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Discover weekly, the best short stories

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

150+ Sad Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. Do you ever need to break your own heart? We see you. Grab a tub of ice cream or a box of tissues and settle down with some of the best, really sad short stories to make you cry.

Sad Short Stories – Page 3 of 10

Letters from the Summer I Never Returned

Submitted to Contest #308

Trigger Warning: This story contains themes of war-related grief, displacement, and emotional trauma. A story of exile, memory, and quiet love The heat of this Californian summer is a dry, relentless thing, so different from the humid summers of my youth. It’s the kind of heat that stills the air and bakes the memories right out of the ground. On days like this, with the jasmine vine scenting the quiet afternoon, I find myself unlocking the desk drawer I haven’t opened in years. It’s full now—folded pages, ink faded to rust, envelopes with...

2 likes 5 comments 5
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A sigh in the wind.

Submitted to Contest #308

Once, when she was seven, she would run in the summer sun, hair whipping in the wind. Olivia would run after butterflies and blow on dandelions. Sometimes, she would walk around the block, looking at windows to see what other people were doing. Other times, she would watch the boy next door. She would watch the windows of his house to see if she could get a glimpse of him. She would play with her sister, Rosaline, until their mom called them in for dinner. Later, she would miss these days, but not then. Then she was happy, content just to be...

2 likes 1 comment 1
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Live, Laugh, Love

Submitted to Contest #308

After it happened, I expected the world to stop turning. I expected the sky to go dark, the moon to crash into the earth, the birds to go silent, the wind to no longer blow through the trees. I expected it, because that's what should have happened. If the very earth that created her had any level of care or reverence for my mother, it should have shown something. It should have gone dark. The sun should have been swallowed up by the sheer darkness that was my world after she was gone.She was my rock, and I was just the layer of soil and gras...

1 like 2 comments 2
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The Colorado Street Bridge

Submitted to Contest #308

***discussions of past violence***** ‘The baby was born early. Please come, I wrote your name as the father.’ Jaime Hernández read his mom’s erratic handwriting over and over on the back of the impossible photograph before he turned to look at the sepia tinged image again. The woman holding the dark skinned newborn, swaddled in a thin pink blanket didn't look so much like his mom, Jaime thought, as it did of himself, just a few years ago before puberty squared his jaw and broadened his shoulders, so young and so scared. Jaime flipped through...

21 likes 16 comments 16
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A Mothers Whisper

Submitted to Contest #308

Good evening, I am hoping I can borrow you for a few minutes. I have an occasional situation that I could use some help with. I have heard that one is never alone, however I have never heard of anything like what I am experiencing happen to anyone else, which is why I am asking for your help. I need to give you some background in order for you to possibly be better to understand this unusual situation of mine.From the time my mother entered middle school, she was introduced to illegal and illicit drugs. She used them throughout high school a...

10 likes 1 comment 1
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The Good Dream No Woman Wants

Submitted to Contest #308

“It was just a dream, honey,” I cooed softly to my son. My husband sat on the small bed next to me, rubbing my back as I cradled Liam’s tiny body in my arms. “It was only a dream.” Liam whimpered, further fracturing my heart. It had been weeks since his nightmares started, and they were consistent. Every night, around 2:30 in the morning, Liam would scream. “No! No! Stay away!” he’d beg the figment of his imagination. And every night, my husband and I would run to his room and comfort him until he fell asleep once again. We tried everything...

7 likes 2 comments 2
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Where the Grass Grows Back

Submitted to Contest #308

The weather was pleasant on a regular Friday in Georgia. The rain had just passed and Briar High was filled with high school students eager to get out of class and feel the sun on their faces. Classroom windows were lined with kids watching the wind blow leaves around the yard, filled with anticipation. Ben Miller, however, sat alone at his desk staring daggers into the poster hung on the wall across from him.The poster read: Another win for the Briar Bruins! It had him in a trance, causing unwanted memories to invade his mind–a baseball fie...

2 likes 3 comments 3
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It was all just a dream.

Submitted to Contest #308

Content Warning / Disclaimer:This story contains references to emotional and physical abuse, trauma, and psychological manipulation. Reader discretion is advised.It Was All Just a DreamIt was all just a dream.That is what she tells the detective, the social worker, the news anchor with the sympathetic smile. She says it aloud because if it was not a dream, if it was real, then she has to remember every breath, every bruise, every moment she smiled at the monster and called him safe.They told her the countryside would be good for her. Soft. H...

18 likes 12 comments 12
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Summer Cycle

Submitted to Contest #308

He teetered out of the apartment, tipsy, into the summer night. The still air was refreshing on his shirtless skin. His bare feet enjoyed the freedom of the cool night. He was blessed to have a terrace. He should be grateful. A peppering of stars reached out to the city below, even as the city itself attempted to suffocate them with its own lights. He leaned out over the railing, shoulders over the abyss, and studied the dark pavement five stories below. He wondered what would happen if he jumped. If this time, he had the spine to do somethi...

2 likes 2 comments 2
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Bottom's Last Dream

Submitted to Contest #308

On Midsummer’s Eve, Bottom the Weaver opened the door of his hut to see the last crescent of sun dropping behind Theseus’s castle. He still thought of it as Theseus’s castle even though Theseus’s son Duke Hippolytus reigned there now. He stepped out into the warm evening, turning to take one last look at the loom that was his livelihood. For years, he had been the best weaver for miles around, but now, with his failing eyesight, he found it hard to make fabric with the fine details that had been his signature, and he was relegated to weaving...

3 likes 6 comments 6
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Step out

Submitted to Contest #308

Elara had always loved the quietude of early mornings. Before the sun peeked over the horizon, she would sneak out of her small, shadowy room to sit by the open window, her nose pressed against the cool glass pane. The scent of dew-kissed grass wafted through the crack, a gentle reprieve from the stifling air that filled her home once the day grew bright. Her mother's soft snores echoed from the adjacent room, a comforting lullaby in the stillness. But today was different. Today was the first day of summer, and the day she had dreaded for tw...

0 likes 0 comments 0
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The Summer The Ocean Forgot Me

Submitted to Contest #308

They say the sea never forgets. But I wonder now, and I sit on the lip of the world with my pen trembling against vellum paper, if it ever has. It was summer 1954. I was ten, nearly eleven, all knobs and knees and terrified of deep water. My parents rented the same salt-bleached cottage every year in Ashwood Bay, a town too small for maps but big enough to have secrets. I remember the heat curling off the sand like specters, the sunburn on my shoulders, and the endless expanse of time that only children possess. That was the summer I knew he...

10 likes 1 comment 1
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Excerpt from The Weight of Ananke (a book I'm writing)

Submitted to Contest #308

5 Atlas was still on the empty beach, his limbs aching, his flesh salt-burned and battered. The tempest had gone, but had left him shattered in more than one way. His arms and legs pained him, the lead of the sea's wrath still running through his bone. When he was at last capable of standing upright, burning pain stabbed through his ribs, and he doubled over, hissing.The silence that had closed over him was oppressive. No gulls cried overhead, no waves gently lapped at the horizon—only the wind keening over the empty ground, talking to him a...

8 likes 2 comments 2
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"Three, Two, One" Click

Submitted to Contest #308

My finger traced through the window’s fog, each line forcing trails of condensation down the pane to sink into the old wooden sill. The stars were shaky, no doubt, some with six points instead of five, some that looked more triangular than textbook. I exhaled back onto the murals, warm breath disguising their bumps and imperfections in a fresh layer of fog. I had done this every winter since I was young, painting sunshine in its current lack thereof. At the same window too: it was the biggest one in our small condo, the wooden sill still sup...

3 likes 1 comment 1
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The Seven

Submitted to Contest #308

TW: Firearm violence I sit at the edge of the building. I am towering above the ground. So high up that the scurrying humans blur together like a swarm of ants. My feet sway back and forth, the worn shoelaces of my crusting leather boots slowly tugging themselves out of the knot I tied. Beside me is a boy, he stares down too."Do you remember?" The boy asks. "Before? Before the fires? Before the government lost control of the environment?"My eyes move lazily to the people below. They are victims of the environment's downfall. The government's...

14 likes 10 comments 10
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RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

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