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Discover weekly, the best short stories

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

150+ Lgbtq+ Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. Discover incredible works of queer fiction right here, on this page of fresh new LGBTQ+ stories.

Lgbtq+ Short Stories – Page 2 of 10

The Castle Under the Stars

Jarred Stephen Meek

Weekly Contest #354

A drop of water pelting my nose wakes me to another monotonous day. Crisp spring air carries notes of last night’s rainfall. If there’s ever a reprieve from the rain, it’s for a brief window in the wee hours of the morning. The hours I usually prefer to spend sleeping. Chirps and caws bounce off brick walls like ping-pong balls. Sunlight beams through the old frosted glass, casting a scene of a bustling world of shadows, colours, and light refraction.My naked toes and my button nose tingle from drafts of cold air. I run warm, so I like to le...

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Promises Kept

Kevin Lind

Weekly Contest #354

It was a Tuesday evening when the wind stopped blowing. It hadn't stopped for nine straight days, scouring everything it touched with dark sand. For nine days, James had been stuffing wet rags under doors and into windowsills to keep the sand from penetrating. For nine days, his mother had been coughing in the back bedroom. Finally, all at once, the wind stopped, like a clock that had been wound down. James went out onto the porch to see what remained of his land. He had expected the air to smell of dust, but it smelled clear and clean. Gri...

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Carved

Weekly Contest #353

You follow your toddlers through the woods behind your home, just as you remember your own mother doing with you a very short twenty-something years ago. At the time, the woods seemed to be full of magic. Trees that felt so tall, they cloaked the sky with their leaves, a snapping branch in the distance that could mean friend or foe — you were destined to find out either way, of course, — and a brook babbling with no distinct start or end, so much so that it let your childhood imagination decide it had to start or end somewhere absolutely rem...

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End of Bouncy Pink Life

Will Willoughby

Weekly Contest #352

End of Bouncy Pink Life By Will Willoughby Once upon a time, two bouncy boy toys lived a wonderful life on the shady porch of a sunny house facing a sunset cove on the Pacific Ocean. They were not everyday toys like a Tonka truck, a Lego set, a Barbie doll, or a wooden Pinocchio. Instead, they were special—carved from luxurious cherry wood, sanded, shaped, and then meticulously hand-painted in a small mountain town in a faraway land. Each toy had a hook and a long, springy wire attached—like a mini Slinky—that gave them bounce. Frederick, ...

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Just us three

Weekly Contest #352

I was near the water’s edge once again, my favorite place to be. It didn’t matter which city or state I was in. As long as I could hear the waves crashing on shore, and see the water sliding on the sand towards me, and then recede to fold back into itself again, I felt at peace.To my left, a man joyfully played with his golden retriever, tossing a ball into the water and letting the dog retrieve it. To my right, a little further from the ocean waves, a family was seated in beach chairs and gathered around a large bonfire. It made me ache for...

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Green eyes

David Poslad

Weekly Contest #352

Frozen, I muster Mason’s face, its lower half hidden behind a thick layer of lead, where his helmet intended to protect his dear life. Only that this helmet has just terribly failed. „Darren, what happened?“, the others‘ voices call, but my gaze stays locked on Maosn’s beauty, now gone to eternity. Still I remember the day we first shook hands in combat, one of the last lessons of our ultimate year. Me being a small lonely boy never ready to dive into a fight, but there he was: Pretty Mason, offering me his hand as if asking me to dance not...

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An Unfamiliar Winter

Kevin Lind

Weekly Contest #352

“You need to listen.” Elias whispered against the rotting timber of the doorway. Dmitri had placed him there to escape the pressing crowds in the street and the cold of the winter wind. “Find a paper, a decree, a church bulletin… Anything with a date on it!” His breath plumed grey against the air. Dmitri nodded as his eyes scanned the street with a predator-like focus. “I see a place,” he said. “There’s ink and vellum… perhaps a scribe can be found there.” “Go,” Elias said. “I’ll wait.” “Stay back against the door, and pull your hood...

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Seasons out of time

Weekly Contest #351

Goodbye to YouThe words came to Eli Carter as if from another life.He sat alone in the dim hush of his childhood bedroom, with the words, Goodbye to you, my little one... in a notebook open on his knees, a pen suspended above the page. The room had changed only in the small, painful ways time allows. The trophies still stood on the shelf, dulled by dust. The walls still held the faded outlines of posters long surrendered to sun and age. Outside the window, spring had returned with its usual indifference, filling the branches with birdsong a...

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Confusion's Nephew

Story Time

Weekly Contest #351

Confusion couldn’t figure out how one was meant to skate at Rockefeller Center. She didn’t know where to rent the skates. Where the ticket booth was. She didn’t know how long one could skate, or if time limits even existed. She looked down at her nephew, and he yawned. He was too sleepy for ice skating anyway, she decided, and she asked him if he’d like to get some dinner and then go back to the hotel. He agreed, because he was an agreeable child. Confusion had begun to wonder if her nephew might be Agreeable, but her sister had warned her a...

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Magical Chaos of a Newbie Witch

Terra Rayne

Weekly Contest #350

“Well, this could have gone better,” Clark wheezed out, having fallen to his knees on the floor.I was frozen, petrified, and confused as shit. All I know is that the cat I’ve had for three years is now standing in front of me as a fully grown and very naked man. If you had told me that my cat, whom I named Clark because I was stoned out of my mind when my mother handed him to me, would transform into a human being right before my eyes, I would have laughed. LAUGHED. So hard. But I can’t laugh. No, instead I flung the strange book with golden...

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The Vault

Joe Millward

Weekly Contest #350

The door beeped, and the catch unlocked. She swung a left, headed down the hallway, not stopping until she saw a familiarly unusual sight. A vault door, painted a soft lilac, left hanging open. “Tea?” Glen called out from behind, rattling around in the kitchen. His nest of forms and documents in the two-by-two cell was empty. A nosier person might have taken a peek, but Stephanie was here for her own shit. “Sugar, no milk?” “Milk no sugar.” Stephanie corrected. The closer to liquid caramel the better really, but she’d panicked in her firs...

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For The Ages

Opal St. Gerald

Weekly Contest #350

“Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome back to the Connor Pratt Show! I’m your host, Connor Pratt, and joining us here tonight are two very special guests—one a complete unknown making his grand debut at this year’s awards season and the other a living legend with one of the most extensive filmographies in Hollywood history, starring in ‘The Baroness in Barcelona,’ Mister Ace Hart and Little Miss Gracie Belleview!” The audience roared, and that was their cue. Grace, holding Ace’s hand, guided him gently onstage, using her free hand to wave elegantly...

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Vino, Verdad, y Vergüenza - Wine, Truth, and Shame

Kevin Lind

Weekly Contest #350

The trouble began with the second bottle of Rioja. The four were seated at a wrought-iron table on the rooftop terrace. The air smelled of orange blossoms and jasmine. Below them, the old city of Córdoba spread out in a warm, amber sprawl, and the floodlit walls of the Mezquita rose above the rooflines like a lantern someone had left burning for a thousand years. Dr. Elias Larson was forty-one, a tenured professor at Sofia University where he taught Medieval Islamic History. He was the only man at the table, the only American, the only one ...

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by any other name

Dev A

Weekly Contest #350

“SHAPESHIFTER ON BOARD!” I screech, climbing down from the crow’s nest. “MONSTER! MONSTER ON BOARD!” It’s the dead of night aboard the Roger’s Revenge. The crew begins scrambling around, lighting lanterns and revealing women in nightclothes. “What’re you going on about, Penelope?” “Monster?! Where?!” “I need my beauty sleep, dammit.” A murmuring crowd begins to gather on deck after all thirty women fully wake up and muster. First Mate Tillie pushes her way into the front, her short black hair sticking up wildly. She has a hand on the h...

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Wolves

Weekly Contest #349

CW: Implied violence, moral distress Today is April 31: Liberation Day. Hurrah. The pong my armpits emit rivals the reek of the mounds of black seaweed baking in the sun. My vest sticks to my skin, my underpants are riding up, chafing every step I take. I’m dying to rip off my protective suit and let my body breathe. To get off the island of Texel. Go home. Experience some civilisation. Take a bath.Relief is due tomorrow, May 2 – Remembrance Day.‘Who knew a sea could turn into a desert so fast?’ Mette says.‘I guess you won’t be seeing your f...

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