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Discover weekly, the best short stories

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

150+ 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 7 of 10

Rebooting Normal

Submitted to Contest #313

This short story is the next chapter after “Welcome Back, Edgar” featuring Miles and Edgar (the AI) where the two dance around an emotionally significant subject—grief and moving forward—without ever naming it directly.-----Miles Harding stood at the kitchen counter, holding a jar of peanut butter in one hand and a spoon in the other. The toaster had betrayed him again—two slices, both carbonized into shuriken-shaped shame. “Should’ve just used the broiler,” he muttered. From the corner desk, lit up in RGB, Edgar cleared his throat. Metaphor...

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OBSESSION

Submitted to Contest #313

OBSESSIONBy Deirdra Hawthorne Mathes Walking down the hallway -dread- laced with sick anticipation- fills me. Blood pounds in my ears. For months, I have used every excuse I could imagine- even lied- to avoid seeing you. But this cannot be put off any longer. My future demands this meeting. Drawing my shoulders back, I know this is a brave choice. A tough choice– but I am afraid. So very afraid that I won’t be strong enough to keep you out of my life. Clenching my fist, I silently declare: I will not think this way. I have worked too hard ...

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Second verse of the river

Submitted to Contest #313

The sun, a slow-burning ember, crested the jagged peaks of the Guardian Mountains, casting long, purple shadows across the valley. Below, the village of Oakhaven stirred, not with the hurried clatter of industry, but with a quiet, purposeful reverence. Today was the Day of the Vespera, a tradition as old as the village itself, a moment to honor the great river that was their lifeblood.Just as the villagers began to gather, a small group watched as Elara and Joric stood before a freshly tilled field. Joric held a hand-carved plow, a tool pass...

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Second Honeymoon

Submitted to Contest #313

(Some people might find this story politically sensitive) Second Honeymoon (2040) ‘Not that we really had a first,’ Matt observed, when Celia first mooted the idea. ‘Exactly. So no time like the present.’ ‘I guess.’ That was as enthusiastic as he got. But he’d be glad to go, once she organised it. And she knew very well where to go for help with travel admin. HotDawg had been her go-to bot for some time when it came to arranging things, and sometimes even when it came to arranging – or re-arranging – herself. He was resourceful, and if no...

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Spectrum

Submitted to Contest #313

Contains some domestic violence Spectrum I can’t stop staring. Beautiful you. I will fix your face in my mind and on my palette, I will blend pigments with joy until I can paint you in colours of wonderful. My stained fingers itch and twitch, picking and snagging at the flimsy cotton of my long skirt. It is bitterly cold—my thick cardigan and scarf, the only items to ward off the chill. Already, I am mentall...

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The Search

Submitted to Contest #313

Memory, Drystan had learned, was the cruelest of cartographers.Each time he traced her face across the maps of years, she emerged transformed—not by time's honest erosion, but by the terrible alchemy of loss that transmuted recollection into hunger, fact into desperate mythology. Her eyes might hold the amber of late harvest wine one day, the storm-grey of northern seas the next. The delicate geography of her hands shifted between tellings: here, marked with the honest scars of an illuminator who had known quill and pigment as intimate compa...

20 likes 6 comments 6
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Drowning in Dreams

Submitted to Contest #313

Selena walked down the all-too-familiar sidewalk, past the buildings filled with mementos of her life. Colorful banners invited everyone to join in the familial atmosphere. The smiling business owners selling their wares, some made with techniques passed down for generations, waved at her as she passed. Patrons, people who knew her from before she could walk, laughed without a care in the world. She wrapped her olive peacoat around her lithe frame, her ebony hair tied back with a silk scarf, a gift from someone special. Her heart was racing...

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Cut and Clarity

Submitted to Contest #313

Like a church fresco, the night sky hung over the man standing in his front yard in the middle of America. Behind him stood the historic brick home that he shared with his wife. In the front window, her face poked through a parted curtain, anxiously watching him, waiting for him to come back inside.But the glittering dots above called to him.Come join us. Come join us, the stars whispered, their bewitching celestial voices tickling his ear. They were doing everything they possibly could to capture his attention and entice him to meet them in...

9 likes 3 comments 3
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Everything You Can Imagine Is Real

Submitted to Contest #313

I am worried about Nathan. He insists that he can see dinosaurs. That they speak to him. That they are in the wild garden. I have pieced together that this garden he speaks of is some place where the dinosaurs exist in his mind. He has an active imagination and has been getting carried away. There is that cartoon he is fond of called Betula Radish Wuz Here.In that show there are several colorful talking dinosaurs who solve mysteries. Detective Radish solves crimes. The crimes are always silly like someone loses their baseball hat or house ke...

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The Endless Climb

Submitted to Contest #313

The Unending ClimbBy J.L. Butterworth His fingers scramble for purchase on the steep, rocky hill. Nothing but darkness surrounds him, but he feels as though he’s adrift in an infinite void, only the dirt underneath his fingernails and the earth digging into his knees felt solid — real. “I can’t...I can’t...there’s no way...” Admitting defeat, yet clinging on with his fingertips, his body flat against the precarious ground, gasping between every word. “I believe in you.” A voice calls out, from everywhere and yet nowhere. “Who is that??” His ...

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The Trouble In The House

Submitted to Contest #313

He inhaled lightly at the opening of the bottle. He let all the flavors permeate his nostrils. Cherry. Smoky oak and a hint of vanilla. He could already taste hints of the liquid on the back of his tongue. The scent lingered around the bottle and heightened as he poured it into the glasses in front of him. It had been a rough day for all of them. His wife and her sister had already started begging for wine before they’d started cooking dinner. Now the scents of roasted tomatoes, sweet peppers, and garlic intermingle with the deeper, rusti...

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Renascence

Submitted to Contest #313

Note: Content warning is for the Act being implied but not shown. Renascence “Are you gonna finish that?" I jerked as I remembered that I was still sitting at the counter of a diner. I glanced in the direction of the voice, finding a middle-aged waitress with a bored look and tired eyes. She was pointing at my half-eaten lemon meringue pie, itching to clear off the counter and begin closing, the hour was late last I checked, and I had no idea how long I had been lost in my own thoughts.“Yeah, I-I’m done with it, thanks.” I pushed the plate ...

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ONCE UPON A TIME IN ARGENTINA or Keeping an Eye on the Inverted Commas

Submitted to Contest #313

ONCE UPON A TIME IN ARGENTINA or Keeping an Eye on the Inverted Commas I last saw Martin in Barcelona. We had dinner in one of those restaurants by the harbour where they serve fish in huge iron skillets. We ate a zarzuela of hake and swordfish, and mussels that looked like ebony sculptures. Martin had insisted on red wine. Outside the street-lights came on, and I saw a young woman wrap a cardigan around her shoulders. A gull called out in the dusk. As the waiter passed our table Martin picked up the empty...

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Among the Bunians

Submitted to Contest #313

The first thing that she smelled was incense, with a mix of earthy and woody scents, with a slightly bitter aroma that woke her up from her deep sleep. The smell hung in the air, clinging to the back of her throat like a half-spoken whisper. How long has she been asleep? She tried to reach for the light, but it was pitch black. She could feel soft fabric, damp with breath and sweat, pressed around her eyes and wrapped around her head. It was a disorienting experience trying to shake the darkness away. That knowing alone sharpened the edges o...

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Doe Eyes

Submitted to Contest #313

The car smelled like damp wool and old heat.Southern Appalachia in winter didn’t freeze so much as cling. The chill had weight—wet, stubborn. Frost powdered bare branches, and a dusting of snow softened the road’s cracks. The kind that made the world too quiet.Cora adjusted the heat again. The fan stuttered, then hissed to life, breathing out stale warmth. It reeked faintly. Not engine burn, not antifreeze. Something warmer. Sour, like wet fur left too long in the dark.She turned it off, rolled the window open a sliver. The cold bit her skin...

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RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

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