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Discover weekly, the best short stories

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

150+ Urban fantasy Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. From vampires at the bar to werewolves around the corner, our collection of urban fantasy stories will bring the magical into everyday life.

Urban fantasy Short Stories – Page 4 of 10

Constance Power Tibbins Will Not Stand For It

Submitted to Contest #299

As I watched the man once again smoking his pipe full of candied peel and haranguing the air with great vigour, it seemed to me that in this world one could be purposeful, even whilst being quite thoroughly mad.I thought, moreover, he was hard of hearing, as he produced two tiny trumpets, placing one in each ear, before announcing himself with the prodigious volume of the extremely deaf.‘Wassup?’ he said, to nobody.He spoke often of blessings, which led me to consider whether he was a holy man. His attire was not that of the clergy - he in f...

16 likes 14 comments 14
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Wall Of Silence

Submitted to Contest #299

Grateful for the lights on the way home Stacey could sometimes see faces pushing to get out of the wall of the subway. Always hurrying along so no one could see her wide-eyed one second silent scream each time. One Friday night Stacey is mumbling to herself on the tube train home after being fired from her temp job. The creepy boss has sacked her after she declined his hand on her knee. Yelling at personnel for taking his side she is lifted to the pavement with two months salary as a 'goodwill gesture'. “What a pay off!” Her mumbling got a ...

7 likes 13 comments 13
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In Central? Nobody’s ever wrong—unless they run out of excuses

Submitted to Contest #299

Look, in the Hong Kong trading jungle, the investment banks, the traders, the dealers, nobody ever fails—at least, not out loud. Not Banker Benny “Big Beef” Lee. Here, if you make a bad call, you'd better have a story ready. If you so much as mention the word “mistake,” you might as well turn in your market badge, your karaoke mic, and your hopes of ever eating dim sum with the high rollers again. A baking-hot Friday in Central. Skyscrapers gleamed, tempers simmered, and Benny was about to make investment history—just not the good kind. Lion...

6 likes 2 comments 2
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Spirits of '76

Submitted to Contest #299

Spirits of ’76 Back then they wasn’t many fire hydrants in Posey, but there was one at the very top of Hill Street. Every year around New Year’s Eve it got opened and Hill Street got closed. See, sleigh ridin’ was a part of winter. Folks was a might more tolerant of things like this back then, and besides it give ‘em a chance to get rid of a lot of old tires. Now if ya’ll can remember the winter of ‘75-’76… it got cold! And if you don’t remember… you didn’t live around here then. ‘Bout mid afternoon New Years eve that hydrant at the top of H...

7 likes 7 comments 7
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The Rite of Spring

Submitted to Contest #298

It’s a warm Spring night, and you’re positioned about a good 25 to 30 feet away from the bonfire, sufficiently distant for all the people dancing around it, kids exclusively, to seem like so many drunken moths fluttering around a lightbulb. The enormous tree root that you’re sitting on is about as old, moldy, and surprisingly sturdy as you yourself seem to be, and this estimation is not without cause. You’re in your mid-fifties and still in relatively good health considering there are no formal doctors. You call the people dancing around the...

8 likes 3 comments 3
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Tatertown

Submitted to Contest #298

“I dare to be myself—screw you!”That’s what I want to scream from my seat on the bus to Anywhere and Nowhere, like every bus I’ve hopped on in the past month. A distraction from my messy divorce. Hopefully, adventures. But I keep my middle-aged mouth shut like the good little girl my momma raised.Chicken.I pull on my newly-pink hair self-consciously, regretting my “screw you” attitude that led me to choose a sleeveless shirt that shows every jiggle of my flabby upper arms.Sigh. Reinventing myself ain’t so easy.I look out the window at the sw...

12 likes 2 comments 2
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New Blood

Submitted to Contest #298

Short Synopsis: A short story for a personal project of mine called "I was adopted by a vampire". The main character is a young human girl named Tabitha (she goes by "Tabby") who is...well, adopted by a vampire named Kristof. Of course, the foster care system that she came from is wary of this arrangement for the obvious reasons, but Kristof seems to be completely genuine about the whole thing - he really just wants a daughter. Of course, a story with no conflict is not a very interesting story, but none of the story's "real" conflict is goi...

5 likes 1 comment 1
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Bleeding Heart

Submitted to Contest #298

TW; Partial nudity, briefly implied discriminatory violence and Xenophobia, and swearing.Note: This is a supplemental prequel story for a longer story I have been writing for over 9 years now called "The Formidable Bishouman", which was initially influenced by a bunch of old animes I used to watch in High School like Kinnikuman, Fist of the North Star, Urusei Yatsura, Ginga Nagareboshi Gin and later Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Super, but has far expanded beyond that point as its own original story. This story follows the events of one of t...

6 likes 1 comment 1
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In Full Bloom

Submitted to Contest #298

The moon glitters in the sky, throwing a silver cast over the garden. He totters along the bumpy cobblestone path, searching for the plant. He passes beautiful hedges, which tower over him, patches of tiny colourful wildflowers, each one precious and unique, budding saplings, soon to grow into grand fruit trees. It almost jumps out at him, it’s thick, sturdy stalk holding up closed yellow buds. He reaches out to touch it, fingers trailing down the stem, catching on a thorn. A small, shiny bead of blood wells up on his finger. He puts it to h...

11 likes 6 comments 6
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To Elsewhere and Beyond

Submitted to Contest #298

When the trap snapped shut around her leg, cold metal biting fur and flesh, she didn’t scream. Others would have chewed their limbs off to get out of this, but she didn’t fight. She simply stared at it, blinking slowly. She knew how to get out of these, but for some reason, she didn’t care enough to react. The keeper would come around six anyway, giving her a few hours to avoid the exertion of being free.This was not the first time she had found herself lost in a moment like this. Once, it was paint. A dried spot on the bathroom tile—white a...

10 likes 2 comments 2
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444

Submitted to Contest #297

“No.” “No what?” Vi looked down into the casket, its lid still off, her sister’s face a little sunken moon in the pillow. She didn’t know ‘what,’ honestly, and the more she thought about it, the more silly it seemed. Eve was looking at her with a perfectly placid and porcelain expression, the type of clean pokerface which made her such a legendary hunter among the Sidhe clan, but Vi knew better than to underestimate that look. She swept her hand side to side. “Well, what?” Eve said again. She pushed the shovel out, stretching her arm. Vi ...

5 likes 6 comments 6
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Day 217

Submitted to Contest #297

Day two hundred and seventeen was the start of the end. They could see it. The child was as she had been for weeks. Still. Quiet. Unaware. Yet, the room had changed. The air was heavier. The light was dimmer. They knew the markers of death - had been summoned by them thousands of times throughout millennia. This, however, was different. The soul before them had clung on for months, teetering on the edge as her body fought to sustain itself. The spirit had been called to her side day after day, waiting for the moment when her Earthly form wou...

1 like 1 comment 1
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A Quiet Way To Spend Ten Years

Winner of Contest #297 🏆

On a cool, clear day in late September, I went out for my final cup of tea. There was a place I liked downtown. Yemeni. The girls who worked there wore sleek headscarves printed with bright, abstracted patterns. Sunny spirals that went on for years.Handing them my last ten dollars, I took my tea out for a walk beneath the elms. Joggers raced their dogs into the evening gloom, in a park-turned-arboretum that I remembered from my college days. Tracing the path back to a familiar bench I slung my backpack down and sat. I poured my tea into a th...

103 likes 64 comments 64
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MOO

Submitted to Contest #297

I have three things that make me special. Different.I know what time it is without a clock. 11:04pm? I can do you one better. 11:04 and 32 seconds, baby. This chick is never wrong.I can see ghosts.And I make a killer peach cobbler.Okay, okay, back to the ghosts. Ever since my older and slightly crazy brother Tanner pushed me on my scooter down a hill as a kid, ending in my head hitting a silo (think Deep South country) and lights out for Daisy (moi), I’ve seen the occasional spirit. Most are harmless. Some are mean as a trapped skunk, but th...

4 likes 2 comments 2
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Doom Jazz

Submitted to Contest #297

The clocks stopped on November 10th, 1920, at precisely 4:29 PM. Daniel Horatius Triggs first noticed on the heirloom pocket watch he was nearly finished cleaning. The gears inside were still ticking away, steady as a mechanical heartbeat, but the hands remained unmoving. Puzzled, Daniel checked the time against his own wristwatch. If he could figure out how long ago the first timepiece stopped working, he might be able to figure out what had been dislodged to cause the malfunction. Only the wristwatch also read 4:29. The hands of both watch...

9 likes 3 comments 3
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RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

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