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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.

1520+ 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 92 of 102

Seconds Before Death

Submitted to Contest #74

Death is a scary thing. We spend our whole lives avoiding it, even though we are on a constant timer, getting closer to death every second. It's inevitable. Some people live healthily and live longer while some don't, and live shorter. Most people fear it, while some look forward to it, like me. I had lived a painful life, tortured by everyone around me. Turns out I would die painfully too, with a knife sticking out of my chest. I laid down in the side alley, awaiting death. I had about ten seconds left in my life. I looked back upon l...

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The Nuke

Submitted to Contest #74

 “What a wonderful day,” I thought as I drove to work. Dressed in scrubs, ready to take care of my patients. The sky was a beautiful blue, the sun peaking behind white fluffy clouds. Little did I think today would be different than any other day. I thought it would be normal. I would walk into the hospital and help those I could, whether it be giving IVs or just talking with my patients. I didn’t expect what would happen minutes later.  I knew the US and Russia were in turmoil, especially since we tried getting them out of the UN… ...

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Cassie's Hall of Times

Submitted to Contest #74

Cassandra leaned over and scratched yet another tally into the slabs of polished marble. The marble was white, but fisured with streaks of navy and aquamarine. In her palace, there was a tranquil, cool air. It also consisted of long hallways, sometimes doubling back on themselves, at other times making you walk for a quarter of an hour but getting nowhere. Everything was in a cool, watery blue or a pale crystalline white. Controversially, outside the palace was a scorching desert, with red, powdery sand and mystical winds blew eerie tunes th...

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Lotte Hollow's List of Lies: a Lotte Hollow Story

Submitted to Contest #74

LOTTE HOLLOW'S LIST OF LIES A list by Lotte Hollow, Witch-in-Training Lie #10: The Time I told Billie Manchester I Was a Vampire Self-explanatory title. Billie Manchester was teasing me for being creepy and living in a dark, shady, tree-surrounded house where the plants bloomed toxic purple in the middle of winter, where the paint was peeling and black, where strange lights poured from the windows, where wispy-looking, transparent "ghost-girls" with soulless black eyes seemed to be spied every halloween, where the gnarled, eerie tree...

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Curse of the Owl Clan

Submitted to Contest #74

Within our shared tipi, my bride lay with swollen stomach on furs. A strong fire blazed beside her. Draped in loincloth and feathered shawl of the owl clan, her honey colored flesh still inflamed my loins. Winter had descended, the cold wind taking its icy bite into me whenever I neared the mouth of the tent, but perspiration beaded on my woman's skin. Lelvep stretched herself out on the pelts and moaned. "Tusrok, I am hungry. Make me a rabbit." "Anything for you, my love," I breathed. The winter had been ...

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Ten

Submitted to Contest #74

Ten.How long does it take to change a life? To put it on a new trajectory. To take one action or make one decision that will either propel it to new heights, or send it plummeting to the depths. How long?Dr. Brandon Walker was about to find out. He’d played the scene over and over in his head. Sometimes with a good end, usually with a bad one. He knew the risk he’d be taking, now he just needed to find the courage.The entire New Year’s Eve party had been building to this moment for him, and for Solace Grimwald, the object of his affection. T...

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The Sunbird Cage

Submitted to Contest #73

Charo Hendrix awoke with a groan. She slammed down on her blaring alarm clock—a whining, syncopated melody. Neon light poured through polyester curtains, painting the cramped bedroom in fluorescent shadows. Charo sighed. Time to rise from the ashes. “Beepo,” she said, still tangled in her sheets. “Start coffee, please, and thanks.” “Of course, ma’am,” said the apartment AI in a posh tenor—a new setting she downloaded from the manufacturer. From bed, Charo could hear the coffee machine grind to life in the kitchen—which made sense becau...

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Dear God

Submitted to Contest #73

Dear God, it’s… that time of year again. I sit here thinking of what to write. I know I’m a little old for writing letters to a presumably fictional character, known around the world for taking much of the spice out of Christmas, at least as far as the One and Only Son is concerned. But never the less, I believe it is good therapy and I recommend it to all. No one actually believes they are going to get what they ask for anyway, but it’s not the asking, or the getting, that’s important. It is a fact that you lessen the trep...

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The Paradox of Mundanity

Submitted to Contest #72

Somewhere between the window pane and fly screen of the bus’s window, Ayla’s vision changed. On the surface, everything had been muddled together for a while; it was a common symptom of the humidity that ran rampant in New Orleans. The window pane’s surface was slick with the air's sweat, even more effective at blurring scenery than a fast moving car--and fast her Greyhound bus was not. On her left, an elderly man wheezed into his Blackberry, complaining of a “midsummer malady.” How he found himself remembering his doctoral days; the recoll...

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Last Night

Submitted to Contest #72

     We at the Hierarchy of Morpheus would like to offer you a position as a dream sorter in our human division. The doctors with beaked masks skate on frozen Styx. There are more names for us than anything else. The red-faced children build with sheets of glass. You should think of us as spirits. The fog blows over the ebony tree. We send dreams to all creatures that dream. The wooden clown dances in the sated baby’s fists. We often use coporeals with their squishy brains to do quality control. The coconut falls int...

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My name is Monika

Submitted to Contest #72

When the new computer model, Bx12 came out in the year 25000, it was sold out of nearly every store in America, and the world by the next day. It was installed into every person's home, permitted to access every electronic item, permitted to study the humans that owned it. Since Bx12 was installed in every home around the world, it created a Hive, every Bx unit compiled all their data of human behavior and interactions into the correct folders. Soon Bx knew everything about human emotions, actions, reactions, even how they thought. The human...

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The Ivory Diversion

Submitted to Contest #72

Boromin was sat quite at his desk with a pile of papers to look through and sign when he heard a commotion downstairs. The Ivory Court was a modern building in one of the towers between Dalan’s Refuge and Ocean View. A beautiful floor plan with a tiled-mosaic pattern was always visible from the balcony-like upper floor, where the employees could free from the oppressing sensation of the thousands and thousands of tonnes of stone magically suspended in the air around them. For those, like Boromin, who were relatively new to the city life, it ...

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Black and White

Submitted to Contest #72

 Things always came easy for me especially when I put my mind to it. I have a strong sense of self-love and self-worth and I do not scare easily. I have six older brothers and I am the only girl. My parents have been married for forty years and I do not recall ever hearing them fight or even raise their voice to one another.             I am sorry, I forgot my social grace, which was instilled in me at an earlier age by my mother, grandmother and even God almight...

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Invisable to Light

Submitted to Contest #72

Nobody seems to notice me for the most part, I tend to blend in the background. Even though I think I am a pretty cute raccoon girl. I have a power that often makes me seem like I am not there, and I can walk through walls if I concentrate enough. I am pretty lonely, people just don't pay attention to me much. Then, one day I met a tanuki who seemed very kind, and we became friends. She met a guy, but still saw me. I couldn't help but to feel a bit jealous, she had what I hoped for..someone noticing her. I never said anything about it though...

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Burn the World with Me

Submitted to Contest #72

"If you fight fire with fire, the whole world gets burned." Excalibur breathed heavily, her hero cape singed and her body pummeled with heavy wounds. Her face was battered with scars, but it wasn't like I was any better. Her silver armor was now melted and torn. The Silver Sword Hero was now no more. Blood seeped from my fists, my fingers skinned raw and tips burnt as patches of fire bloomed on my injuries at her words. I, the Scarlet Harvester of Flames, was also no more. Aria la Rosenne, better known as the hero Excalibur, was my archenemy...

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RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

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