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

4840+ Speculative Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. Looking to explore terrains beyond Earth and stretch the limits of your imagination? Welcome to the Internet’s best source of speculative fiction stories.

Speculative Short Stories – Page 191 of 323

Forced Fate

Submitted to Contest #140

I remember green trees. To be specific, not just green trees, but trees in a myriad of colors. Autumn brought leaves of red, purple, and a beautiful golden yellow. Some trees stayed a beautiful deep green year-round. Spring was the best time to admire the trees. The bright green buds of newly forming leaves were a sight to behold, and the blooms of colorful flowers were always beautiful. I did not appreciate them then. They were the most mundane thing in the world that I took for granted. I never thought I would wake up in this dreary future...

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When To Die

Submitted to Contest #140

When to Die This was the fourth time he had died this year. The first occurrence only lasted a few minutes before he was resuscitated. Each seemed to last a little bit longer than the previous experience. Every time Lucas felt pain all the way down to his toes until he died, but coming back was even worse. It felt like the wind had been knocked out of him, but he still couldn’t breathe. He could feel the frigid fingers that wrapped around his organs slowly, painfully, retreat. By now, he had begun to get a sense of when he was approaching ...

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In Remembrance Of All The Things I May Never Be

Submitted to Contest #140

*TW LanguageI remember the last time I had spoken to her with far more clarity than I do the first. It's a funny trick life plays on you, the way it blends the good memories all together into one indistinguishable blur, and yet, the bad stand out like the blood from a beating heart dripped onto the crisp white snow. This particular bad memory was neither the beginning of my story, nor the end. It instead served as a complexing, unending tide, wearing against my newly built faith. It is those moments I struggle to reconcile with. The anger th...

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Life is one big act of growing up

Submitted to Contest #139

“Grow Up” he snarls through gritted teeth. Oh how these words rile her. She has no idea why but they never fail to get her back up. She leaps into attack mode the instant they are spoken, every single time, as if she feels threatened by them or under fire. “Not a cat in Hells chance” she replies scowling at him in annoyance “I have no intention of ever growing up” Thinking to herself she aims to stay young at heart and fun for the rest of her days no matter how old she gets. But is that truly why she refuses to grow up ...

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My Dear Doctor Mortem

Submitted to Contest #140

“in vita et in mortem… in life as in death” My Dear Doctor Mortem,  I am writing to you on behalf of one of my most difficult cases. I thought perhaps you could help me. Yes, I realize this is highly irregular, given the nature of our individual practices, but I find myself at a loss. My patient is one Leanna Richards, and before you start, I assure you that she is much too young to have earned a file in your cabinet just yet. Then again, so was Henry.   I believe he came to you as a result of the plague. You’ve gotten a good ...

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What's Mine is Mine

Submitted to Contest #139

Although I don’t recognize my hands, I certainly recognize the things they were putting on the counter at the thrift store. I watch as chipped nails, originally a clean sky blue, slowly lay out my past in front of me.The first was the holey band t-shirt. It was clearly once black, but faded with washes, sunlight, and age. My father had given it to me when his beer belly could no longer be contained by its cotton midsection. There were holes in the shoulders and faded stains under the armpits and when I wear it and work up a sweat, dad’s smel...

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The Tides that Turn

Submitted to Contest #139

“Grow up” A faint cry from the next room pings her ears like the signal off a cell tower. Both feet hit the floor and she is approaching the source of the sound faster than speed dial. It does not phase her; she is focused yet in a daze from having been awoken at 2 in the morning. Instinctually she scoops up the crying infant and breast in hand offers of herself the nectar that soothes all pangs. All righteousness and holiness have been restored and once again the house returned to a peaceful state with only the sweet sound of a baby cooing...

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The end and beginning of life

Submitted to Contest #139

The waves collected the bioluminescent algae into a chaotic society of billions. They churned in a perfect mass with enough darkness in between to still show each individual life form. A single figure stood ankle deep in the swirling light. Ceremonial robes locked under the weight of the water as it wicked upwards. His eyes were a black mirror to the glowing sea. It was time. It was the end of an era and the dawn of a new one. A time of forced celebration and more than a few dissenters disappearing into the night. It is quite the ask to e...

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The Solaxis Mist

Submitted to Contest #138

An immense rectangular prism, silver and featureless, perched on a cliff overlooking a tumbling river. The prism, called the Center for the Defense of Planet 808, glowed faintly in the growing light of the deeply golden horizon; the river reflected the bright windows of the towering white buildings on the far bank. On the face of the prism that looked away from the river and towards the promise of a rising sun, an invisible door slid open and a young woman emerged. Dressed in the charcoal uniform worn by the 808 Defense Force, dark hair...

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Rest Comes With the Morning

Submitted to Contest #138

Trigger warning: This story contains a brief reference to suicide and mentions of death.        I never wanted to fall asleep as a child after realizing that sleeping was as near to dying as a person could get. The mind shuts down and attempts to block out all the things that make up the parts of life—sights, sounds, feelings so strong that they make the body react in physical ways. Like vomiting before an exam or experiencing that little buzzing hum in the tongue and at the back of the neck the first ...

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Please Keep Your Hands and Feet Inside the Class War at All Times

Submitted to Contest #138

    Above and around me looms an impossible expanse of metal- the curvature of which is riddled with metallic structures that seem to mock the topography of the Earth below. An affront to whatever mad god inspired it. The people all cried “progress!”  “prosperity!” and “preservation!” Too few of us knew what this actually meant. Wars were fought to make this monstrosity a reality. Oil was plundered from neighbors, children were ripped from their mothers’ arms. People died to create Disney Planet.     After ...

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Gentle. Peaceful.

Submitted to Contest #138

The world has always been dark. Twisting, menacing grey-and-black shadows make up my world. A thick blanket of ash and debris fills the sky, encasing us in a wintry tomb, in a monochromatic life. My grandma told me stories of when humans lived in the light. When the giant gas star used to shine on the world, bathing everything in a golden light of warmth. Of hope. Light was life, she would say, and scientists said that the day the sun didn't shine would be the day humanity ended. The day we all died. We didn't die, but I think our humanit...

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Prisoners of the glass cloche

Submitted to Contest #138

The reflected light from the cheap glass face of my watch strikes my eyes, staining my vision shades of purple and grey as I check for the time. The hand shifts to 12: 72. A sudden dry taste burdens my mouth and chokes my breath into an airy cough. I sip the last of the water struggling at the bottom of my flask. Living inside the glass cloche dome sets our world ablaze with the light which never surrenders and the ever thick atmosphere. The fat drops of built up condensation on the surface above spontaneously fall to instantly die upon impa...

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Favorite School Project

Submitted to Contest #138

It was 1983, but not quite the version you remember.In third grade gifted class, we made these little terrariums. I thought they were the coolest. Mrs. Manchester lined us up in front of a formica table covered with newspaper, a bag of potting soil, and a box of gravel. We each got our own fishbowl and filled it up, added a lonely jade plant, spritzed water on top, and behold, we were gods. My fishbowl was green and tumbled like sea-glass, not smooth and transparent like everyone else’s. “The pet store didn’t have enough ...

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Say Goodbye at Sunrise

Submitted to Contest #138

I have never seen the sun. When I say that, I mean it literally. Not as some dramatic statement about how depressed I am or a metaphor for how I’ve never had a good day in my life. I mean I have literally never seen the sun. You’d think it’s a miserable existence. Never feeling the warmth of a warm summer's day, never laying down on a beach to get gorgeously tan, never being blinded by pure light. At least that’s what I’ve been told it’s like. Light and warmth and tan mean nothing to me. After all, I’ve never experienced them. I’ve heard...

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RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

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