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

150+ Fiction Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. If you’re looking for the best fiction short stories to read online, we’ve got you covered. Wide-ranging and ever-curious, these free short stories will meet your reading needs.

Fiction Short Stories – Page 10 of 10

Beneath the Obsidian

Submitted to Contest #331

The first crack appears where nothing has cracked in millennia. I feel it before it happens. Planets always do. A simple line. A simple reminder. Before you ask—yes, planets can break. I am Aetheris, a world accustomed to silence, stillness, control. Which is why the fracture shimmering across my obsidian plateau feels wrong in a way only I can understand. The crack glints across my skin, a thin silver incision cutting the darkness with surgical precision. It shouldn’t exist. Not here. Not in the place I perfected into stillness. Days don’t ...

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The Safe

Submitted to Contest #331

The Safe “Just don’t touch it, Candace.” I stare at him, expressionless. The pitch of his voice, the tremor of his hands, the way he just refused to meet my eyes. Where was my husband? I don’t say a word, but he reads me like a book. “Sorry, honey. Sorry – It’s just… “ He sighs, puts his hands in his pockets, takes them out again. “I just need you to stay out of this. Promise me. Please.” This time, he looks at me for five short seconds, but I’m the one who looks away first. “Mhmm.” It comes out softly. I can see the relief in his eyes as...

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The Tale of Red Ford

Submitted to Contest #331

Snow hammered the walls of Hearthwatch Fort hard enough to fill the arrow slits.Korax sat close to the long central fire, palms stretched toward the heat, watching sparks rise into the rafters. The hall smelled of smoke, wet wool, and a faint tang of orcish tallow from the other side of the hearth. Humans and orcs both hunched over bowls, shoulders formed in the same exhausted curve, their respective armor stacked against the far wall in untidy rows.Outside, the winter wind howled. Inside, someone was telling a story.“—and then Sir Edric spu...

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In Bed as Winter Takes Hold

Submitted to Contest #331

IN BED AS WINTER TAKES HOLDHe slept on the left hand side of the bed as he had done with all his girlfriends. He was restless; he could not throw off the memory of the performance they had attended. It wasn’t the music as much as the story. He couldn’t leave it be, and the more he realised that the more concerned and restless he became. Pauline was sleeping. She too seemed a little uneasy. She was snoring more loudly than usual and it was less regular, almost musical in its cadences. He felt trapped though he didn’t know why. There was nothi...

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Gaslight Contest

Submitted to Contest #331

Callie was on the sofa when Phil walked through the door.“What the hell is that?” he said.A small brown and white dog sat on her lap. A wire kennel rested on the floor, its door open. The pup looked at Phil with what appeared to be a frown.“What do you mean, what’s that. It’s a Cavalier King Charles spaniel, of course. Don’t you even know what they sold you?”“Who sold me? I didn’t buy anything.”“Oh, come on. Where else did Beauregard come from? You like that name? Beauregard?”“So you’re telling me you just came home from work and this animal...

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You Would Have Loved it Here

Submitted to Contest #331

When I was younger, I would have this recurring dream. It started in the courtyard. Standing from a distance, I would see my mother and father under the shade of the gazebo, and my brother running about in the garden. I'd hold my hand up in the air to greet them. They all would turn to me at the same time and stop in their tracks, faces turning pale. As if they had seen a ghost.Then the scene would shift. Suddenly I was in a forest, trudging through deep layers of snow. I don't think I'd ever really seen snow before, but I imagined this must...

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First Snow

Winner of Contest #331 🏆

The first snow began in the small hours, noiseless, without ceremony. By the time Ruth woke, the world at the window had turned to winter. The sky pressed low over the mountain bowl, a porcelain hush of blue shadows. She took her time to sit up. Her joints felt the weather before she did. A dull ache in her knees and an old pain in her collarbone reminded her of a fall on ice.The window fogged with her breath as she leaned close. Below the cabin, the slope dropped away into fir and aspen, their trunks lifting out of the new snow. The creek i...

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Nothing freezes faster than trust

Submitted to Contest #331

Nothing Freezes Faster Than TrustFrozen to the bone, he walks briskly from the gym toward home. The falling snow tickles his collar and crackles beneath his shoes. David looks forward to curling up with Olivia by the fireplace, a good glass of wine within reach, wrapped in her sparkling enthusiasm. The thought alone warms him straight through the cutting wind.He crosses the frozen pond and slips as he steps from the ice onto the snow-covered grass. “Fucking ice,” he mutters to himself. Just as he’s about to get up, he sees something black ly...

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Did the reward compensate for the death of my friends?

Submitted to Contest #331

CW: Contains themes and/or references to wartime violence, death, and loss Did the reward compensate for the death of my friends?The door bell rang. I shouted to my wife. “ I will get it.” I opened the door and there stood a British army Major and his aide-de-camp both in full uniform.“ I trust we have come to the right address. Are you the brother of Captain Hockins and am I addressing Anthony Hockins? ”“Yes.”He then asked if they could come in.“Yes, of course.”“We have come to tell you your brother died in Norway two weeks ago on active du...

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The Secret Samaritan

Submitted to Contest #331

Ben trudged down the hallway and paused by the loungeroom door, ears attuned to his boys, feeling every bit of his thirty-eight years. He peered around the doorframe to watch. Lying on his stomach, eleven-year-old Harvey sprawled on the floor in his pyjamas, note pad in hand, chewing the end of his pencil. “Whatcha doin’?” asked three-year-old Curtis, also in his pyjamas. “Thinking about what I might get for Christmas. What are you doing?” asked Harvey in return. “I just came in to see the tree,” Curtis whispered. “The decorations are prett...

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Tall Tales or ChatGPT

Submitted to Contest #331

As far as I’ve seen, nothing good ever comes from a lurch on the line.It’s hard to tell what causes it, sometimes we run the line out two miles. Usually its a whale, they eat fish off the hook nice and careful, but sometimes their tailfins get wrapped up in a mess.“Please tell me Uncle. Why are you back before Christmas?” Jim asked for the dozenth time, he was a curious and bright hearted boy.“It was a good haul is all.” Black cod season runs from October through February in Alaska, I was on the couch early for the year.Yes, we did this a lo...

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Unexpected Treasure

Submitted to Contest #331

CW: Trauma, grief, gore Sitting at the window watching the snow fall, all the memories begin to come back. Usually, I jump up and find something to do to keep them at bay but today, the house is quiet. The chores are done. There is nothing to do but sit and watch, and so I do. It was the same type of fluffy snow that made you feel as if you are in a dream. As if the snow globe had been shaken and everything was falling into its perfect place.I remember long ago when I was not the one perched in this window watching the snow but was hunched o...

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Hello and Goodbye

Submitted to Contest #331

*Note-this piece contains mentions of sex and has some curse words. Salty tears carved canyons on her cheeks. Short, black whiskers hesitantly sniffed at her face. Cesar’s canine nose sniffed and gently licked a tear that almost escaped over the crest of her chin. Where had things gone so wrong? Sydney glanced around the room, remembering the artifacts that represented two lives coming together. The rickety mirror he rescued from the trash – sans the mirror- had clashed with the simple, modern bedroom. Tony and Sydney had been dating fo...

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Ice and Absolution

Submitted to Contest #331

By the time Cormac Dunne found Rick Butler’s street, the desert snow was coming in sideways—fine as dust, mean as gravel. It needled the windshield, blurred porch lights into halos, and made the subdivision feel half-remembered from another life: quiet, watchful, waiting to see who came through.He eased the truck to the curb, engine ticking in its nervous cool-down. In the shell behind him rode three paintings wrapped in foam and tape—cargo he couldn’t deliver and couldn’t abandon. Some restless part of him had finally let him turn off the i...

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Beneath the Silent Glacier

Submitted to Contest #331

The outpost rose from the ice like a cluster of metal bones, half-buried in wind-carved drifts. It sat on the western edge of a nameless Arctic island, a point on the map that might as well not exist. The crew called it Frostbite Station—mostly as a bitter joke. Several squat buildings, made of corrugated steel bristling with frostbitten bolts, clung to a foundation of ancient blue ice. Every winter storm rattled the walls so violently that the men often wondered if steel could endure the cold at all. The latest storm had passed two days ear...

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RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

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