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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 6 of 10

Salvation

Submitted to Contest #307

Mama sat up on the thin tattered mattress and coughed a red mist into the air before I could bring the old rag to her lips. “Sawyer, I’m getting worse, the pain I can’t take it anymore,” said Mama. A hacking force coming from somewhere buried deep in her chest has left her lungs screaming and her ribs sore. Seeing Mama like this caused my eyes to gloss over. “It’s gonna be okay Mama,” I whispered unconfident. I looked around at the patchworked walls of scavenged materials. Warped plywood and rusted metal sheets that me and Papa looted during...

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Rilestone: Jenny's Hunt

Submitted to Contest #307

The flash of white hair flit between the trees as a pair of sneakers fitting for a ten-year-old boy pounded upon the dirt. Eyes of light-blue scanned the left and right directions before focusing ahead, trying to look around the many ground foliage protruding from below, either guarding potential falls or hiding places. He couldn't stop, not yet. Somewhere, out in these woods, someone was out to get him. The sound of a little girl's scream erupted unexpectedly, barely half a mile to his right. "Hanna", he whispered, and then he placed a h...

9 likes 8 comments 8
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Chad, Michael and Diego-Final Exam?

Submitted to Contest #307

Prompts:Write a story about a secret group or society and a story about a test or exam with a dangerous or unexpected result. Chad, Michael and Diego-Final Exam? I attend one of the most non-prestigious city colleges along the eastern seaboard. Surprisingly, it has a large student body, probably because many cannot afford the hoity toity Ivy League school tuitions. The college is a menagerie of people.Faces constantly come and go. None seem familiar from week to week. Most students live in studio apartments within walking distance to the m...

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The Archives of Ebonroot

Submitted to Contest #307

Every town has a place people avoid without understanding why. In Ebonroot, it was the Public Records Hall. It stood hunched at the edge of the northern forest, its stone facade stained with moss, its windows dark as closed eyes. No one remembered who had built it. No one questioned its presence. It was simply there, like a bone buried too deep to dislodge.Mallory Finn was the archivist. She had been for fifteen years. Each morning at precisely 8:03, she emerged from her narrow brick cottage on Crofton Lane, her shoes always spotless, her sk...

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In the Dark Where No One Speaks

Submitted to Contest #307

PrologueBefore the DoorwayWest Virginia, 1952Dr. Elias stood at the edge of the operating theater, arms folded, eyes fixed on the woman at the table. Walter Freeman didn’t work like a surgeon. He worked like an artist. Like a man so practiced at killing something inside a person that it no longer felt like violence.The pick slid in clean, just above the eye and beneath the ridgeline of the brow. Freeman tilted the handle with a casual grace and for a fraction of a second, Elias swore he heard a whisper… maybe. A rustling like dry leaves twis...

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The Kingmakers

Submitted to Contest #307

The first rule of regime change is simple: the story must come before the blood. Not the truth—the story. The one that gets told in headlines and whispered in embassies. The one that floats through think tanks and settles over evening news like fog. A righteous tale, clean and simple. A villain. A victim. A hero. And somewhere, behind it all, men like Gabriel Sloan. No official rank. No public face. Just a burner passport, access to seven black accounts, and the authority to destabilize sovereign governments if the calculus made sense. Gabri...

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2nd Deadly SIn

Submitted to Contest #307

“ Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.” Erich Fromm The 2nd Deadly Sin After a long hard day at the movie theater, underpaid and overworked Reinar, enters through the front door of his humble home. His wife is leaving for work at the gas station in a hurry and she stubs her toe as she stumbles slightly on the steps while putting on her shoes. “ Holy crow!” “Are you okay?” Reinar asks Annie, concerned. “ Yes, I’m running late and now this! My ca...

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The Society Below; Classified: Academic-Military — DO NOT FILE

Submitted to Contest #307

Chapter 1: The Root of Silence Dane’s breath fogged the frigid air, each exhale a warning siren in the night. His boots skidded over loose gravel as he and Mercer tore through skeletal woods. Behind them, the Society’s hunters thundered like vengeful ghosts wielding unseen hammers. The trees devoured the echo of their flight, but not the terror. “You sure it’s here?” Mercer hissed, chest heaving. Dane didn’t answer. He felt it—an electric wrongness ahead, the place Dorian had whispered of before they left him bleeding in the chapel’s shadow....

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Ulf and the Valravn

Submitted to Contest #307

Trigger warning: disturbing war imagery, child deaths, gore, and corpse mutilation.Studying is never easy, especially when stretched thin between final projects and tests before the college year is over. Having finals for computer science, statistics, and abnormal psychology is hard enough. However, with doing a big project on one of the religions covered in world religion class, Blake Jensen decided to go to the undergraduate library. He thought that would help him get the hardest part taken care of before cramming for the tests on loads ...

6 likes 2 comments 2
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The Ink-Eaters

Submitted to Contest #307

The Ink-Eaters The first time I tasted ink, it was warm. Not the metallic bite of fountain pen ink, nor the bitter slick of toner on your fingers—this was older. Richer. It clung to my teeth like wine, bloomed behind my eyes like a headache, and whispered a word I shouldn’t have known in a language no one should still speak. Welcome, it said. I hadn’t meant to eat the page, not really. It was a late November night—the kind where fog paws at the dormitory windows like something with fingers—and I was behind on three essays. The library was cl...

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The Porcelain Scholar

Submitted to Contest #307

Under the fluorescents my skin shone like kiln-fired china, and the professor finally noticed me. The archive basement hummed with climate control systems. Three in the morning, and I sat alone among temperature-regulated cases, cradling a bleu-fleur teacup that had survived two centuries. The porcelain felt warm against my palms, as if it still held echoes of the Qing courtesan who once sipped jasmine tea from its rim. Hairline fractures mapped its surface like tiny rivers—crazing, the conservators called it. Battle scars of time. My thesis...

15 likes 7 comments 7
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The Memory Room

Submitted to Contest #307

The Memory RoomBy Gabriella CooperCHAPTER ONE: THE MANDATE It started with the Mandate. At first, people thought it was a conspiracy. A fringe rumor whispered in online forums and late-night radio shows. But then the letters came—official, government-sealed envelopes delivered to every doorstep. You had to give up a memory. The news channels sugar-coated it. “A humanitarian program,” they called it. “A chance to unburden yourself.” Officials claimed it was a measure to ease psychological distress, to help citizens live happier lives. But the...

3 likes 1 comment 1
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Can I Call You Her Name?

Submitted to Contest #307

He walked into the bar tonight. Like he’s been doing the past several nights. Trying to drown his sorrows in loads of alcohol until the hallucinations become a reality, and he can finally escape into his dream world where she is still a part of his life. As of right now, he hasn’t quite reached that dream-turned-into-reality state. He scoped the bar, looking at the fellow drunks he would be sharing a building with tonight. He slumped his way to a bar stool and began his long journey of various alcoholic drinks to help him cope with the imm...

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ETHICS 4.01

Submitted to Contest #307

The heavy exam silence shattered like glass as the lecture theatre door slammed shut. Every head jerked up from their paper, swivelling in unison at the noise.Dr Pantos swept by, heels clicking like gunfire, her dress swaying with the rhythm of her hips. She was effortlessly movie-star-esque: red lips, sharp cheekbones and an expensive fragrance. Eliza watched, entranced, before tipping her face, cheeks burning, back to her paper. Concentrate, goddamn it. It’s your final exam.She rubbed a cramped wrist; ink smudged on her fingertips from two...

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CTRL

Submitted to Contest #306

She ducked into the small studio apartment quickly, hoping to avoid her chatty neighbor, who always seemed to catch her at the worst times. Phone clutched in hand, the screen aglow with an unanswered call to Blake. Jacket shed, shoes flung, then she dropped her phone on the desk, powered on her laptop, and changed into comfy clothes. She grabbed a beer from the fridge, cracked it open, and plopped onto the stool. She clicked the browser, and as soon as it loaded, a chat box expanded onto her screen. OnlyEyes4u- “Hey, how are you doing tonigh...

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RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

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