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 Contest
Monthly Contest
Reedsy Literary Prize
Magazine
FAQ

← All contests

#372 What Keeps You Up at Night

Now that spooky season’s on its way, I’ve noticed various changes creeping into the world around me, from spine-chilling new releases in local bookshop windows to scarier movie suggestions on my favorite streaming platforms. This week, let’s lean into the most terrifying time of the year and write stories that center around worry, dread, and the small hours of the morning...

🥇 Winner

The UnDreamer 3.0

Winner of Weekly Contest #372 🏆

“It’s 2084 — sleeping is keeping you poor!” Garret Glover grinned at the 50 megapixel front camera of his mounted iPhone 27, which he was live-streaming from. He glanced at his personal phone and checked the content brief from NoSleep: Catchy opening line. Suggestion: In the year 2084, sleep is for the poor! Explain how the UnDreamer 3.0 has benefited you. Suggested focus: increased time for productivity at home and on the go, dream + memory tracking benefits. Demonstrate the product, highlighting key features: MemoryLock and DreamDecoder. C...

52 likes 34 comments 34
Read story

⭐️ Shortlisted

Four Skittles

Shortlisted for Weekly Contest #372 ⭐️

CW: Disordered eating, calorie restriction Monica hits end on her watch at the exact moment it changes from 3.49 to 3.5 miles and scrolls down her workout summary, still standing at the end of the driveway. Duration: 59:09 Energy burned: 264 calories Distance: 3.5 miles Steps: 8,249 Average pace: 16:54. Her best this week! Average heart rate: 106bpm Tomorrow, she thinks, it is time to upgrade from the 12-lb vest to 15 lbs! When she unlocks the front door it is 9:42 a.m. — and her older two kids aren't downstairs yet. She breathes in throug...

24 likes 12 comments 12
Read story

Unladen

Shortlisted for Weekly Contest #372 ⭐️

CW: Gore, insects, discussion of mental health It began when I started waking up at night. Almost invariably, I would blame my jolt to awareness on the weather – early spring storms that wept impotently in the sunken pre-dawn, the staccato of falling rain like an itch at the base of my skull. The watery morning light would bring little relief; only the realisation that I had somehow wasted time staring at my phone or a book or the insides of my own eyelids instead of sleeping and now I had to suffer the consequences. The day would pass in a...

22 likes 9 comments 9
Read story

This week's prompts

Write about a character who wakes up in the middle of the night, or is unable to sleep.

– 112 stories

Start or end your story with a strange and/or persistent sound.

– 52 stories

Write a story about a fear that turns out to be justified — or entirely imagined.

– 66 stories

Include the words "Who’s there?" or "It’s probably nothing" in your story.

– 34 stories

Write about a character who can’t stop checking something.

– 49 stories

Stories

The Candlelit Soul

Weekly Contest #372

Rodia placed a cup of warm tonic before her, then measured a small spoonful of bromide powder into it and stirred. He watched the liquid swirl clockwise, until it dissolved completely. “This tonic will numb the dread and loosen your tongue.” The candle between them began to dwindle while the last of the evening light crept through the dusty window, mingling with the candle’s soft orange glow. Together, the two lights barely held back the shadows gathering in the barren wooden room. There they sat around an old table. “I can’t…” she said, ...

71 likes 99 comments 99
Read story

The UnDreamer 3.0

Winner of Weekly Contest #372 🏆

“It’s 2084 — sleeping is keeping you poor!” Garret Glover grinned at the 50 megapixel front camera of his mounted iPhone 27, which he was live-streaming from. He glanced at his personal phone and checked the content brief from NoSleep: Catchy opening line. Suggestion: In the year 2084, sleep is for the poor! Explain how the UnDreamer 3.0 has benefited you. Suggested focus: increased time for productivity at home and on the go, dream + memory tracking benefits. Demonstrate the product, highlighting key features: MemoryLock and DreamDecoder. C...

52 likes 34 comments 34
Read story

Until The Sun Rises

Weekly Contest #372

The small farmhouse sat far from the road, surrounded by a tall grove of trees that stretched high into the dark, cloudy sky. A variety of maples and oaks, their branches shifted and swayed in the breeze. A storm was quickly rolling in but from the inside the house the lone occupant couldn’t tell. He couldn’t smell the scent of rain that was carried on the wind. As it brushed across the open field that stretched between the house and the old, cracked road. The only thing that he could smell was the sawdust that coated floors and the old mild...

44 likes 12 comments 12
Read story

Unwanted Kin

Weekly Contest #372

In Japan, it’s common practice to honour loved ones who have crossed over every August during Obon (お盆). For those precious few days, it is said that deceased ancestors ‘return’ for a brief visit back in the world of the living. Perhaps to process grief, it eventually transitioned to welcoming the dead with extravagant outdoor festivals, daily banquets, and graveyard clean-ups. It’s a venerable tradition that’s both celebratory and melancholic. Tending the home altars for the departed is a daily ritual, with offerings presented and incense ...

41 likes 25 comments 25
Read story

End of the Line

Weekly Contest #372

Donald Parker pulled away from Columbus and South Water precisely on time, and three minutes later, when he crossed State Street, Friday became Saturday. To him, midnight was like a spell that changed everything. Office buildings stood mostly dark above him, their upper floors disappearing into a hazy sky that reflected enough light back toward the ground to erase the stars. There were still plenty of people around, but they no longer crowded the sidewalks. Cars no longer packed the streets, and the drivers who remained seemed less inclined ...

40 likes 21 comments 21
Read story

The Call

Weekly Contest #372

It was still dark when the sound woke me. Before my alarm. Before sunrise. I sleep with those little orange foam earplugs and a fan going all night. Between the two, I usually don’t hear much. But I heard this. Coming from the backyard. It wasn’t far away. It was close and loud, calling over and over. I pulled out an earplug. There it was again. I sat up and woke my husband. “Do you hear that?” He did. And then I remembered. The phone call the night before. I had been expecting it. I was in New Jersey. My family was a thousand mil...

35 likes 17 comments 17
Read story

Check and never tell

Weekly Contest #372

It’s that time of night when you have no business being awake, with thoughts for companions no one would want. Switching on the lamp, you check the odds and ends in the bedside drawer. Earplugs. Check. Vaseline. Check. The odd paperback. Still worth checking — though you’re no longer able to read it. Mostly you check for pills. You scrabble around only to find all the packets are empty. How did that happen? Can it really be thirty years since his life ended? If you can call it a life. Your bony hands grip the bannister. Another fall wou...

32 likes 9 comments 9
Read story

AWAKE

Weekly Contest #372

“Did you check the closet, Daddy? I mean, did you really check it?” Patricia squeezed Mr. Rabbit, her favorite talisman, and searched her father's eyes. She didn't think her Daddy would lie, not really. But part of her knew that sometimes grownups didn't pay attention to the most important things, especially on days like today. Her Daddy smiled at her and walked toward the closet, but Patricia saw it fade just before his back was turned. She could see the back of his black suit was wrinkled. There were light water marks on the shoulders from...

31 likes 4 comments 4
Read story

The Weight of Almost

Weekly Contest #372

Tick. Tick. Tick. At 3:17 a.m., Sidney F. Arlen woke to the sound of something tapping against his bedroom wall. Three taps. A pause. Three more. He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. The house was quiet. His marriage had ended four years earlier, his daughter had been absent from his life for nearly as long, and the only other living thing beneath his roof was a spider he'd named Gerald. Gerald lived above the kitchen window and had proven himself a remarkably considerate roommate. Tick. Tick. Tick. Sidney rolled onto his side. "It'...

30 likes 9 comments 9
Read story

The Angel of Death

Weekly Contest #372

The clock said 3:11, and Vincent was awake to see it. Seventy-two hours. Give or take. By the second night he wasn't counting anymore, too busy trying to ignore the way the shadows seemed to lean toward him. Down the hall his father breathed, a wet rattle in, a long whistle out. That was the sound the house ran on now. Nicholas Pierce, seventy-one, lungs full of what the doctors called progression. The third pot of the night sat cold beside him. Around one, his heart had fluttered, a fish turning under ice. He'd blamed the coffee. Lately he ...

26 likes 15 comments 15
Read story

PRIVACY

Weekly Contest #372

Arthur Kessler had always been a private man, although his family disagreed about exactly when privacy had become an obsession. His daughter Laura thought it had grown worse after their mother, Helen, died six years earlier. Her brother Michael disagreed. Their father had always been that way, he said; their mother had simply understood him better than the rest of them did. At seventy-eight, Arthur's habits were deeply ingrained, and he regarded his desire for privacy not as an eccentricity but as something entirely reasonable. He was not ...

26 likes 12 comments 12
Read story

Four Skittles

Shortlisted for Weekly Contest #372 ⭐️

CW: Disordered eating, calorie restriction Monica hits end on her watch at the exact moment it changes from 3.49 to 3.5 miles and scrolls down her workout summary, still standing at the end of the driveway. Duration: 59:09 Energy burned: 264 calories Distance: 3.5 miles Steps: 8,249 Average pace: 16:54. Her best this week! Average heart rate: 106bpm Tomorrow, she thinks, it is time to upgrade from the 12-lb vest to 15 lbs! When she unlocks the front door it is 9:42 a.m. — and her older two kids aren't downstairs yet. She breathes in throug...

24 likes 12 comments 12
Read story

Nobody Knocks Once

Weekly Contest #372

Do not answer one knock. That was the rule. Mara walked through the town square on her way home from shopping. A few kids played a game on the side of the road in front of her. She stopped to tell them to go home because of the storm, and she watched them play a game she had never seen before. One child knocked three times. They all said, “Who’s there?” “Why, it is I, Charles!” one boy said. They giggled. A second child knocked twice on the wooden box. They laughed again. The final child raised one finger and knocked once. Nearly all went si...

24 likes 3 comments 3
Read story

Me Neither

Weekly Contest #372

At 1:43 in the morning, Alison checked where her daughter was. She did this without putting on her glasses, which made the map bloom softly around the edges: France was a pale shape beneath her thumb, roads dissolving into one another, town names requiring more commitment than she was willing to give them. The blue dot was still in Lyon. Good. She put the phone facedown on the bedside table. Beside her, Neil made the small clicking sound at the back of his throat that had accompanied twenty-three years of marriage and, according to him, did...

22 likes 14 comments 14
Read story

Beneath the Skin

Weekly Contest #372

Fatal accidents/roadkill Tess couldn’t sleep. There it was again. Scritch-scratch, scritch-scratch… She pressed her fingers into her ears and dragged the eiderdown over her head, but the sound only sharpened in the dark. Above her, something moved across the ceiling. Slow at first. Then urgent. She knew they were up there. Worse, she could smell them. When the scratching stopped, the silence was enormous. Tess held her breath. ‘What were they up to now?’ Something scraped overhead, heavy, and deliberate, as if something solid was being drag...

22 likes 22 comments 22
Read story

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