Menu

Menu
Prompts
Contests
Stories
Blog
Directory
Contests
Magazine
FAQ

Set your story in your favorite (or least favorite!) place in the world.

Posted in Short Story on Apr 25, 2025

Submissions are closed

Make sure you don't miss our next contest by creating your free Reedsy account.

Sign in with Google
Sign in with Facebook

Or use an email address:

Why not check out our active contest?

✍️ 35 stories

Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

Submitted to Contest #300

"Who left their shoes!? Seriously man! You have no shoes! Come on, somebody, anybody!"Darren Doorful was having a bad day. No one mentioned his twenty-fifth anniversary with the TSA. He knew the young-ens wouldn't, but his uppers should have.Clueless faces turned towards Darren without saying a word. No one came forward to claim the abandoned bucket."These shoes didn't just walk in here by themselves. They got to belong to somebody!" He scanned the travelers like an eagle for prey.They scattered, adverting their eyes, desperately trying to a...

29 likes 8 comments 8
Read story

Come for the Monkeys, Stay for the Emotional Damage

Submitted to Contest #300

A True Story of an Adventure in Belize After a very mediocre relationship during COVID with a truly uninspiring man named Kyle, whose greatest passion in life is collecting discarded or lost gloves and hats found on the streets of New York. I find myself single, vaccinated, and dangerously susceptible to bad ideas. It isn't my finest moment, and let's be real, no one knows what they are doing during COVID times. Most of these relationships founded during lockdown are purely for emotional survival. "You have to go to Belize," my friend Jenna ...

17 likes 12 comments 12
Read story

Sharing Sharon's Eulogy by Zowie-Wowie

Submitted to Contest #300

My mom was a bad speller. Notoriously bad. She named me Zowie. It's supposed to rhyme with Bowie, as in David Bowie, but most people got it wrong. I feared the first day of school growing up. Invariably, a teacher would call my name rhyming it with Howie, as in Howie Mandel. I never bothered to correct the teacher. I always wanted to see how long she would go on pronouncing my name wrong. In third grade, my teacher went all the way to the middle of the term before the art teacher corrected her. Deciding I didn't want to be Zowie/Howie, I wen...

15 likes 8 comments 8
Read story

On The Ice

Submitted to Contest #300

Damn it was cold. He had been told just how cold it was, but hearing it will be -50 degrees and experiencing it are two different things. The copter glided over Queen Maud Land at two hundred feet, the wind leaking through Jack Valance’s parka even with the heat tubes running at full strength. The sun just peeked above Ulvetanna Peak, high noon for this time of year in Antarctica. Jack had his FarSight All Light Binoculars affixed to his goggles, allowing him to scan the frigid landscape. There wasn’t much out here. Most of the bases were on...

14 likes 3 comments 3
Read story

Where the Water Waits

Submitted to Contest #300

Where the Water WaitsMost people, if you asked them, would say their favorite place was somewhere warm—somewhere bright. A beach, maybe, with white sand and gold pouring from the sky. But she was different.She never came for the sun. Never for the sand.She came for the hush.At first glance, she looked like the others. Towel slung over one arm. Sunglasses perched precariously atop her windblown hair. Her feet pressed tentative prints into the damp morning shore, erasing themselves as quickly as they appeared. To a stranger, she was just anoth...

11 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

The other horizon

Submitted to Contest #300

There is a small island with round rocky shores facing the waters between Sweden and the Baltic—an eastern outpost of the Scandinavian peninsula, where land finally gives way to the sea.Two hundred years ago, it was much smaller, divided into two or three small parts. A few thousand years ago, it did not exist at all—it was the seabed.But when the great ice sheet gave way and retreated fifteen thousand years ago, releasing its oppressive weight, the earth's crust began to rise, allowing the land to increase again slowly. The sea receded. Roc...

11 likes 4 comments 4
Read story

Gate 17

Submitted to Contest #300

Airports are chaos wrapped in glass and steel, a symphony of hurried footsteps, rolling suitcases, and garbled intercom announcements. For most people, they’re a necessary evil—queues that snake endlessly, overpriced coffee that tastes like regret, and the constant dread of delayed flights. But for me, they’re something else entirely. They’re cathedrals of possibility, humming with the promise of elsewhere. The moment I step into Johannesburg’s OR Tambo International Airport, a weight lifts from my shoulders. My lungs expand, drinking in the...

11 likes 4 comments 4
Read story

The Work Retreat

Submitted to Contest #300

Tove had been looking forward to the work retreat all month. Three days and two nights in the North Carolina mountains was just what she needed. Nothing but the sounds of birds and forest creatures cradling her to sleep. No bustling city life, no screeching sirens or teed-off neighbors. Nothing but warm smores over a campfire and fresh green grass between her toes. The mountains were her favorite place on Earth. “Ready to go, Tove?” Randy, her co-editor for Yellow News Magazine and current best friend, pulled her out of her day ...

11 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

I'm Giving Up

Submitted to Contest #300

"Today is my last day. I don’t see why I needed to send in my weekly status report,” I said calmly, while trying my best to ignore a strong pit in my stomach.“Yes Jane, and that really puts our team in a tight spot. Our 2025 year roadmap will now completely change due to staff capacity with you leaving. The least you could do is finish your updates to the deck,” my manager said, with a following huff.“Okay, fine, I’ll update it later today. Is that all?” I asked, resigned to my final corporate menial task.“Yes. Bye, Jane,” she said before en...

11 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

On Stage

Submitted to Contest #300

There were always the few hours before the show when Allison thought she just did not want to go, and she was asking herself if she should cancel it. Call the place and tell them she was sick. She wondered why she was doing this. Why exert the energy at her age? What was she trying to prove? Was it to win something, was it to go back in time to those early years in Manhattan? Was it to be known, so people would see who she truly was? Was it a search for meaning in her life after a forty-year law career that she never really wanted?For Alliso...

8 likes 5 comments 5
Read story

Momma Flo and MTLC

Submitted to Contest #300

Prompt: Set your story in your favorite place in the world. Momma Flo and MTLC “Teddy, I’ve got something for you,” as my Momma called from the kitchen. Right away I knew it would be yummy. When I entered the kitchen, she looked at me with her saucer-like, loving eyes. “Teddy Bear, I know how much you enjoy licking my wooden spoon so I added extra for more tasty fun,” she smiled as she handed me the wooden spoon. It was heaven on a stick. My Momma, Florence knew how to feed my sweet tooth. She was in her element in the kitchen. Before televi...

8 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Mickey’s Infernal Bargain

Submitted to Contest #300

Contains Some Foul Language Consistent with Character (Satan)SATAN SLOUCHED AGAINST the obsidian throne, picking ash from under his fingernails with the tip of a ceremonial dagger. The screams from the ninth circle had dulled to white noise centuries ago. Another day in Hell—predictable, boring, and exactly how he liked it.A lesser demon scurried in, clutching a stack of contracts. “My Lord, we’ve got seventeen new arrivals from Wall Street. The usual package?”“Give them the broker special. Eternity of cold calls that never connect.” Satan w...

7 likes 6 comments 6
Read story

Sea la Vie

Submitted to Contest #300

When I was 42, I wanted another baby. Not just any baby, one in particular. I’d seen him, even held him, studied his sweet face, cupped his tiny head gently in my hand, felt his downy hair. From the time I’d learned about him – still in the womb then, his birth mom just a teen, giving him up for adoption – I’d felt it was meant to be. He should be mine and I should be his. But that wasn’t how it turned out. I blamed my husband for it. He had been such an oaf. He hadn’t meant to spoil it, but it wasn’t about his intentio...

6 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Help Me Die

Submitted to Contest #300

Help me die…help…me…die I couldn’t get those words out of my mind. They burrowed into my brain as only persistent earworms can the whole way up Highway 101. Not even the majestic redwoods wrapped in their cool, foggy shawls could silence Mom’s manic mantra. Did I help her? Let’s get the suspense out of the way right now. Yes, I did. But it took a while. The last thing on earth I wanted was to say goodbye to the woman who raised me single-handedly on a wing and a prayer and very little else–no thanks to my good-for-nothing father who I ...

6 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

In the north.

Submitted to Contest #300

‘Skål!’ Tom exclaims as he raises his glass.‘What’s that?’‘It means cheers in Swedish.’‘Have you got completely native?’‘Yes. When in Rome and all that.’‘But we aren’t in Rome, are we?’‘No. But we should make an effort to speak the local tongue, shouldn’t we?’‘So far, my experience with this language is beyond comprehension.’‘Well, consider this your first lesson, then. Skål!’ Tom repeats, lifting his glass again.‘Cheers,’ Jerry mutters stubbornly. A client of Jerry has generously offered his summer house in Sweden for them to enjoy at no co...

6 likes 4 comments 4
Read story

🌟 Similar prompts

Write a story about someone who sets off in one direction and ends up somewhere else.

Short Story – 51 stories

Write a story about a place that no longer exists.

Short Story – 66 stories

Start or end your story with someone arriving somewhere for the first or last time.

Short Story – 97 stories

Write a story about a place that hides something beneath the surface.

Short Story – 84 stories

How to Write a Novel

Join Tom Bromley for a writing master class and finish your first draft in 3 months. Learn more →

How to Write a Novel