Menu

More apps built by Reedsy

Assemble a team of professionals

The writing app for authors

Writing courses, events and memberships

Get your book reviewed

Weekly writing prompts and contests

Menu
Prompts
Contests
Stories
Blog
Directory
Weekly Prompts Contest
Reedsy Literary Prize
Magazine
FAQ

“Write a story about a character who begins to question their own humanity.”

Posted in Character on Mar 27, 2026

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?

✍️ 80 stories

Quid Pro Quo

Weekly Contest #348

He stands over the bed with the pillow in his hands. His knuckles are white with tension, the fabric compressed under the pressure. It would be simple. No mess, no blood, no questions. A palliative patient who simply stops breathing in his sleep. It happens every day.But simple is not the same as right. Simple was too easy, too fast.Jonas lowers the pillow and carefully puts it back in place.The man in the bed has been reduced to a skeleton draped in parchment skin. The same man who used to be able to suck the air out of a room with a single...

38 likes 63 comments 63
Read story

Your Replacement Is Waiting

Weekly Contest #348

The envelope arrived on a Wednesday, because nothing that destroys a life begins on a Friday.Vincent Collins found it on his welcome mat at 7:14 in the morning, positioned with deliberate precision, its cream-colored edges lining up neatly with the doorframe. No postage. No return address. The paper stock was heavy, expensive, the kind of stationery that announced its importance through texture alone. The font on the front, a severe sans-serif that spelled out his name and address, looked government-adjacent. Official without being identifia...

21 likes 10 comments 10
Read story

Howling at the Moon

Weekly Contest #348

Ryan used to think the whole werewolf thing was stupid.Not scary—just wrong.The idea that something inside you could take over—that it needed a full moon, or a curse, or some external trigger—always felt backwards. If anything like that existed, it wouldn’t come from outside. It would already be there—waiting for the right conditions.He said as much once, freshman year, half-drunk, arguing with Dan and Sid in the common room while someone played a horror movie no one was watching. Dan and Sid were cozied up with Lisa and Jenny under a heap o...

17 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Talk to me

Weekly Contest #348

I wasn’t afraid when I asked Rachel to meet me at my place, but I should have been. It was my first time dealing with a sexual harassment complaint, and I never thought it would be from a man. Silly me. As if women couldn’t be monsters, I thought as I tidied up my apartment. She was able to talk about men as if they were accessories, but I’d never imagined she could be a predator, someone to run away from. One more surprise to add to the list. When she arrived an hour later than expected, she was way too cranky for my taste and the conver...

16 likes 5 comments 5
Read story

Enhanced

Weekly Contest #348

Aiden raced across the field of war, kicking clods of mud in his wake. The servos in his enhanced knee joints screamed under the pressure of his pace and strain creaked through the steel rods that strengthened his leg bones. His breath came ragged and his throat was hoarse. The optimised oxygen dispersal of his lungs and enforced muscles of his heart could only do so much under the exertion. All of it was regulated by the control unit embedded in his right forearm, which flashed incessantly in warning. None of Aiden’s revolutionary augmentat...

11 likes 3 comments 3
Read story

The Disappearance of Rosa Ortiz

Weekly Contest #348

The day they took Rosa Ortiz, I was thinking about my grocery list. Rosa had just relieved me at the nurses' station. She was laughing at something – a joke from one of the aides, I think – and I remember thinking how rare that sound had been in recent weeks; how the hospital had grown quieter. More of us were being cut early as fewer patients sought medical care, and as a result our earnings and benefits were being slashed. But I still needed to stop for groceries on my way home, because eating is a basic necessity. I was standing at the t...

11 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Human Enough?

Weekly Contest #348

“Describe your bedtime routine. What the hell kind of question is that?” I grumble, smacking the magenta packet onto the kitchen counter. “What do they even want me to say?” Harrison walks over to where I stand, and he runs his hand through his messy curls, and smiles down at me. “I dunno,” he starts, “if I had to guess,” inspecting the packet, flipping the pages, “I’d say they want you to describe your bedtime routine.” I try to shoot laser beams at him with my eyes, but I haven’t reached that level of ESP yet. “Yes. Thank you, Harrison.”...

10 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

The Incredible Disappearing Woman

Weekly Contest #348

There was nothing special about the day that Sophie Rhodes first noticed she was fading out of existence. Her pre-work routine had unfolded with the same rigorous discipline that she prided herself for sticking to every morning: up by 6, homecooked breakfast at 6:20h and a forty minute run around the park right after. The physical exertion had revealed nothing different about her body, no signs of abnormal fatigue or sickness, which was why the paleness she saw reflected in the mirror was so startling. Although “paleness” was an inadequate e...

9 likes 7 comments 7
Read story

Human

Weekly Contest #348

Chloe was of two minds about things. On the one hand, she cared. She cared deeply about people and animals. She hated anything that caused suffering. She spent much of her waking life avoiding anything causing any discomfort or pain. She felt guilty at killing a fly that wouldn’t leave her apartment. Countless Daddy Longlegs owed their lives to her rescuing them from drain traps.She often felt she didn’t do enough.But, despite her caring for Joel, more than anyone else she knew, she had to break up with him. She just couldn’t care anymore. B...

9 likes 4 comments 4
Read story

Pinky Promise

Weekly Contest #348

I stretch my arms above my head, allowing my spine to crack one vertebrae at a time. I am sleeping on the floor on a thin mattress pad, with bunched up balls of cotton, making it impossible for a comfortable night's sleep. My joints ache as a reminder of my unfortunate sleeping arrangement. I sit up and can see the small twin bed in the room. It's a thin blanket rising and falling as Jacob sleeps deeply. He looks so peaceful. I hate to wake him, but if I don’t, he’ll surely get in trouble. “Jacob, it’s time to wake up,” I whisper. I see his...

8 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Umbrae Animae

Weekly Contest #348

When I first noticed the changes, I did nothing to stop them. It started with my senses. The world around me dimmed. Hue and vibrancy faded away to grays. What did it matter that the flowers were no longer pink and yellow? Did it ever matter? The sky's cerulean paled to dusty cornflower, hardly distinct from any overcast day. Everything that entered my mouth was sand. The pines outside my apartment no longer washed me in their surface-cleaner scent. Pillows were pressed over my ears, turning my heartbeat into an ever present, pounding drum. ...

8 likes 4 comments 4
Read story

Take the Plunge

Weekly Contest #348

The only source of light comes from the street lamps outside, giving the otherwise dark clinic a burnt-orange tint. I keep my hand on the door as it gradually comes to a close, guiding it so as not to slam and awake the patients. The reception area is where most of the cameras are, but I’m still taking a huge risk coming in through the side. That’s fine though; I knew that I could lose my job and face potential jail time the moment I offered Cecelia to do this for her. I’m confident that I could make my way to the medical cart in the dark, b...

8 likes 4 comments 4
Read story

An alien, the window, and the hot dog

Weekly Contest #348

Greg still wasn’t sure if the burrito was good or bad. He took another bite, chewed, and then he swallowed. Still, nothing. It wasn’t bad, he thought to himself, but it also didn’t seem good. He had been eating the same bacon, egg and cheese burrito from the cart outside his work for six months now, and he still couldn’t say if it was good or bad. It wasn’t that Greg couldn’t taste anything, it was just, he couldn’t tell if the taste was good or bad. He figured that if he kept eating the same thing long enough he would be able to get an idea...

8 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

Recorded Interview – Subject Unknown

Weekly Contest #348

The following transcript was recovered from a digital camera found in the apartment of documentary filmmaker Eliot Vanog, reported missing on October 14.The identity of the interview subject remains unknown. *** INTERVIEWER (ELIOT VANOG): Why did you reach out to me specifically?SUBJECT: Fourteen months ago, at your conference in Chicago on the human capacity for violence, you said something.INTERVIEWER: What did I say?SUBJECT: You said, “The word monster is a moral shortcut. It lets us pretend brutality is something inhuman, when in fact it...

8 likes 6 comments 6
Read story

The Oldest Hunger

Weekly Contest #348

She did not scream. They rarely did, once the cold had settled into their limbs and the fog had done its quiet work on their minds. He had learned, across more winters than he cared to number, that the body surrenders before the will does. It is a mercy, perhaps. His teeth were already in her neck before he registered the taste of copper and iron and something faintly sweet beneath. Yes, the particular sweetness of youth, of a body that had not yet begun its long argument with time. He noted it the way a man notes the quality of wine. He swa...

7 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

🌟 Similar prompts

Start or end your story with the sound of a heartbeat.

– 82 stories

Write a story in which a character receives a message from somewhere (or someone) beyond their understanding.

– 49 stories

Include the line “Who are you?” or “Are you real?” in your story.

– 92 stories

Write a story in which a character forms a connection with something unknown or forgotten.

– 61 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