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

150+ Lgbtq+ Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. Discover incredible works of queer fiction right here, on this page of fresh new LGBTQ+ stories.

Lgbtq+ Short Stories – Page 2 of 10

Into the Daylight

Submitted to Contest #314

It was the hottest day of the year, approximately six days after Sua passed her fourteenth Sun celebration. Her mentor, Nieve, the last oracle left in their tiny, insulated village, informed her to prepare for this day the night before. The hottest day of the year marked the day Sua would travel to the spirit realm alone and journey back while disrupting the spirits there as little as possible, a trial all apprentice oracles faced before their abilities would fully blossom. After years of training and meditative rituals, Sua knew exactly how...

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The Grove and the Girl

Submitted to Contest #314

They call it “The Grove of Her Blessing”. A name too soft for a place that thrums with ancient breath and bone deep knowledge. Trees arc skyward in a crescent of reverence: ash with silver bark like moon-scored metal, rowan heavy with red-fruit promises, beech leaves whispering like velvet secrets. At the center lies the pool, born of a spring older than memory. Its surface so still, so piercingly clear, it doesn’t just reflect the sky; it becomes it. Women come as the seasons change. Barefoot in dew or snow, veiled in grief or joy. Maiden...

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Heatwave Sunday

Submitted to Contest #314

The air conditioner had given up sometime around three AM, wheezing to a pathetic halt with what sounded like a mechanical death rattle. Now, at eleven in the morning, their apartment felt like the inside of an oven set to slowly roast your inhabitants. Maja was sprawled across the hardwood floor in just her underwear and Riley's favorite flannel shirt, the soft blue one that was practically threadbare and somehow still too much clothing for this weather. She'd unbuttoned it completely, using it more like a blanket that she could dramaticall...

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Torandot Redux

Submitted to Contest #314

"Forget her, Cefalu," Gayle consoled. He lit up his pipe and turned back to face his friend. "Turan's a goddamn princess and you're just a--"Cefalu was no longer behind him on the cobblestone streets of Karakorum, but had climbed atop the shingles of a nearby roof.Gayle dropped his yasun, letting the lit tobacco spill on his feet. "Cefalu!!-- Gah!" He quickly brushed the embers off his foot and looked back at the roof. His friend was gone.Mumbling to himself, Gayle jockeyed onto a narrow fence, as Cefalu must have, and jumped to hang from th...

3 likes 1 comment 1
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The War is Over

Submitted to Contest #313

“Maybe in our hypothesising, we’ve accidentally robbed the moment of its landing,” the humour in her gaze is pinned on the cigarette between her fingertips. Her other hand subtly mimes the fingering of a piano piece against the stack of cinderblocks we’re sitting on, her only tell being the rhythmic flex in her littlest finger. We’d set up this hermitage six or so months ago. She’d argued that respectable ladies discussed any matters worth the interest in private- that the troopers had no rights to our discourse. The canvas marquee housed tw...

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Clarity

Submitted to Contest #313

The coffee shop on the quad had become routine, though Micah couldn’t pinpoint exactly when. Somewhere between September and now, mid-October leaves beginning their slow burn to amber, his Tuesdays had reorganized around this place, at this time. He told himself it was about the coffee, which beat dining hall swill, or that it seemed to always match his schedule, but he wasn’t buying his own excuses anymore. “Predictable,” Eldee said, appearing beside him in line with that half-smile that did complicated things to his chest. She wore flannel...

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Revenge has a Ring to it

Submitted to Contest #313

REVENGE HAS A RING TO IT “This is the restaurant I was telling you about. The food is good, but the Oceanside view is killer, Am I right?”“It’s fine, Davey. A diner would have been fine, too.” “Ed, come on, let’s chill. I wish it hadn’t come to this. I mean, the reason that we’re here.”“It didn’t have to come to this, Davie. And don’t talk like you’re the injured party. It doesn’t suit you. ““Ed, it’s not worth this much bad blood. It’s not like this get-together is another deal breaker. ““Hey, you’re the attorney here, but it seems to me ...

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Old lovers café

Submitted to Contest #313

Years. It’s been years since then. Yet, every now and then, I still catch the scent — cinnamon, old books, freshly brewed coffee with a hint of amber, and it’s like time folds in on itself. One breath, and I’m back in that café, light spilling in across the scratched-up table, your hand brushing mine over a the rim of a chipped porcelain cup. I don’t remember the conversation — just the feeling— of almost saying something, of almost reaching for something we both knew wouldn’t last. Funny how scents hold more truth than memory ever could. I ...

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The Walls Are About Us

Submitted to Contest #313

“You've reached Jaxon, leave a message.”I sigh and put down the phone, only to pick it up again. Ellis: He still isn't answering his phone Maz: Let him have his temper tantrum. He'll come back Maz is right, he usually does. He'll storm out, slam the door, and go for a walk or something to clear his head. He's never been gone this long before, though. Maz: He just needs to torture you a little more with the silent treatment This is why I'm not supposed to talk to you, I think. Mazin's always been critical of Jaxon, which he obviously didn't...

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Three Quarters of My Doomsday

Submitted to Contest #313

Are you there, God? It’s me… Ludwig. Do you ever listen?No. I should have known you’re deaf. If you did hear me out, I wouldn’t be sitting here, on this couch, dressed in black, picking cat hair from my clothes. And Mitzi wouldn’t be staring at me with a thousand questions in those shimmering, green eyes. The most pressing, obviously – where’s dinner? And secondly, where the hell is my owner? Can you answer that, big guy? Because I’ve got nothing. How do I explain this to a beast that barely understands basic words?I’d grown used to this pla...

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The Orchard's Language

Submitted to Contest #313

The orchard wasn’t theirs. It had never been. The fences were splintered, peeling white like old scabs, and the signs were long gone, rotted out and swinging by a single nail. But the girls had stopped noticing those details. They’d slipped past that place between trespass and belonging, like a cherry pit spat into high grass.They were girls the way fireflies were girls—just barely, flickering, in motion. The air that summer was honey-thick and humming with cicadas, and the sun seemed to hang a little longer than usual, bloated and slow, lik...

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Girls of the Lotus Pond

Submitted to Contest #312

Content Note: some readers may feel unnerved by the themes of vague body horror. The afternoon slid over the earth like honey left too long on the stove, thick and slow and smouldering, sugar turning to smoke. It was the kind of heat that made time crawl sideways. Cicadas stitched the air together with silver wire, and the koi pond in Eleanor's backyard exhaled steam like a fever dream, each breath damp with rot and rosewater.It was July and everything was wet: the grass, their skin, the sun-glossed petals of ivory lilies bloated on the surf...

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Bunny

Submitted to Contest #311

“I can’t sleep.” “I’d be amazed if you could, Bunny.” Laurie rolled over and pulled the beaded cord of the bedside lamp. The room filled with a comforting tangerine haze through the smoke. Horizontally, she wriggled to close the space between her and her lady, resting her head in the magical crook between thigh and stomach. Flick, crackle, inhale, exhale. Jane lifted the joint from her lips, leaving a chocolate lip print on the filter, and tilted her head down to lay heavy-lidded eyes on her lover girl. Laurie’s head still spun every t...

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The Witch and the Never-Ending Need to Communicate

Submitted to Contest #310

Argie always found books easier than people. They spoke whatever language she felt for the day; poetry, thriller, nonfiction. She was a witch who could convey her emotions to others without uttering a single word, easily manipulating light that people recognized as her feelings. While she preferred to keep quiet and let her power replace her voice—to the point where moving towns meant no one knew her name—those emotions were never truly understood. Others would nod and smile when Argie let off a flurry of her thoughts put into tangibl...

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The Liminal Spot

Submitted to Contest #310

Hugo Galloway hadn't been seen in three days. In that time, the canals that ran through Manchester had grown thick and dark as ink. The autumn was always unpleasant in the northern half of England, the October sky typically filled with storms that crackled and roiled with rain, but this week was dry. They had nothing but heavy gray clouds with dark bellies. It was as if the rain were afraid to fall. The folks on the street knew nothing about the why of it all, would have denied it if they were told, but they knew something was wrong. None bu...

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RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

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