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

11070+ 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 79 of 738

The Heirloom

W B

Submitted to Contest #271

“Would you like one?” Jos was sat on the wiry green bench, his little legs swinging back and forth, when he heard the voice. A small girl was standing outside the bakery opposite. He could just about see her small, pointed face above a mountain of fluffy cinnamon buns. Her eyes were an opalescent brown, sparkling with flecks of gold. “Hello? Would you like one? They’re about to go bad.” He spotted his nanny exiting the shop next door and hopped off the bench. “Maybe next time!” He grinned. Despite her predilection for baked goods, and frankl...

8 likes 2 comments 2
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Windswept, Wind-drunk, Oh How the Air Holds Our Memories

Submitted to Contest #272

He thinks it's been months. Months of ragged stones and a blazing sun, somehow still there is no warmth. He thinks it's only been months, he cannot count the rise and fall of the moon, or the differing colors in the trees. He cannot even count the visitors, for there are none. There are never any, it is only himself that he knows of. He does not quite understand it. But does he need to? This is all he knows, the calming blades of grass that he lays on, the stone is comfortable, he thinks. He has never had anything else to lay his head upon. ...

16 likes 2 comments 2
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Treasure Trove

Submitted to Contest #272

There's the bastard now. He's such an asshole I just want to grab him by the throat and strangle him. "Hello, Fred. Why don't you sit next to me? I'd like that." I smiled a phony one and moved my chair to accommodate another beside mine. "Thank you, Josh. I don't mind if I do." The pathetic shit took me up on my offer and plunked himself down in a chair smack dab shoulder to shoulder with me. "Fred, what's new?" "You wouldn't believe it if I told you. But if I do. You must promise me you won't speak it to anyone else." "Sure, Fred, I swea...

24 likes 2 comments 2
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How Do We Tell Them All?

Submitted to Contest #271

There’s not a lot I learned from my Dad. He was gone a lot. Work, he said it was, when he even bothered to explain. What I did learn, however, is an impeccable method of observing strangers. We would sit on a park bench, eating a bare bagel with frozen fingers and just look at people. This small thing, this insignificant way of spending time together, meant the world to me back then, and for right measure. He and mum were the only people I saw, the only people I truly knew. And I hated them. So much. I considered my mum vulgar and disgusting...

7 likes 1 comment 1
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Playgrounds & Playmates

Submitted to Contest #271

Why are we meeting at a bar in a strip mall? I think to myself as I pull into one of the last parking spots of the unimpressive, suburban sports bar. I nervously fluff my curly hair in the rearview mirror, and triple check there’s no lipstick on my teeth a final, final time. I felt too nervous to eat much today and my anxiety does high-rise belly flops into my empty pit of stomach bile as I dig through my wallet and hand my ID over to the large bouncer at the front door. That bouncer looks familiar. Did we go to high school together? God, I ...

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"Chess".

Submitted to Contest #271

“Hi!” said the gorgeous young lady from behind the front counter. She was smiling and exuded a gentle warmth and genuine kindness.“Welcome to Nathan’s Wellness Retreat. You must be Annabella”.I mumbled “ah, yeah, well, Annie”, looking firmly at the floor so that this well-meaning stranger wouldn’t see my eyes welling up with tears of humiliation and shame.I had been driving on the night almost ten years before when I had killed my boyfriend Harry. Despite us only being 17, he was the love of my life but he liked to party and was drinking mor...

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Malheur à deux

Submitted to Contest #271

Hearts in despair may shatter, though it takes but a gentle dove to repair the matter. Introspecting, with both arms on the ledge of Putney Bridge, Cicero evaluated his life. Shunned by his daughter of thirteen, from the slanderous enmity of her mother, what besides did he have on Earth? Not his métier, that was for certain. Imbursing him with wealth and financial security was insufficient recompense for what banes it inflicted upon Cicero. He loathed his métier for having entrapped him into sifting through cases upon cases of murder, s...

34 likes 6 comments 6
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The Broker

Submitted to Contest #271

The BrokerCorsica, 2018. Wet streets snaked around huddled stone buildings, bare and rustic. The scent of brine and fish residue clinging. The Kid, the only black one, worked nights in a harbour bar, sat by the edge of the dock. He was forty three. He looked younger. Time in this coastal place was slow and arrested - caught in an amber strangeness of memory and centuries of fishing, boats, and salted wind.By day the Mediterranean stretched out before the town, an aquascape of blues and greens - rows of liquid agate. Everywhere shimmering in ...

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Children of Corruption

Submitted to Contest #271

It was swathed in shadows. The garden. Filled with crumbling marble statues and dying rose bushes.  The torn remnants of Lilith’s wings fluttered in the cold wind. She had grown used to it over the years. It still hurt. But the constant pain had been pushed to the corners of her mind. The kids ran across the stone paths, playing games of tag and hide and seek. With tangled curls falling around their faces, and grubby cheeks red from laughter. Lilith watched on, sitting silently on an iron bench, hands tucked neatly in her lap.  Hea...

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Ma's Scrapbooks

Submitted to Contest #271

Ma passed away last week. It doesn’t feel real… She was always there for me my whole damn life, a single mother doing the best she could, and now she’s just… not. I know it's not my fault, but I can't help but think about how things could've been different if she didn't have to raise me all on her own. Now I’m in her house, going through her things to find out what to keep and what to toss, and every item is like a closed fist to the gut. Especially the photos. Ma loved to take photos whenever she spent time with anyone, and made what amount...

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Blood and Ink

Submitted to Contest #271

Content warning: This story contains themes of substance abuse, physical violence, and mental health.Julian stumbled over the sidewalk; his eyes pointed down to the ground while he walked. "Another wasted night" he mumbled in self-deprecation, lifting the foam cup of whiskey in his right hand to his mouth and taking a deep gulp. He glanced at a gash on his left forearm, opened from the fall he had taken earlier that evening. Blood snaked down to his wrist, tracing the edge of a tattoo - faded now after many years, but surprisingly still...

5 likes 1 comment 1
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Night shift

Submitted to Contest #271

Andrew's touch was firm and a little rough, just how she liked it. Anna wrapped her arms around his neck as he pulled her close, and they kissed passionately. They both knew they didn't have much time. The subtle aroma of his aftershave mingled with the crisp, clinical scent of disinfectants in the on-call room. Her fingers traced a path down his neck, light but confident. Andrew paused for a moment, looking into her eyes. She pulled him back in, not in the mood for drawn-out looks. Anna was eager to get down to the nitty-gritty.Then her pho...

33 likes 15 comments 15
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Cage

Submitted to Contest #271

Trigger Warning: Themes of alcoholism, grief, and terminal illness. Sometimes I worry I’ll be struck off the medical register. It's a constant threat to my self-belief, a nagging doubt. Make a mistake, struck off. Be unprofessional, struck off. And if you are lucky enough to avoid that fate, then you still get the pleasure of a disciplinary process where you're treated like a criminal. It’s why I am so clinical and keep my emotions under control. Be the perfect human-robot and you conform. It’s no way to live. But perhaps it helps us deliver...

28 likes 15 comments 15
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End Credits

Submitted to Contest #271

I stood by the side of the road out of town, my sodden suit jacket failing its audition as a coat. My small flight case waited beside me, a teenaged LAX luggage tag flapping in the dead black breath of the sea that steered the rain sideways through the rays of approaching headlights. I raised my thumb in surrender and pointed my gaze somewhere above the procession of approaching lights to where it might find the eyes of a merciful driver. The last of my money had been drunk in a brown, out-of-season bar the day before. The summer street fur...

12 likes 3 comments 3
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Vestiges

Submitted to Contest #271

(CW: swearing, violence, suicidal thoughts)I didn’t recognise the stranger, but my body did. My gut squirmed and the vein in my temple began throbbing. Then my fists and jaw clenched and the muscles in my arms started spasming like in the days when I used to hit the gym obsessively – to ‘clear my head’, I had told the therapist, leaving out the faces I envisioned on the punching bag.But who was the stranger? He had passed me in the park. Late twenties. Longish, strawberry blond hair. Aquiline nose and a beard straddling the boundary between ...

6 likes 0 comments 0
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RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

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