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

4820+ 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 262 of 322

Vessel

Submitted to Contest #89

You’re sitting down – just a passenger. You stare out the window, gazing past the blurred panorama of the world. Staring, entranced by the bustling of life the view before you has to offer. But the non-stop movement gets you dizzy after a while. They never rest, constantly keeping their paces. You willed your eyes to leave the window. You look to the right, left, in front of you, behind you, where many other passengers sat. All of which were immersed with their own tasks; writing a journal, reading the news, conversing with their loved one...

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So She Killed Her Mother-In-Law

Submitted to Contest #89

Her only regret about killing her mother-in-law, if one could call it as such, was not killing her earlier. From the beginning, she knew that it was not just to plain kill her, it was a matter of winning, too. The way she would win, she taught, is that she will not give her mother-in-law the satisfaction of conveying the message after her death that she was important enough that someone took the time to plot out her murder. So, when she murdered her if one could count that for murder at all, she did it not thinking of it at all. Nonchalance ...

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Listen to The Phoenix

Submitted to Contest #89

I jumped.Arms outstretched and pointing towards the darkened sky. Drops of rain tumbled down onto my face, forming a pool of water just above my chin. A drop of water fell onto my lips and it tasted salty, like the sea. Like tears.My breathing was laboured and I was unable to distinguish the thunder from the sound of my own heart beat. I was wet from the falling rain, or was just my sweat and tears? I was unsure of everything now. I was only aware of the heavy breeze rushing past my face as I fell, down, down, down. Tears burned into my fles...

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No Goodbyes Today

Submitted to Contest #89

*Featuring Characters from "Message from the City" and "A Trickster's Tea Party"You would think that a human left to wander the fae court of Madness alone would be doomed. Countless stories depict unhappy ends for such unlucky folk. While bathing the muck of the hunt off, Iki made a mental list of all the ways she could have been ensnared if the fae so chose. And yet, here she was. If anything she'd been ignored. She runs her fingers through her hair, delighted to find it already dry. The efficacy of their facilities almost made her want to ...

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and like the wind

Submitted to Contest #89

He clutched the stems of the melancholie souls in a deathly grip, waiting anxiously for the potbellied owner of the flower shop to finish business with the boy in the late twenties and his order of a 2 dozen roses. Quite pretty they were, the rose flowers, with their red petals dank from the morning dew. Far auspicious a blossom than the ones he was currently gripping, like his life very much depended on it.He'd thought these flowers, the melancholie souls, were quite apt for the occasion he was getting them for, because you see, Dariel was ...

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The Butterfly Monarch

Submitted to Contest #90

The Butterfly Monarch Day 1 My body's been changing recently; now I'm king of the world. It's been a crazy morning. Somebody should really warn a fellow about this stuff. Let’s start from yesterday. Yesterday I was comfortably wrapped in a dangle-bed eagerly awaiting my radical transformation from a chubby-grubbly to a fully flighted flutterby. It was an exciting moment. I had been waiting in that tiny wrapping for eighteen days and I was certainly ready for my promised areal freedom. This is something of a rite of passage for my kind. W...

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Day of Sun

Submitted to Contest #90

I lay on my bed staring at the ceiling wide awake. Sighing I glanced at my clock, 5:58... so close. I promised myself I wouldn’t get up before 6:00 am. Today was far too important to be sleep-deprived, I had to be at my best. The second hand in my clock ticked so slowly, seeming to mock me in the anticipation.  “That’s it!” I declared to my empty room, “I’m getting up!” Leaping out of bed, I knocked over my clock with satisfaction and watched it fall to the ground. The last Day of Sun had been a decade ago, I was only 12 at the time. In...

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Mind to Mind

Submitted to Contest #89

Ari smiled. “You alone have successfully bridged the communication gap between our races. You have our gratitude and our blessing. Now our wisdom can be shared with those of your race and yours with us. Smile if you understand.” Ari’s forehead tingled. It felt warm, pulsing with energy. She began: “I come in peace wise one. Those of my race call you Twinkle because of the light that shines in your eyes, but I will call you something else if you prefer.” The dolphin shook his head. Silence continued from the...

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SafeMoon

Submitted to Contest #89

  Where to begin my story? It seems like that everything crumbled within a month. I lost my job. I lost my wife. I lost my house. I lost my friend.   I met my wife when I was twenty years old when I was in my first year in engineering. My God. I still remember when she entered the class. She was on crutches with her school back on her back, and holding a binder in her hands. It was love at first sight for me. Not for her though. I had to courtship her for maybe weeks, months…but then we became soulmates.   My wife, Sonia...

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Will an Audience Embrace Faith?

Submitted to Contest #89

It had been almost four minutes. It was not agony or ecstasy. It was one song, and dance can play funny tricks on the mind while an artist performs. Time speeds up when the music is slow and conversely takes forever even when the beat seems impossibly fast. Faith had only one week to pick the music, prepare the dance, and find something to wear. She had not felt this sort of excitement and anxiety in decades, especially not for herself. Faith had never been much for risk-taking and now was certainly not the time to change her mind. Her...

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She Waits

Submitted to Contest #89

His angry music playlist was blaring, so she knew exactly what kind of mood he was going to be in when she re-entered the room. Every song, every lyric degrading and demeaning. Her least favorite song being a spin on an old Camp Fire song, “The Cat Came Back.” But this group wasn’t singing about a cat being better when she’s down on her knees. This was a new form of waiting. She had spent years waiting for him. What strange irony life has that now she is actually truly waiting on him. She stared down at the purple latex gloves on her hands a...

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The Lawmaker

Submitted to Contest #89

C/W: sexual assault   Jeffries smiled at the young lady across the reception desk. She briefly returned his smile before pretending to find something on her computer monitor that required her attention. He could tell she was pretending because of the hesitant yet random noises her long fingernails made against the keyboard as she pecked at it.   He broadened his smile, letting his eyes wander away from her. Her current indifference wouldn’t matter for long. Soon he’d be installed into his new position and he’d rise up the corporate...

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Broken

Submitted to Contest #89

"I know that you will be lonely if I don't talk to you anymore," Greg said and crouch down to look at the teenage boy who is currently sitting in his hospital bed. He heaved a deep sigh before looking back at him. He roams his eyes around him as he saw the fresh wounds and purple bruises around his face and hands. His feet are both tattered with cuts and scratches. Since when did the existence of this boy become so important to him? He doesn't quite remember but he remembers the first time he met him running on the streets with bruises and c...

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PREDETERMINED DESTINATIONS ( By A Higher Power)

Submitted to Contest #89

I've made many changes in my life, some good and some bad, but I'm not gonna bore you with all the gruesome details, so I'm just going to go back a few years, to 2016. I was living in Ga, and had been between Ga and TN, for about 10 years. I had gotten homesick and wanted to move back to Ohio. I packed up everything, put it in storage, and just kept out enough for a couple months. Me, my fiance', and our two cats. I had about 1k in my pocket, to get us by, and we headed North on Rte23. Everything went pretty good, but without really having a...

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I Tried

Submitted to Contest #89

It was over. The life I had once known was gone. I didn't know how to react. Should I be relieved, confused or upset? Relieved, because of the constant desperation for it to be over. Confused, because it all happened so abruptly. Upset, because I was going to miss those certain moments in my life before. I like to think that I am happier now, that I am free. This was the change I felt I needed. The fresh start I desired. I couldn't continue to keep going, to keep getting back up. I was tired. I needed something different. And death was def...

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RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

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