUBJECT: Your (Brilliant) Paper on Mirrors/Jane EyreDear Professor Rhodes,I hope this email finds you well. I must confess that, although we have never met, I am a longtime admirer of your work—I was actually at your talk on Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell last year, which I greatly enjoyed.I write to you today to express my sincerest compliments on your paper The Beast Within: Mirrors and the Internalized Male Gaze in Jane Eyre. I know better than a...

156 likes 68 comments 68

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⭐️ Recommended stories

“Countdown to Impact” by Joshua Iyo

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #258

The plane hums steadily, a familiar and comforting vibration that thrums through the metal hull. I sit near the open door, and the world beyond sprawls out—a plain of blues and greens. Below, the earth fans out like some vast, intricate map. I lean out a bit, my heart already quickening up with this feeling of thrill that never really goes away no matter how many jumps I've done.  It is sweet, electric; a pulse in my veins. There is something rather magical about this view of the world from high up, a bird's-eye view that can connect th...

13 likes 4 comments 4

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“Moratorium” by Ross O'Donnell

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #250

“And so I told him, he’d have to earn back my trust!” Mort rasped between fits of laughter. “Get it? Urn? Because he’s always harping on about that big stupid urn his sister bought him!” He slapped his thigh with one bony hand and relapsed into cackles, reliving his moment. I shook my head fondly, grinning the stiff, rigor-mortis grin of a wife who’d long since learned to see the punchline coming, and instead mostly focused on admiring the strong cheekbones of the comedian who lay by my side. It was not a bad pastime. For any softness i...

18 likes 11 comments 11

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“Lovepugs” by Caro Robson

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #229

Montgomery's chubby little body trembles with excited grunts as Poppy pushes open the door. Noticing the stylish reception area, she shushes him, feeling foolish for bringing a pug to a lawyer’s office. Still - she needs him here. He is her only remaining family and she cannot face the reading of her mother’s will without him by her side. A familiar voice rings out from the reception desk, immediately putting her at ease. “This must be the famous Montgomery! The whole town is talking about this handsome fellow.” Poppy had...

21 likes 24 comments 24

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✍️ All stories

“Cooking up a Successful Restaurant: A Recipe for Success” by Jeff Meade

Submitted to Contest #270

Recipe OverviewStart out with dreams. Restaurants are based on this magical ingredient. Restaurants are not created just to sell tasty delicacies, but rather to showcase desires, ambitions, and personal fancy. They are selfish in that way, as only the creator truly understands the artistry they put into their work.  So start with a dream. Grab a sheet of paper and sketch out what the kitchen would look like. Then spend countless hours pondering whether the crispy Po’Boy should have jerk seasoning or traditional blackening spice. It’s al...

7 likes 4 comments 4

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“Living among shadows” by Sonia Młynarczyk

Submitted to Contest #269

Mary Jane wasn’t an adventurous girl. She rarely left her house and hardly ever without one of her parents or siblings. Not that she didn’t like to - hearing the chatter of all the people at the town market and feeling the sun on her face were her favorite moments of any week. No, Mary Jane liked the outside. The mysterious, unknowable space. It’s just that she could never find her way through the confusing world of shadows that surrounded her. She alone lived in it. Noone else in her family had to navigate the same everchanging ethereal lan...

6 likes 0 comments 0

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“Half Hearted” by John K Adams

Submitted to Contest #269

Lionel Bricker, or Brickbat, as his friends called him, came home one day and saw the need for a change. ‘Decluttering’ had become all the rage to his coworkers. Lionel became aware of it overhearing his workmates during lunch. That grown men should waste valuable time discussing cleaning strategies struck him as odd. His staff explained that ‘Swedish Death Cleaning’ was about ‘intentional decluttering.’ Relieved, Lionel said, “Oh, I thought it was a bizarre Viking burial ritual.” He said, “I’m not going anywhere. To ensure loved ones are no...

10 likes 6 comments 6

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“Making Tortillas with Mom” by Katy Dream

Submitted to Contest #270

Roxy sat in the living room playing with her dolls.  She told her dad goodbye as he left to go to work at his night job at his company.Setting her dolls down she ran into the kitchen just as she heard her mom humming in the kitchen to the radio.  “There you are!”  Her Mom said.  “Did you come to help me?  Remember that I told you your uncles are coming over tonight for dinner?”  Her Mom said.  “Oh yay!”  Roxy clapped her hands together.  She remembered it was Saturday night and it was he...

6 likes 0 comments 0

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“L’Homme au doigt” by John Rutherford

Submitted to Contest #269

BANG! The auctioneer’s gavel slammed into the block.“Sold! For one hundred and forty-one million US dollars.” The auctioneer announced.There was a sudden muffled noise as hushed voices reported the news to potential buyers, through cupped hands holding phones, or others whispering into the screens of laptops. The excitement in Christie’s auction room in London took some time to dissipate. There was only one item for auction that day in 2015, it was Alberto Giacometti’s famous object d’art, a six-foot-tall bronze sculpture named - L'homme au ...

24 likes 18 comments 18

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“Get a Jobi” by Tommy Goround

Submitted to Contest #269

-1-Once upon a time there was a carload of girls smoking pot and yelling towards the drive-through speaker at Taco Bell. The line of cars wasn't moving but my dog in the passenger seat was anxious because he heard there were just 23 minutes left till the end of the world. Now in the old days, with thirty-minute of warning for Russian ICBMs to fly over the ocean, we could have enjoyed major shopping. The old bombs would have neutralized everything while the new bombs are designed to simply kill people and leave most of the infrastructure...

9 likes 3 comments 3

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“Double Rainbow” by Eliza Kohler

Submitted to Contest #269

Rich turned the key in the door of his 2004 Toyota Corolla and heaved a sigh. Last night's storm had dissipated to a light sprinkle, now coating his windshield with a fine layer of opaque glitter. He reached into the car for his scraper and began attempting to rectify the situation, but it was useless. The sparkling mist was still falling. Surrendering, he dropped into the driver's seat, glitter fluttering from his clothes into every crevice of his freshly detailed car. Damned near impossible to get the stuff out. The windshield wipers ...

5 likes 2 comments 2

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“Sorano” by Shubham Ghodgaonkar

Submitted to Contest #269

Hana is a girl who lives in a New York penthouse with her mom and dad. Her mom’s name is Jenny and her dad’s name is Kiyoshi. He was a Japanese immigrant who came to the US to study engineering, and along the way ended up marrying Jenny and staying in the USA without returning home for a long time. Hana’s parents thought that now she had completed her 8th grade, they should take her to see his dad’s hometown which was in Shinjuku, Japan.  Hana was not that excited as she wanted to hang out with her friends from school and have some fun,...

6 likes 1 comment 1

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“The Golden Echo.” by Tez Scanlan

Submitted to Contest #269

Trigger note: Depicts loss and grief of a relative, with christian belief systems from the characters. The Golden Echo. It was strange watching my young child of seven rifle through his grandma's things. We had inherited the lot on her passing, just two weeks prior. The house was to be sold, but its contents were ours to do as we pleased.Having gone through a divorce myself, barely six months before, our current home was void of objects. Basic necessities only, for he had taken much. The death of my mother had been a timely one, as...

5 likes 1 comment 1

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“The Elusive Genie” by Murray Burns

Submitted to Contest #269

The Elusive Genie           “Most people are about as happy as they make their minds up to be.”                                                                  &...

23 likes 6 comments 6

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“An Opportunity Found” by John Steckley

Submitted to Contest #269

I, Jeffrey Winter, have given up as a writer. Publishers never look twice at anything that I have ever submitted to them. Sometimes, I swear, it is like they never even looked once. That was even true of the one publisher here in town. After three rejections, I decided I did not want to go through that pain again. I guess that I will have to be content with being a teacher of English at a community college, someone who may inspire one of my students to become a successful writer. It is possible, and I will finally be...

8 likes 7 comments 7

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“Aunt Julchen's four-leaf clover” by Lili Margareta

Submitted to Contest #269

Disclaimer: This is not a fictional story! :) When I was about 8 years old, my mom’s wallet got stolen in a parking lot. I can still remember her crying, though not because of the money. My mom would have gladly given all that and more if it meant a special four-leaf clover, old and brittle and pressed between the leather compartments of her wallet, would come back to her. My mother grew up in a huge and complicated family. Her mother had been adopted by her aunt and her aunt‘s younger brother when her biological mother learned that her husb...

9 likes 2 comments 2

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“a reviewers worst nightmare ” by William Ghostkeeper

Submitted to Contest #268

Another review, another batch of lost subscribers as our character walks into his bosses office he wonders if he is gonna be fired for consistently losing subscribers when he puts out a restaurant review. I mean it must be that right? I mean there's no way that newspaper reviews are a dying medium… right??? As he opens the door he can already tell that he's angry. But when he talks its the most polite he's ever seen his boss and overall kinda cheery, it creeps him out a bit. “Please take a seat” “how are you today”, “how's the dog doing?”. “...

5 likes 3 comments 3

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“Hero's Mission” by Breanna Aguiar

Submitted to Contest #267

You know that old mop that sits in the corner of a small ass supply closet in every restaurant or school? Yeah, well that's me right now. I am the mop and my supply closet is actually a cardboard box. I know on a regular day I don't exactly smell like roses but when it rains, I start smelling like a load of clothes left and forgotten for too long in the washer. Although, even that would smell better than me because when you wash clothes you add those good-smelly things in there. I usually get clean by taking a dip into the lake or running th...

2 likes 0 comments 0

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“We all have secrets dear” by Robert Radcliff

Submitted to Contest #267

It was impossible for Tom to hide his happiness.He would meet his date Sophie in just a few hours.Their initial point of contact was an introduction on the brand-new website "Secrets and Excitement."It was unique among dating apps in that it only paired users when one or both had secrets that could influence the course of their relationship. The website promised it would not share the secret with anybody else, and it was kept in total confidence. They paired the secret keeper with someone who would probably be cool with hearing the secret, ...

6 likes 0 comments 0

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