4870+ Best Speculative Short Stories to Read Online for Free - Reedsy Prompts

Deja Vu

Submitted to Contest #62

There are places where the world runs backwards. I am one of them. The world broke apart, again and again. The city lit up like noon, but in the middle of the night. The ground shivered and bucked and convulsed beneath my feet like a body wracked with pain. Silence roared around me and clamor followed in its wake. I tasted salt and iron, ash and smoke. Static danced across my tongue, buzzed in my ears. The distant city fell. I didn’t see the skyscrapers tumbling and burning, but I felt the collapse in my bones, in the violent trembli...

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What Is To Be

Emily Brownlee

Submitted to Contest #62

The brown-haired woman being wheeled down the hall doesn’t have much time left. She is fading away from grief, I think, seeing how tightly she is holding on to the tendrils of her past. She has interwoven the strands of her memory so tightly with every possibility of her future that it has been cut short. I look away. My attention turns back to the nurse administering medication to the few other patients sitting in the common area. She perplexes me. A strong, vibrant portion of her path points her away from this place, flashing like a neo...

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All Tomorrow's Lives

𝗢wen 𝗦𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗲𝗳𝗲𝗿

Shortlisted for Contest #62 ⭐️

I am in Colorado, flying above the forest. This body extension is a drone, and I hover above the beginnings of the wildfire that will burn an area the size of Manhattan. There is a plume of black smoke, and the air has become turbulent. Twenty people will die in this fire, most of them firefighters. I can only assume this is the best outcome. I have no access to the information in my past, but if I were to judge by the mobilisation of crews here to fight it, and its proximity to the town of Kittredge, I believe it could have been a high-casu...

51 likes

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Grandmother's funeral

Wei Hello!

Submitted to Contest #62

"Alright class! Today's homework is to gather things for your time capsule!" The teacher announced as the students began to file out of the classroom. Once every student was out of the classroom- or so she thought, she swiftly turned on her heel and began to work. Before she could however, she spotted a child deep asleep on his desk. It was Jerry. The boy was a rather lonely and isolated student of hers, and his eyes always seemed to stare out into the distance, never really making eye contact. The woman sighed, Jerry was a subject of growin...

12 likes

2 comments 2

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No Hard Feelings

A.Dot Ram

Winner of Contest #62 🏆

Dear Winston,By the time you’re reading this, I will already be a human popsicle. I know you don't support my decision to freeze myself. Still, I want to make you understand it... Winston Solis held the letter in trembling hands. Hazia’s exuberant penmanship swarmed over several handwritten pages like ants on a mission. There she was, having the last word again. But something about the cursive made Winston’s ribs ache and his breath catch. It seemed more a piece of her than the sweaters she’d left behind in their townhouse, or the ...

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Future Memories in Red Minor

Katina Foster

Submitted to Contest #62

When Martin came to, he found himself sitting at a kitchen table. He didn't know how he got there, or how long he'd been sitting there, but he wasn’t overly concerned with these details, either. He pushed his chair back from the table and stood up. Now, I leave to meet my friends, he thought. He walked towards the front door, then stopped as a strange sense of déjà vu came over him. Martin stood for a moment with his hand hovering above the doorknob, trying to catch hold of the feeling in order to probe it for more detail. He sense...

40 likes

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Death Prefers Chamomile

Allie Weaving

Submitted to Contest #62

Death sits calmly across the table from you, fingers neatly steepled, a cup of tea at one elbow. You are in a small, brightly lit room with only one door and you can’t remember how you arrived. It is just the two of you seated in high backed office chairs; the kind with wheels and good back support. Death is waiting politely for you to speak. You look at the tea and try to gather your thoughts. It smells herbal. The meeting has been going on a while. “How can I know for sure?” you try again. “You can’t.&nbs...

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It's Okay

Rosie Garcia

Submitted to Contest #62

We’re leaving. I know that. I know a few too many things, if you ask me. Sometimes it gets to be too much, and I think I’m going mad, then I forget a little and it’s all okay again. Right now, it’s okay again, because I’ve managed to forget everything but this. We’re leaving. Not in the way most people would expect, though. The entire world is something most people wouldn’t expect. Then again, most people aren’t here to expect it. They’re all dead. Which is a pity, I’ll grant you that. Maybe it’s a good thing. There isn’t much left of the he...

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The Knight And The Bard

Ryan Dupont

Submitted to Contest #62

A man sat alone at a table in a shadowy corner of the tavern, keeping to his own thoughts, lost in a mug of ale. He was wearing chainmail, with a sword sheathed at his hip and a heavy, iron helmet sitting upon the table next to his empty porridge bowl. He was clearly a knight, wearing the colors of the kingdom of Rhylaria and the markings of Queen Valda on his shield. He did not look up when the bard approached. “Good Sir Knight, I do know thee,” Aldos insisted. “Are you not Sir Alfred of Rhylaria?” “Go away bard,” was the response, as...

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Farewell sinners, I go to paradise.

Len Mooring

Submitted to Contest #62

“Why would you think I would miss this world as it is when I have the chance of emerging into a world of artificial intelligence and rationality? I have been posed this question many times before and it surprised me that it even had to be asked. Just look about you and tell me that this world is ruled for the benefit of the majority of its inhabitants. What is spent on armaments in one year would feed and house the destitute almost in perpetuity. We make cluster-bombs and cruel and despicable explosive devices that can be picked up by childr...

13 likes

2 comments 2

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Forget Your Past

DK Marie

Submitted to Contest #62

She woke slowly. Her crazy dreams made her groggy and confused. All night, they chased her, making her feel as if she’d been running backward, from the present to the past. Opening her eyes, she took in the unfamiliar bedroom. She was startled to feel a warm body pressed against her. The masculine arm resting on her waist was that of a stranger. Fear knocked out her breath. Who was he? As a matter of fact, who was she? She couldn’t recall her name, her history, nothing. She was a blank slate. Swallowing a ...

14 likes

4 comments 4

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Anthony Bog: Philosopher and Dead

Megan Faith

Submitted to Contest #62

“What do you believe?” “What’s that my friend?” “What do you believe?” Anthony repeated, voice carrying along with the pitter-patter of the halls. They were in the middle of the corridor of the Queen’s library, returning to the sunny world and exposed to the summer air. Light beamed down past the pillars, highlighting their walk. “Answer the question, Carrow.” “Do you want my opinion?” Carrow countered, balancing the tip of a quill in his mouth. “Or will you do it anyway?” He shifted his scrolls in his arms, adjusting for better securi...

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Angie and her fascination with Time Capsules

Tithi Banerjee

Submitted to Contest #62

Life has been like a momentary relapse, phasing in and phasing out, Angie had been in her dreams relocating to places, making memories in dozens, and replaying them in her mind in a loop. This is the story of a girl with a barely-there existence, not because she was not admired by her fellow compatriots, but she secluded herself to the truest of extent. A girl who somehow cushioned her apathies through learning bit by bit, then some more and even more, what fascinated her was time warps and how it's existence seemed all starry to her. She...

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Saving Billy

Cynthia Prokarym (Scott)

Submitted to Contest #62

“How long do you plan to keep putting this off?The words pierced through Marie Stanford's peace of mind, threatening to suffocate her. These intrusions always gave her the same sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.Though the sudden interruption rattled her inside, she kept lacing her brand-new saddle wood boots, which had just arrived by UPS. After she finished, she glanced up to give the man an eye roll, letting him know she wasn't pleased.The strangers always found them. She and her husband, Gary, finally ended up returning to Stone Plai...

33 likes

7 comments 7

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Coin toss

Robert Trudel

Submitted to Contest #62

I chose to go. Live or die. People bugged me. I should have given my fortune to the poor blah blah blah. Hey, I gave ten percent, as expected, required, demanded. Leave me alone. I just wish to get out of here, hopefully for a better world one hundred years down the road. Maybe by then the earth shall be done with all this petrol, plastic trash and general pollution. Geeees someday you can't even see see the sky over the city. Ok, it happened once when they had COVID-19, people for most part stayed inside....except for a few idiots here and ...

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4870+ Speculative Short Stories to read

Speculative Short Stories – Page 319 of 325

Deja Vu

What Is To Be

All Tomorrow's Lives

Grandmother's funeral

No Hard Feelings

Future Memories in Red Minor

Death Prefers Chamomile

It's Okay

The Knight And The Bard

Farewell sinners, I go to paradise.

Forget Your Past

Anthony Bog: Philosopher and Dead

Angie and her fascination with Time Capsules

Saving Billy

Coin toss