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Discover weekly, the best short stories

Looking for a steady supply of contemporary short stories? Every week thousands of writers submit stories to our writing contest.

150+ Contemporary Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. All the newest modern day stories to thrill and inspire, all in one place.

Contemporary Short Stories – Page 10 of 10

Colossus

Nana Lemon

Weekly Contest #343

Like sirens followed by an electronic metal sound the song begins. I’m standing in the kitchen. Headset over the ears, knife in hand, and I move along with the rhythm of the song. I’m wearing no apron because I feel daring today. The curry cubes are ready. So is the meat, the onion and the potatoes. Everything prepared. Neatly arranged in bowls and plates in my messy kitchen. There is something driving me to start cutting, but I want to enjoy the music, so I wait. My head bobs in the rhythm and the cymbals are joining sirens.The last carrot ...

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The Length of a Breath

Weekly Contest #343

At 08:42 on a Tuesday morning, Mara stood at the pedestrian crossing outside Greycourt Station, holding a paper cup of coffee she had not yet tasted. The day was ordinary in the way that only certain days are, sky the colour of a polished spoon, air sharp enough to wake the bones, commuters arranged along the kerb like punctuation marks waiting for a sentence to resume.The red man glowed. Cars idled. A cyclist balanced, foot on pedal, humming tunelessly. Somewhere behind Mara, a suitcase wheel ticked over a crack in the pavement with the pat...

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Lanterns at Low Tide

Weekly Contest #343

The band had just found its groove, fiddles and accordion weaving together like ribbons caught on the same gust of wind, when the church bells stopped mid-peal.Not gradually, not with the gentle faltering of tired hands, but all at once, as though someone had seized the sound and clenched.The music stumbled on for a few bewildered seconds. The bunting continued to flutter between lampposts. The May Festival carried on being precisely what it always was: a cheerful sprawl of jam stalls, homemade cakes, flower crowns, children streaked with fa...

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A Moment Without a Word

Angela Di

Weekly Contest #342

They’d met in college. Friends of friends of more friends. Years later, when reflecting back on how they met while at dinner with people they hadn’t met yet, they would agree that the actual friend who introduced them was Amy. But the one who went on to study some kind of bacteria at the bottom of the ocean, not the one who decided to follow a band one summer and was now somewhere in the Midwest with a family and lots of shirts with slogans she liked to try to sell on social media. Today wasn’t that dinner date. That wasn’t for years to co...

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The House Remembers

Niveadita Razdan

Weekly Contest #342

Two people live in a house that's too quiet.Watch them move through it in the morning. See how they both step over the third stair. The one that creaks.One goes first. Steps over.The other follows. Steps over the same place.They don't discuss this. They never have.There's no one asleep upstairs.There hasn't been anyone asleep upstairs in years.But they both step over it anyway. Careful. Automatic.Their bodies remember when noise mattered.When 6 AM meant stealth. When every sound could wake someone who'd just fallen back asleep after the 4 AM...

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Daylight

Sean Packard

Weekly Contest #342

Warning: memories of a sibling's suicide and child miscarriage. I need an opening line; she's not a girl to approach with an empty mind. She's by herself, sipping at the bar. I wonder what she's doing. Grappling with an inner monologue, like me? The bartender splashes an old fashioned with bitters and the barback restocks tequila bottles on the posterior wall. The wall is backlit with warm LED strips, the top shelf especially bright, haloed, small-batch Kentucky bourbons and limited-edition Japanese single malts glowing in sin. She looks far...

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Almost Enough

Erian Lin Grant

Weekly Contest #342

For three weeks, the dream had been coming back. It kept resurfacing at the worst possible moments. Like today — when her boss asked for advice. A single word — “unclear” — was enough to pull it back. She missed his question entirely and stood there, frozen, aware of how foolish she must have looked.Julia didn’t know whether it was a premonition, a warning, or just a sign of burnout.She came home after her shift, exhausted. The tension at work had been worse than usual today, but still bearable. Yet one question had refused to let her mind r...

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Four Minutes and Thirty-Seven Seconds in the Life of Roland Tate

Alev Gefen

Weekly Contest #343

The moment Roland Tate realized he had accidentally replied all to the entire company was 9:52 and fourteen seconds on a Tuesday morning in March.He knew the exact time because he was looking at the clock in the corner of his screen, while hitting send, the way you look at a traffic light right as it turns yellow—too late to stop, too early to pretend you didn't see it.The email had been intended for his coworker. It read, Sierra—thoughts on Glen's presentation? I thought the slide about Q3 projections was genuinely the saddest thing I've ev...

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My Pumpkin

Priscilla Ndana

Weekly Contest #342

Content warning: grief, family loss, emotional trauma I have met few individuals that spark that unmistakable, blood-rushing pang in my chest. That individual who brings out a side of you that you didn’t know was there. That feeling where you think ‘How is so-and-so right now?’ And ‘I hope you get hit with a brick!’ There was that kid in primary school who would step on the backs of my shoes during lineup, the sixth form tutor who marked me down for using a pencil she didn’t like, and the man at the local chicken and chip shop that once snee...

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The Coniff Experiment

George Georgerfrost@gmail.com

Weekly Contest #343

Dr. Jonas Coniff was the department head of the Biology Department at Yale University where once been a contender for a Nobel Prize for his work on genetic research. Publishing several articles in The New England Journal of Science and Medicine, Jonas had earned the respect of his peers and students. His fame did not come without his critics however since he was known as a persnickety curmudgeon who lived alone in his apartment overlooking the Quinnipiac River in Fair Haven. It was a scenic view, but a solitary one at that. No one really kn...

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Temperature Drop

Nana Lemon

Weekly Contest #342

8 °CAs usual he had to first pull the door, then turn the key. When he could hear the light metal clicking noise, he would be able to push the door open. He switched on the light in the corridor. Everything was quiet when Simon opened the door to the flat. His father had said that he would be home for lunch, but the lights in all other rooms were switched off and there was no smell of cooked food in the air. Looking at the shoe shelf his parents’ shoes were missing as were Lena’s and Paula’s shoes.There might be issues with the train. Or may...

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Killer Therapist

Stephen Schester

Weekly Contest #342

This Friday is a Friday that changes Angelina’s life forever. Because this Friday, she’s given a second chance to keep fighting for her marriage, given by a man who’s hired to kill her. Angelina pulls into her driveway, gets out with her Publix grocery bags, and walks towards her front door. A BMW is parked not too far down the road. No one’s in it and sticks out like a sore thumb. You see, her house is the only house on this road. A gorgeous house just for one now.Angelina opens the front door, slips off her outside shoes, and makes her way...

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The Party Circuit

Maggie Grainger

Weekly Contest #342

This wasn’t how I envisioned our long overdue reunion–butt up with dozens of screaming four-year-olds jumping on my back–but life, especially my life these days, can be a cruel prankster. My son, Hank, scampers off deep into the play structure with his motley crew of buddies, leaving me and his younger sister, Maeve, to fend for ourselves in another grimy, snot-infested ball pit – my new weekend norm. There’s nothing in the Big Book of Motherhood about preparing yourself mentally and physically for the God-awful number of children’s birthday...

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The Man in the Moonlight

Mae Siu-Wai Stroshane

Weekly Contest #343

One steamy night in July, a nurse and her daughter took a dip in their local pond, not expecting to find anything new and strange. They were wrong.A car honked. Stefanie shifted gears and reflected that changing gears described what she and Mai would have to go through now. It had been hard to say good-by to Mai three weeks ago, but now Stefanie could feel distance between them. "Sweetie, Cornwall Pond is practically in our back yard. Let’s take a quick dip and get some pizza after.”They left the highway and headed to the pond, past a rus...

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Relatively Odd

Weekly Contest #342

“Relatively Odd”Fully clothed, life-size mannequins aren’t what you’d expect to see in someone’s home. A department store, sure, but not in a home, not like this. Maria was holding her cellphone when she greeted me at the front door and asked me to wait for a moment while she finished her call. When she walked away, I waited a few seconds then stepped into the living room. I didn’t think I’d have to compete with plastic people for a place to sit. All I could do was stand there in the middle of the weirdness and wait for her to return. Fortun...

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