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Discover weekly, the best short stories

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

150+ Thriller Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. Looking for a story that will keep you on the edge of your seat and holding your breath? Don’t skip our collection of thriller short stories.

Thriller Short Stories – Page 10 of 10

Sunken City of the Saco

Submitted to Contest #310

NOTE BEFORE READING: This story explores themes that some may find distressing. It includes depictions of long-term grief and trauma, psychological manipulation, kidnapping, and scenes of physical violence. Please proceed with care. The bookshop was a mausoleum of paper and dust, a quiet monument to a love of stories Elias Thorne had inherited from his older sister, Eleanor. Ten years she’d been gone, vanished like a character from one of the folklore books she’d adored, leaving Elias the sole keeper of her legacy and the struggling busine...

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The Quiet House

Submitted to Contest #310

Content Warning: This story contains themes of intrusive thoughts, obsessive-compulsive behaviour and psychological distress. It also includes references to guilt, self-doubt and graphic imagery. Reader discretion is advised. The Quiet House The house is still. Not quiet, but still, like breath held for too long. Like something waiting to be found. It creaks, but only when I stop listening to it. A soft groan in the ceiling beams, and a subtle tick in the pipes that still need to be fixed. I always make sure to check the locks before I go t...

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Careful What You Write, I Might Be Written

Submitted to Contest #310

“The two kids ran from being murderers.”I remember the old man rasping, his voice hollow from a lifetime of smoke. His library carried the same aroma — it reeked of ash, mold, and dusty paper.I forced myself to nod like it was the first time I’d heard the story.Like I hadn’t already watched it happen.He crushed an ash into an overflowing tray. Smoke curled under the low ceiling.And I let the silence hang between us.“Any suspects?”“Case was closed four years ago. The town forgot it. No one knew someone would still be dug up in the dirt,” I sa...

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DEAR DIARY OF A BAD, BAD GIRL

Submitted to Contest #310

For a long time, I just seat still, holding the steering wheel with both hands and staring at the joint through the rain-spattered windshield. The rain spray pelts the glass and runs down in golden streams under the beam of the headlights and the sodium lamps that illuminate the bar’s facade.It seems like the right place, I conclude; the kind of place where junkies, shady blue-collar workers with checkered pasts, and motorcycle gangs frequent. The kind of place where there are always broken glass and dried blood stains on the floor, traces o...

11 likes 2 comments 2
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Book of the Distant Dimension

Submitted to Contest #310

Book of the Distant Dimension Timothy Ward was an aspiring, albeit unsuccessful writer, who was trying to publish multiple novels that editors seemed to be uninterested in. “This will never work,” bemoaned Timothy as he attempted to write another book. “Not enough people are reading,” continued Timothy as he tried to write dialogue even though it tended to come off as stiff and unnatural. As he was writing suddenly, a mysterious being, which had the appearance of an angel combined with a vampire appeared to Timothy. “I am I insane,” asked...

8 likes 3 comments 3
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The Story That Shouldn’t Have Been Read… Until Now

Submitted to Contest #310

The Story That Shouldn’t Have Been Read… Until Now When I finally pressed “publish,” I had no ending in mind. I’d stitched this story together over twenty-four frenetic months—rough sentences scrawled on coffee-stained napkins, creased receipts, the backs of old court filings. Every fragment was soaked in midnight panic, swollen with grief so raw it clawed at my throat, laced with an anger I tasted on my tongue. It was, I told myself, pure invention. A safe exorcism about the day my little sister, Callie, vanished without a trace. I didn’t p...

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The Best Seller

Submitted to Contest #310

Rick’s hands shook as he held the thick book in his ink-stained hands. He marveled at the deep red cover and the large white block letters, his name printed across the top. The best-selling author. He signed the fan’s name with a note, shutting the book and handing it back to them, meeting their eyes. Rick glanced at the long line of fans waiting for a signature.It was then that the clang of commotion startled everyone, the sounds unfamiliar to the modern world: bells and chimes of an old grandfather clock that stood against the wall of the ...

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The Rewrite

Submitted to Contest #310

Title: The Rewrite Chapter One: The Blank Page Max Ellison stared at the blinking cursor on his laptop like it owed him money. He’d been at the kitchen table for hours, surrounded by empty coffee mugs and crumpled takeout containers, yet the Word document remained pristine, blank, and mocking. It had been three years since his first and only novel—a modestly successful literary thriller—garnered him fleeting attention, a modest advance, and a few polite interviews. But the sales dropped. The publishers stopped returning his emails. The reade...

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It'll All Be Worth It

Submitted to Contest #310

I wanna be famous. I really want to be famous. Every single time I scroll on FlipFlop, I see people- no, wait- superiors going on holidays, spending money, or even just getting thousands upon thousands of views by doing the stupidest things possible. Like what do you mean someone got nearly one million views by making random faces in front of a camera and making people feel uncomfortable in their own skin? BUT, when I do it, the only views and likes I get are my own. No matter my dedication or concerning amount of screen time, I am never any...

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The Glass House

Submitted to Contest #310

Part I: The ActThe apartment was too clean.Not just tidy—sterile, as if Alina had scoured away every molecule of memory. White walls, muted grey furnishings, not a frame out of place. The air smelled of antiseptic lemon, a scent she’d grown to rely on more than Liam’s cologne. She had once thought it calming. Now, it buzzed faintly in her nose like a low electrical hum.She moved through the space without sound, barefoot on polished wood, her steps careful, her breathing shallow.Liam was sprawled on the couch, laptop open on his knees. “Thai ...

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The door is gone.

Submitted to Contest #310

They say when it rains it pours; today that was certainly true. The deluge was managing to slither through a crack in the rotting ceiling, collecting in a bucket I’d found under the sink. The tone of it hitting the rusted steel was irregular enough that it refused to fade into the background; I couldn’t help but mark the sound of every drop. It was doing nothing for my patience, already stretched thin by the trek back to the cottage amidst the stormy conditions. Half frozen, utterly drenched, heels burning from the rub of the new leather of...

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THE WHISPERING PAGES - A BOOKSHOP MYSYTERY

Submitted to Contest #310

On a rain-glazed Thursday evening, with the last wisps of twilight clinging to the rooftops of Olde Crescent, Sarah Hargrove was closing up her little indie bookshop, The Whispering Pages. Her routine was a comforting one—shelving the errant paperbacks, aligning the displays, counting the cash register to the mellow hum of jazz. She knew every book and every regular by name, so when she noticed a book was missing from the shelf where The Violet Ledger—a battered, out-of-print volume chronicling the infamous Crescent Disappearances of 1982—ha...

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I Already Know The Title

Submitted to Contest #310

Content Warning: This story contains graphic violence, gore and psychological horror which some readers may find disturbing. I stare at the back of her head, urging her hair to go up in flames - the smug bitch. I take a sip of my coffee without averting my gaze. She sits taking selfies with an obnoxious cup of something - a Frankenstein coffee. It took her ridiculously long to order the concoction, and she was downright nasty to the poor staff; threatening to post about the slow service to her thousands of followers. And then, had the audaci...

26 likes 20 comments 20
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Bayside Reading Immersive Club

Submitted to Contest #310

"You know that group is gonna be bullshit, right?" Luc told me after I stumbled on the Bayside Reading Immersive Club website on my laptop. To be fair, I couldn't exactly defend it, the website itself sucked and every book recommendation I followed seemed equally as shitty. They were all by some indie authors I'd never heard of, and if they found out there was any other genre than horror and gore, they probably would have had a stroke."Luc, shut up, you know I need to be around people that write. They aren't some Stephen King regens, but I l...

14 likes 4 comments 4
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Remember Me

Submitted to Contest #309

“Here you are,” a nurse said while setting a silver tray down on a white table. It was the same thing that the nurse brought me twenty minutes ago. A banana pudding cup. Or at least, I thought it was banana; there was only a very slight hint of it. So it could still be vanilla. “ Can you pass me my clipboard?” I said. The nurse gave a bright “of course!” before walking to the brown, wooden counter on the wall at the other side of the room. It was also the source of a smell that took up the whole room, hand sanitizer, and plastic. The click...

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RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

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