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150+ Mystery Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. No need to go out hunting for clues — you’ve solved the puzzle of where to find the newest mystery short stories just by landing on this page.

Mystery Short Stories – Page 9 of 10

The Final Question

Submitted to Contest #307

I should’ve stayed home.That was the first thought that came to mind when Mr. Halvorsen walked out of the classroom, the door slammed shut behind him, and the lock clicked. Loud. Final.I’m Elise. Seventeen. Not loud, not quiet, just… there. I’m the kind of student who doesn’t cause trouble, who turns things in on time, who floats under the radar like a ghost with decent handwriting. Logic class was the one place I felt solid. There were rules, patterns, and right answers. But this—this wasn’t a test. It was an ambush. We were halfway through...

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If I Had Died That Night

Submitted to Contest #307

If I had died that night, the one thing no one would have known is that I still needed something I couldn’t name. I didn’t get back to Cairo. I stayed in Barcelona. The apartment was a penthouse, directly across from the Facultat de Medicina hospital. From the terrace, I could see doctors and nurses in white coats standing outside, smoking under the pale afternoon sun. A surreal, deeply Catalan scene. They looked like actors between takes. No one seemed rushed. The hospital didn’t feel like a place of urgency from where I stood. And I, feeli...

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Scriptum Obscura

Submitted to Contest #307

1894The candle gutters low as Isolda Ferin moved through the lower stacks of the Sorrellian Library. Her boots clicked softly on the stone, yet the sound didn’t echo. The air has thickened, as if listening. She paused before the last shelf. Her hands, ink stained and trembling, clutched a glass jar. Inside: darkness, not pigment, not oil, but something alive. Words congealed. A thousand unwritten things. She kneeled. The ground accepts her with a sigh. Whispers spiral upwards as she pries open the jar’s seal. “To forget a thing is to feed it...

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The Bell

Submitted to Contest #307

Ella didn’t even remember the street having a shop there. Not really. It was the sort of place you walk past a hundred times without registering it. Wedged between a shuttered bakery and a dentist’s office that always seemed closed, the building looked too narrow to be useful. One filthy window displayed a single wooden chair and an eyeless porcelain doll. The glass was dark, the interior darker still. A tilted hand-painted sign above the door read only “ANTIQUES,” but the letters had almost faded into the gray wood. Still, she stopped. It w...

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The Triangle Club

Submitted to Contest #307

All the boys in the Triangle Club wore a tiny black triangle pin on their uniform ties. The girls they tapped for the club got a matching one and were directed to wear it on their blazer lapels. Although technically a violation of the Blanton Academy dress code, it was discreet enough to go unnoticed except by those who were looking for it. The day after Kelly was tapped, she was on the lookout for the other lucky girls as she trekked across the grounds towards the Humanities Building. She wasn’t surprised when the first one she crossed path...

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Did I Get an A?

Submitted to Contest #307

“Mr. Lang, a word,” Principal Russo said, wagging a chubby, come-hither finger at me from his office doorway.I sighed, adjusting my tie—a soft purple silk number splattered with little green question marks.Russo’s eyes flicked briefly toward the Riddler-inspired tie before grumpily meeting my gaze.A wry smile found its way to my face. Russo hated my outfits, but I had tenure, so there was nothing he could do about it.Still, he made little effort to hide his disdain for anything outside the old-fashioned. With his neatly pressed collared shir...

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Final Exam

Submitted to Contest #307

The room buzzed with a nervous, electric tension as the senior chemistry students tore open their final exam envelopes. Fluorescent lights hummed above, casting a pale glow over rows of lab benches. Scratch of pens, rustle of papers, and the occasional sigh of anxiety filled the air. At the front of the room, Professor Alton McClain stood with his arms crossed, a steel-jawed figure with gray in his beard and wariness in his eyes. He had spent thirty years teaching chemistry at Langley College, long enough to know when something felt... off. ...

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The Bell Beneath Caldera Street

Submitted to Contest #307

They say if you walk Caldera Street just past midnight, the air itself leans in to listen.A cracked bronze bell hangs from the archway of a long-abandoned church at the street's end. It hasn't run in decades--not since the fire--but those who know, say it never stopped sounding. You just have to hear it right. You have to listen with your bones.Lenn never believed in stories like that. Not until the night Emri slipped him the key. It started at a gallery. The kind where everyone pretends they know what paint is trying to say. Lenn was there ...

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Shadows on the Thames

Submitted to Contest #307

London, 1883. A dense fog, as thick as wool and as mysterious as the secrets hidden within the city’s winding streets, clung to the gaslit alleys like a living shroud. Every cobbled pathway, every weathered façade of brick and stone, and every echo of a distant carriage wheel whispered secrets older than time. In this obscure twilight, Ezra Buckleby, a young man whose dark eyes burned with determination tempered by sorrow, ventured forth. He had come to London not only to seek refuge from his tumultuous past but also to find the truth behind...

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Of Cats and Cosmic Horror

Submitted to Contest #307

The air in her London flat tasted of ash and stale dreams, and Alice awoke feeling as dead as the paint on her peeling walls, yearning for anything to prove she was truly alive. She wasn’t looking for a secret society, or forgotten gods, or anything remotely sinister. She was just looking for a painting. More than that, she was looking for a spark, a flicker of inspiration to reignite the dwindling flame of her artistic spirit. Her tiny Southwark flat, perpetually shadowed by the gleaming Shard, felt smaller and tighter each day, squeezing t...

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The Easiest Confession

Submitted to Contest #306

Who is it? Hello? Alex? Its Hilda calling. You didn’t show up for last Thursday’s meeting, so I was just, y’know, calling to see if you were going to show up today. No, I didn’t plan on it. Oh! Oh. Okay, well, if you can’t make it in person, do you- You’re going to ask if we can talk over the phone?…Yeah that’s fine. I don’t care. If you wanna talk that badly- I don’t mean to pressure you! You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to, I’ll understand. Since we’re over the phone, I get it if you don’t want to say certain things. Just, y’k...

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CTRL

Submitted to Contest #306

She ducked into the small studio apartment quickly, hoping to avoid her chatty neighbor, who always seemed to catch her at the worst times. Phone clutched in hand, the screen aglow with an unanswered call to Blake. Jacket shed, shoes flung, then she dropped her phone on the desk, powered on her laptop, and changed into comfy clothes. She grabbed a beer from the fridge, cracked it open, and plopped onto the stool. She clicked the browser, and as soon as it loaded, a chat box expanded onto her screen. OnlyEyes4u- “Hey, how are you doing tonigh...

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Comments: User: 5280shock - 7 March, 2025 Your Grandfather’s an accessory to murder

Submitted to Contest #306

So, I know that this blog is about debunking insane conspiracy theories, which means my personal life is boring and largely irrelevant, but this last week I was helping my Mom go through a storage unit used by my late grandfather and amidst all the usual boring junk plus an ornate owl pendant in the folds of grandma’s favorite purple, star-speckled tablecloth and a large silver trunk, I found a box that held a series of unmarked books that turned out to be journals. The first was written by my Grandpa Dwight himself, who was (ironically enou...

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The Archivist

Submitted to Contest #307

Elenora Laughley first stumbled upon the Archives through a flippant remark, a half-whispered jest between two professors clinking glasses at the Wex Lit College holiday party. The air was thick with mulled wine and academic posturing, and Nora, a second-year grad student, hovered on the fringes, her glass of cheap Merlot untouched. She studied 19th-century political literature, her focus on censored tracts—texts deemed too incendiary to survive their era. It was niche, obsessive work, and it suited her. No one had ever connected her researc...

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Journal of Lucy Scott

Submitted to Contest #306

Journal of Lucy Scott – YEAR UNKNOWN June 8I arrived at the cabin this afternoon. The drive was the same but different. The large rock at the turnoff was still there, but it was covered in moss, and the thorny brambles were covering most of it. The little general store was still open, but the cheery store owner, who was always out sweeping the porch, was old and grey and had an air of bitter regret. His usual friendly 'Thank you' was now a mumbled grunt of acknowledgment as I purchased the basics for the weekend. Even though age had taken i...

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RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

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