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Discover weekly, the best short stories

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

Mystery Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. No need to go out hunting for clues — you’ve solved the puzzle of where to find the newest mystery short stories just by landing on this page.

Mystery Short Stories – Page 4

Precious Moments

L.L. Cruz

Weekly Contest #375

My wife left me 6 months ago. After 10 years of marriage, she deserted me. No note. No text message. Not even a smoke signal saying she was unhappy. All her possessions were gone. Her clothes, her jewelry, her beloved books, her collection of Precious Moments figurines that always disturbed me. Vanished, as if she had never lived in our house, as if she had never existed. She was obsessed with purchasing Precious Moments figurines for every season, every holiday, every birthday, every anniversary and proudly displayed her collection in the ...

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Three Bad Things

Keilyn W.

Weekly Contest #375

My mother believed death announced itself three times. Not because it was merciful, she said, but because people were stubborn. The first warning could be dismissed as coincidence. The second could be blamed on nerves. By the third, you were choosing not to understand. Simone and I grew up with dozens of her rules woven into ordinary life so tightly that I stopped noticing how strange they were until I left home. Never sweep beneath someone's feet unless you wanted them to remain unmarried. Never answer your name if you heard it called from ...

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A Run of Good Luck

Weekly Contest #375

Earl Edwards had reached the point where bad news no longer surprised him. It annoyed him. It pissed him off. Occasionally it made him want to put his fist through drywall or foot through a door, although he knew from experience that repairing drywall and interior hollow doors was more irritating than whatever had made him angry in the first place. But surprise required expectations. At 45, Earl had learned to stop having those. He stood in the middle of his garage in Wheatland, Wyoming, holding a scrap of walnut in one hand and staring at a...

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He's Not a Ghost

Juliet Sayre

Weekly Contest #375

There was blood on my hands. I thought it might be mine. I couldn’t be certain. I didn’t feel any pain, so maybe it wasn’t. It was dripping from my fingertips onto the carpet below. It was fresh, falling almost gently from my palms. It must’ve been mine. And still, I felt nothing. There was glass at my feet. Oh. There was blood on those, too. Shards imbedded into my toes and arches. I wiggled my toes; blood spurted from the open wounds. And still, I felt nothing. There was a mirror on the floor. Its once golden frame was cracked in several p...

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Livestream pt:1

Thomas Green

Weekly Contest #375

Becky's Diner was a gathering place for folks from all walks of life. During the summers it would be the next stop for road warriors traveling across the countryside. In the winters, a place for people to get hot cocoa with mini marshmallows. But today during the middle of fall it would play as the meeting ground for a group of teenagers trying to make it big in the world. "So, how's our channel looking Bobby?" One teen said, rubbing his hands with enthusiasm. "Well let me put it to you this way," Bobby replied from across the table "Conside...

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The Day Everything Turned. By nightfall, the garden had finished one life and begun another.

Sean Gaboya

Weekly Contest #375

CW: gore related to death of an animal Everything felt wrong that morning. The sun came up pale and weak, as if it had spent the night trying to decide whether to return. The air smelled of wet bark and iron. Leaves scraped across the yard without wind. Even the crows had moved farther off, calling from beyond the houses where I could not see them. It was the last day of October. I was raking the final leaves and putting the garden to bed. My grandson Eli followed me with a paper sack, gathering the small things he thought worth saving: a r...

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Festival of the Harvest Moon

Weekly Contest #375

The dog knew before Diana did. Murphy was an eleven-year-old yellow Lab, carried into Ward Veterinary Clinic wrapped in a blood-soaked fleece blanket—one of the ones they sold every October for the Harvest Moon Festival. “He won’t let us near him,” Mrs. Heller said. “He almost bit Bill when we put him in the truck.” “Murphy wouldn’t bite anybody.” Diana crouched so he could see her. She’d known the dog most of his life. She had stitched his paw after he went through a storm window, removed a sock from his intestine, and once spent Thanksgivi...

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Cloaked in Skin

Madison Castelli

Weekly Contest #375

The first thing Renee saw when she came home was the glass. It glittered across the hardwood in tiny, wet-looking pieces, though nothing in the house was wet. She stood just inside the front door with her hospital bag hanging from one hand and stared down at the fragments scattered beneath the umbrella stand. There had been a photograph there once. She knew that because the frame was still leaning crookedly against the wall, its glass punched inward as though someone had struck it from the front. The photograph itself was gone. Only a strip ...

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The Things We Correct

Keilyn W.

Weekly Contest #375

The first thing wrong with Tuesday was the rain, although Mara Vale would later understand that the rain was one of the few things that had happened exactly as it should. She noticed it at 7:16am that morning when she stepped out of Number 18 wearing a blue dress and found Bellweather moving beneath umbrellas. Rain struck the pavement hard enough to mist around people's ankles, and Mara retreated beneath the awning before it ruined her suede heels. She checked her phone. Rain until noon, high of sixty-one. She refreshed the forecast twice, i...

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A bit different

Madeleine Smith Nelson

Weekly Contest #375

I've always known I'm a bit different. Maybe I'm packed with Ego or the terrors of the centuries. I wander round, my voice weaved into the old. My blood pulses with England but the hills are older than my blood, the green and pleasant lumps in the skyline. I walk around my complexity and pretend I am not alienated but written in the stars and the soil. Today I am visiting the home of my ancestors, catholic and of the aristocracy. Ripped wide open to the public who come here to feed on history and absorb the day in those stone walls and lovel...

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The Turn of Marlow Court

Niveadita Razdan

Weekly Contest #374

There was once a street called Marlow Court, which had eleven houses upon it and no way out but the way in. Every Sunday, as the church bell down the hill struck six, a blue stone was found upon one porch or another. It was the size of a loaf of bread and painted the blue of a robin's egg, though no robin ever laid such an egg. Whoever found it upon their step was said to have the Turn and by seven o'clock the other ten houses had each sent over a casserole, as one does for a death. What the Turn was, nobody could say. Now in the spring of t...

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Encounter

Weekly Contest #374

I awake to a crepuscular ray of sunlight stabbing my eyes, stirring me from the deep slumber possible only in the gloom of winter. Frost clings to the windowpanes like frozen spider webs and my breath puffs from my mouth like a steam train. The thermostat is set as low as possible without freezing the pipes – money is tight. I skip a full shower and wash my armpits and sensitive regions using a washcloth and the bathroom sink. I dress as warmly as possible and have a quick breakfast of toast and bagged cereal before heading out the door. The...

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What the Matches Know

Sharon Fugel

Weekly Contest #374

Some people collected keychains. Others collected magnets, shot glasses or little spoons from places they couldn’t remember visiting. Beth collected matchbooks. Usually small and free, marked with the name of a place she had been. Chicago’s hotel bar. A roadside diner in a quaint town. The New Orleans jazz club she stayed in for exactly forty-three minutes because the saxophonist was terrible. A small, dusty Maine tavern, where the bartender told her, without her asking, that his wife was having an affair. Every matchbook had a story. Th...

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Time of the Forbidden

Weekly Contest #374

He looks through the door’s peephole after hearing a ticking noise, there is nobody outside. His curiosity peeking as he can still hear the ticking. The door opens he steps outside. Jude tries to identify where the sound is coming from, he turns in all directions but cannot spot anything awkward in the corridor. The ticking gets faster, then Jude remembers the old clock that he once saw in the broken elevator shaft. The elevator was never functional, it has always been broken since the day Jude rented his place. He remembers well asking abou...

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Friday at Seven

James Doubleyew

Weekly Contest #374

The thunder shook the building. “Holy shit, this weather!” Mike grumbled to the bouncer as he scurried to escape the sudden storm. He paid his cover charge and slipped into the small pool hall that served as the town’s bar, disappearing under the sign that flashed ‘O’Malley’s’. Mike paused inside the door, giving himself a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dim lighting inside. His pupils dilated and took in the light and revealing O’Malley’s. Men and women, packed the bar, chatted and laughed as they leaned close to talk. A pool table sat...

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