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Discover weekly, the best short stories

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

150+ Inspirational Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. From tales of the miraculous to stories of extraordinary people overcoming incredible odds, you’ll always find something uplifting in our collection of inspirational short stories.

Inspirational Short Stories – Page 2 of 10

I Remember the Wallet

Marlene Samuels

Weekly Contest #354

I Remember the Wallet When my brother Jake and I were kids—twelve and eight, respectively—we lived in one of Montreal’s poor immigrant sectors. We’d been ice-skating at Beaver Lake at the top of Mount Royal when we found a wallet containing five-hundred dollars. It was a veritable fortune to us, but especially so in the 1950’s.We gave Dad the wallet the minute we got home. Inside it, he found an identification card of a man who was named Herman Schultz. “So much money this is. We should better call him right away! Probably he is worrying hi...

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From the Front lines to the Front Porch: Memoir of a Matriarchal Soldier

Ne Kwan Perkins

Weekly Contest #354

The dirt of Fort Bragg is a jealous thing; it stains the soul with a rusted, iron-bound persistence that thirty-five years of rhythmic "left-right-left" cannot shake. My journey began in the crucible of the Corps—a foundation of tempered steel that carried me through the humid bayous of the Louisiana Guard and the steadfast, silent ranks of the Army Reserve. For three and a half decades, my pulse was regulated by the ticking clock of the standard and the rigid, uncompromising geometry of the formation. From the heavy, paternal mantle of the ...

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Old Friend

Weekly Contest #354

That smile, genuine and innocent, it matches the sparkle in the light brown eyes with a silent tear resting on her edges. A light touch on the arm to enhance the moment of being around the people you love. I remember it now. For so long I've been glitched to the system, I forgot how to feel and show it at the same time. Is this Deja vu or the same story since the very beginning. How did I get here?4:00 couldn't have come faster. All I wanted to do was be in the water. Have the warm sand between my toes, green mountains behind me and the endl...

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The Last Artist

Matthew Deng

Weekly Contest #353

There was once an artist named Rade Myner. He was an artist that knew how to do a niche style of art known as Watercrafting. The art revolved around using water to make unique paintings and sculptures and he enjoyed what he did. With the art form, he was able to craft numerous unique sculptures and paintings that not only looked beautiful but also moved when they were done. One of his most famous works of art was known as the Highsurfer which was a sculpture that he crafted about ten years earlier that not only looked uncannil...

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FAT

BRUCE MARTIN

Weekly Contest #354

Maribel Diaphanousky did not merely enjoy food. She orchestrated it. Her kitchen functioned less like a room and more like a bustling airport, with snacks taking off and landing at all hours. The toaster worked overtime. The fridge lightbulb had been replaced at least twice during the past year, although the new LED bulb was expected to have a longer lifespan. Mara believed in balanced meals. For example, if she had a cheeseburger in one hand, she made sure to hold a milkshake in the other. Symmetry mattered. Breakfast was a philosophical ex...

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A Picture Paints A Thousand Words

Jeff Sutton

Weekly Contest #354

I am looking at a beautiful painting in the gallery. The painting I am looking at in the gallery is beautiful. I am in the gallery. I am looking at a painting. It is beautiful.I’m sorry, but those words don’t even begin to do it justice. When I first saw the picture, some hours ago, I was so stunned by its beauty that I had to sit down and stare at it with my mouth open in awe!How can somebody create on canvas the feel, the sensation, the reality of silk, and yet next to it using the same substances create the texture of velvet, of skin, of ...

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I Cried the Day Superman Died

Joe Liotta

Weekly Contest #354

I remember. I remember I cried the day Superman died. Try as I might, I just couldn’t hold it in. I mean, I hadn’t even cried at my dad’s funeral and here I was, in my mid-twenties, and reading a comic book with tears streaming down my face. You see, I grew up with Superman. The old reruns of the TV show. The movies. The comic book. You name it. My first contact with him was when my father took me to the neighborhood candy store and bought me my first Superman comic book. Initially, the visit to the candy store was merely to ...

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How to rebuild the future

CJ Longres

Weekly Contest #353

The Earth remembers what we forget. The husks of humanity’s past glory, laid out all around for us to admire… And yet, we lack the ability to restore them, to even understand their inner workings. These were the thoughts the boy ruminated as he picked up another scrap of metal from among the branches of a bush. He run a hand over it and looked at the light shine on it as he wondered what it had been a part of. He lazily put it onto the pile of similar pieces he had gathered in his wheelbarrow and set off again. The sun was already setting as...

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Mama's Secret

Priscilla Mafoua-Namy

Weekly Contest #353

Soft steps are heard in the garden, gingerly I hide. Looking from the bush, I see my mother. My love. Oh, how she is so sad. My initial motive to scare her is no use now as I emerge to make my presence known, "Mom, what is wrong?" I ask, stopping the innocent game.With a light glisten on her cheeks, she stares blankly before biting her lips. She knows her time is coming. I know her time is coming. We both know, but yet, is it selfish for me not to want her to go? "It's quite alright," she brushes my cheek with her bony hand before dropping i...

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Tree's feelings

Weekly Contest #353

They say we don’t have feelings. But they don’t even wanna grasp the idea of us enduring pain and experiencing happiness. Outer body happiness, estranged happiness. Their happiness. We meet each other every day, but most days humans don’t even aknowledge us. And on even worse days they do and they ruin us. Give us scars, cutting us for wood, for a material to make their beds, or worse to make something not useful. But part of us remains, a remnant of us, a physical memory that we existed. But we don’t die this way. We endure decades until we...

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The Brother Who Let Go

Georgia Papp

Weekly Contest #353

First, I have to tell you I am alive and I have two brothers. One Near-And-Beating Brother, who holds my hand beneath the damp, green and life-bearing soil. Whose hurts I feel and songs I hear vibrating in my veins. The other brother, the Far-Away Brother, has long ago let go of my hand.Although, in truth, the Near-And-Beating Brother is not singular but many, the etymology becomes complex and I fear to lose your interest. I think, perhaps, you would rather hear the story of the Far-Away Brother and the conflict that led to our separation.Th...

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The Seventh Sense

Weekly Contest #353

The Seventh Sense The screams were horrible. She had never even been able to watch crime shows on TV that depicted people hurting others. It was a type of horror, not just good vs bad. They were not for her. But she wasn’t watching TV. She was sitting in her sunroom that morning, planning the day’s thoughts and activities with her trusty coffee, when she heard it. She thought somebody was being tortured. She heard a flurry of activity down the hill on the northeast side of her house. And the screams. They were muted at first and then bec...

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Bottom Feeder

John K Adams

Weekly Contest #353

The tidepool where Ane Anemone lived was as beautiful and peaceful an environment as any anemone could imagine. It was her paradise. Cool, shimmering currents of water flowed over her friends and family. They thrived on the nutrition and oxygen it brought them. The other anemones living on the seabed admired Ane. Matriarch over generations, Ane was mother of them all.Being a Clownfish, Chloe was immune to Ane’s poisonous, stinging tentacles. She made daily rounds tending to Ane and her friends. In the spirit of a hairdresser grooming royalty...

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What I Remember

Katherine Howell

Weekly Contest #353

I was there when all of them first arrived. I had never felt so free. It was in all the curves of myself, wherever I flowed, whenever I wished. I was both wide and narrow, gushing and growing in the spring, and then narrowing and disappearing in the heat. I ran and skipped over rocks and stones and roots and mud, smoothing and tumbling over them with joy. They tickled my underbelly as I pressed over them, carrying them with me as far as I could to their different destinations if they asked. Nobody told me that I was too much or too little. T...

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The Forest Remembers

Annalise Lagerquist

Weekly Contest #353

Knowledge truly is a curse. My leaves shake and shiver in the wind as a plea to my mother. But she does not answer. She has not answered in hundreds of years. I used to believe that she would never leave, in times past when I believed myself to know everything there was to know. In truth, I knew nothing at all. Even now, I only know a fraction of what the earth holds. And as each day passes, I am only becoming more foolish with every piece of knowledge I obtain. As I understand now I will never know all there is to know. No amount of knowled...

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