Menu

Menu
Prompts
Contests
Stories
Blog
Directory
Contests
Magazine
FAQ

Begin with laughter and end with silence (or the other way around).

Posted in Short Story on Oct 24, 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?

✍️ 92 stories

RISUS

Submitted to Contest #326

The alley was silent. Rain fell in thick sheets, a persistent, patient drum on puddles and metal alike. Each droplet fractured the neon towers into a thousand prisms: cobalt blue from flickering holo-ads, crimson from warning beacons, gold from streetlights reflected in the wet asphalt. Broken glass and discarded circuits littered the ground, glinting like dying stars. The scent of ozone mingled with wet concrete, metallic tangs hinting at machines long abandoned or scavenged beyond recognition.Jace Verin moved cautiously. His boots pressed ...

26 likes 15 comments 15
Read story

A Six Out Of Ten

Submitted to Contest #326

CW: Mental health, bullying Today, when my granddaughter returns from school, she is silent, the usual laughter absent. I think I can guess the reason. “Tell me a story – about when you were my age,” she says, her voice quiet. So I tell her a story– a small window into the 1980’s, when beauty and cruelty often shared the same face.*** I hope Tess Hartless doesn’t return from whatever has kept her away.Forever wouldn’t be too long. A high-pitched thrum in my head.A pulse fuelled by dread.My choices are limited.Essentially – fight or flight. F...

26 likes 15 comments 15
Read story

The Giggle Room

Submitted to Contest #326

Ha-ha-ha, someone snorts, and the room erupts. “YES! There it is!” chirps the facilitator, a woman with a headset mic and a name tag that reads SUNNY in bubble letters. “Follow the joy! Let your bodies remember how to laugh!” Forty of us in a windowless conference suite clap on the off-beat like schoolchildren. We’re here because HR said “Team Renewal Day” and the calendar invite said “Mandatory.” I work in Risk Analytics, which means I’m professionally suspicious of joy. I’m also hungover from the networking drinks I didn’t want to attend...

22 likes 14 comments 14
Read story

The morning that lied about its intentions.

Submitted to Contest #326

The sound coming from Sarah's mouth wasn't crying.It should have been. After a day like this—after everything—crying would have made sense. Screaming would have made sense. Silence would have made sense.But this sound, this broken-glass laugh that wouldn't stop, was something else entirely.She collapsed on the curb across the street from her apartment building, fire trucks idling everywhere, and laughed until her ribs burned. Each breath dragged across her throat like sandpaper. Her stomach cramped. She couldn't stop.The firefighters kept lo...

20 likes 11 comments 11
Read story

Silence Is Golden

Submitted to Contest #326

Silence is Golden Nellie-Rae hustled as quickly as she could away from the grip of her disgusting smelly neighbor, Otis Crawford. Ducking under cover of the woods before slowing to take a breath, she continued to clutch two heavy bags of deer meat she managed to carve off the carcass of the buck she broad-headed on her property before the injured animal crossed the boundary line and died. If Otis's son, Cody, hadn't interrupted him, the greedy man would have taken a piece of her hide for claiming her own game. Nervous energy made her chuckle...

20 likes 20 comments 20
Read story

Gasoline. Sugar.

Submitted to Contest #326

“None of this is real. … the people … Me.” — Moon Knight, vol. 8, no. 1 (2016) He told himself five minutes on stage wouldn’t kill him. Just five minutes without thinking of her. Laughter hit him before the lights did. A low roll from the front row, half polite, half real. Colin Merritt gripped the mic stand, sweat slick on his knuckles, the metal warm under the old lighting rigs from ‘82. “I told my therapist I finally feel seen,” he said. “She said, ‘That’s because you won’t leave my office.’” The crowd laughed again — louder, more comfort...

19 likes 7 comments 7
Read story

The Trumpet and Flame

Submitted to Contest #326

A gale of laughter went racing up the high street - mirth and mania all in one - the sound of it catching, lighting, gas to flame. Anneka and her friend Zara, red mouths burning under amber lights, a neon trumpet blazing yellow above them, an ambulance flashing its blue-white siren in the opposite direction, the core of the heat. A bouncer flinched, poor man, standing guard at the pub to which they stumbled - The Trumpet and Flame. ‘You're late, ladies.’ He barred the way. ‘Show’s almost starting.’ ‘Give over, Umar, it's my birthday,’ said A...

18 likes 5 comments 5
Read story

Primo

Submitted to Contest #326

“You quiet today, man.” “Not quiet. Just not talking.” “Exactly, man, too quiet.” “I can talk Pri, just nothin’ to say.” “You wanna drive?” “You want me to drive?” “Nah man, forget it.” “I mean, I can drive.” “Nah, I said forget it, let’s go. Get this over with. I just need to change the seat and mirrors from your midget settings. Gimme a minute.” “‘Gimme a minute.’ I’m not going anywhere, my midget ass. Stop trying to piss me off, sayin’ things like that.” “Like what?” “Oh fuck off.” “Alright. Are you ready, man?” “...

16 likes 8 comments 8
Read story

Hi, I'm Bloom

Submitted to Contest #326

Contains mildly coarse language.“Please lock up your cheese graters and broom handles,” she said. “I need you alive till I get paid.”Laughter filled the room.She wanted them laughing before she jumped in their shit.Dr. Iris Bloom leaned back and smiled; nervous chuckles floated through her office like cheap perfume. The couple was about to reveal the rot in their marriage; she needed them to be loose.Humor was her drug of choice.She knew that better than anyone.Her mother was a ghost with a job - always away, always busy, always forgetting t...

16 likes 7 comments 7
Read story

The Hunger

Submitted to Contest #326

Every hundred million years or so, life starts over. A profound silence fell over Earth’s once thriving cities, broken only by the echo of the dying in this most recent mass extinction. Forty million years too early. It came not by climate change, as had been typical since life began, but in the form of an unknown virus which spread faster, more violently, than it could hope to be controlled. A little girl, no older than ten, wandered the streets of what was formerly the most populated city in the United States’ Pacific Northwest. The ocean ...

15 likes 3 comments 3
Read story

Losing Control

Submitted to Contest #326

I remember the first time I shat myself in public…as an adult. It was shocking how little forewarning I had. It was 3 years ago, so that would have put me at 32. It was a first date with someone I’d met online. We chose a fancy little pub I’d never been to before, “The Fox and Barrel”, if memory serves. As nervous as I was, I still felt like Cheryl was actually enjoying my company. She had silken brown hair in a neat bob, wore a slim fitting black dress very well, and had a lovely laugh.We’d had a couple of drinks already and were sharing a ...

15 likes 9 comments 9
Read story

Familiar Quiet and Unknown Sound

Submitted to Contest #326

Silence is never absolute. There are always sounds. The creak of a house. The rattle of the wind. The rustle of a leaf. We simply never assign any note to the noises that are our daily companions. The mind accepts them as normal, as safe, and allows us to comfortably ignore them. Such was my home, for years. Surrounded by the familiar, I would snuggle down into my evenings, hot mug in hand and with a woollen blanket’s embrace. Alone, I would accept the move and sway of my little world and pay it no mind. Until one night. The evening where fo...

15 likes 12 comments 12
Read story

Invitation Only

Submitted to Contest #326

Charlie heard the giggle on the other side of the door just as he was about to ring the doorbell. Someone cut the laughter off with a harsh “shh!” and there was the shuffle of feet.Charlie sighed. He hated surprise parties. When Mitchell had invited him over for a quiet game night, Charlie had been nervous and pleased. He didn’t make friends easily, but Mitchell had been jovial and breezy since Charlie’s first day at work two weeks ago.Since he'd never mentioned that his birthday was this month, he had hoped he was in the clear.The windows w...

13 likes 4 comments 4
Read story

Wondering bird

Submitted to Contest #326

And to restrict the spirit is to recall an end. Lorena was sure those were the words she remembered from her last dream. She has no idea who said it, not even why. They existed on the border between the nightmares and insomnia. Only she could look at her ceiling in complete silence as the time was passing leaving her no choice but to get up.Opening the window, the cold breeze purified the room, leaving fresh air inside. This part of New England was covered in show in this part of the year, so she wondered why was then late. The person not us...

13 likes 5 comments 5
Read story

The Doom of Embry

Submitted to Contest #326

CW: Gore, body horror Mrs. Chathamford’s salon was filled with laughter and mirth, the bright rays of sunshine warming Embry’s ladies as they discussed the events of the past week. Daphne Harris, and her sister Araminta had wanted to be invited to this exclusive event ever since they turned fourteen. Now, that they were on the cusp of sixteen and to be introduced at the town’s masque tonight, Mrs. Chathamford invited them so her circle could inspect them. She nodded at Daphne, but spoke little. To her twin, the ladies hemmed and hawed, as Ar...

13 likes 5 comments 5
Read story

🌟 Similar prompts

Write about a person or community that mistakes cruelty for care (or the other way around).

Dramatic – 37 stories

Let a small act of kindness unintentionally trigger chaos or destruction.

Dramatic – 53 stories

Write about someone who misreads social cues, with escalating consequences.

Short Story – 29 stories

Write a story with the goal of scaring your reader.

Short Story – 71 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