Menu

More apps built by Reedsy

Assemble a team of professionals

The writing app for authors

Writing courses, events and memberships

Get your book reviewed

Weekly writing prompts and contests

Menu
Prompts
Contests
Stories
Blog
Featured stories
Activity feed

Discover weekly, the best short stories

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

Thriller Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. Looking for a story that will keep you on the edge of your seat and holding your breath? Don’t skip our collection of thriller short stories.

Thriller Short Stories – Page 10

Cadence and the Marine - She broke training to save her person

Weekly Contest #357

Cadence and The Marine Cadence of Moonstone, a PTSD Dog who broke the rules to save her person.As told to Samantha MarisWritten by Sam Maris with Cadence’s ApprovalTW: Gunfire, mentions of sexual assault, suicide and killing My ears feel the air shift a nanosecond before the sound of the violent CRACK of a high-powered round reaches me. A pressure snap that causes the nerves in my ears to stand at attention. Instinct takes over, and I launch myself at Taylor, knocking her to the tile floor and covering her body with mine.Another CRACK, as mo...

18 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

The Shape Of Loyalty

Weekly Contest #357

The greatest blasphemy in Egypt is not doubting the gods. It is serving them after the doubt has begun. In exactly nine hours the sun will be gone. Only I understand what that means. I watch from my chamber window as dawn breaks. On the longest day of the year, a silent throng converges upon the temple grounds. Every face turns east. The sun is a throbbing ball, cutting through the haze and bleeding light across distant palms. Even before the heavens warp, the people feared the sky.Canet, my young servant, lacked the discipline for priesthoo...

31 likes 25 comments 25
Read story

Michael

Weekly Contest #357

Michael never cried when the earthquakes happened anymore. Instead, his body went paralyzed, still in time, similar to the demeanor of a doll.The first one took his hearing when he was six years old. The second one took everything else. Michael Holloway grew up in silence, pure quietude.Not peaceful silence. Not comforting silence. The kind that wrapped around him like wet cement and hardened as time crept past him.At school, teachers described him as “quiet but respectful.” Kids called him weird and freakish behind his back because he wore...

22 likes 3 comments 3
Read story

Posters and Paydays

M B

Weekly Contest #357

The face on the wanted poster grinned with a maw of jagged teeth. His broad head seemed locked in an eternal dispute over whether it belonged to an ape, a bear, or a goblin. The answer, unmistakably, was bugbear. BORIS STRONGJAW. Notorious highway robber. Crimes: Robbery, extortion, arson, assault, indecent exposure, robbery, extortion, arson, assault, indecent exposure, and repeatedly pitching a tent in the town square. Reward: Five hundred crowns. Two hungry males stood over the notice, one a rogue and one a minotaur. The young man wore a...

14 likes 4 comments 4
Read story

Crisis on the Ridge

Weekly Contest #357

The grease on my hands smelled like diesel and dirt. I had been tinkering with the broken tractor by the barn for a few hours now, mostly to pass the time away until Nick arrived.I already hated him. I was annoyed how my brother Leo talked about him constantly, and I hated how effortlessly put-together he seemed in every story.I gave a loud, drawn-out sigh, deciding it wasn’t worth doing this in the afternoon heat. But just as I began to head towards the house, a shiny black rental car came into view through the forest road and rolled to a s...

14 likes 4 comments 4
Read story

Hide and Seek and Menu Requests

Weekly Contest #357

I inhaled a deep breath, diligently fighting the urge to scream obscenities at the absolute toad of a man before me. Carl had apparently made it his work life mission to disrupt my workflow every, damn, day. Since starting this job, he’d somehow transitioned from an easy-going co-worker to my real-life nemesis.Initially, he’d been super communicative, submitting requests to me in such a timely manner I’d almost forgotten what it was like working in a toxic environment. Almost.The switch was subtle. He started submitting requests closer to th...

8 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

The House Mouse

Weekly Contest #357

There was once a mouse named Chipper. He lived in a house that was also close to the forest where he once lived. Chipper decided to move to the house about a year ago as he was cold and hungry, and decided that the house would be the best source of shelter and food for him. Chipper frequently went to the garbage cans and kitchen floor to find scraps of food and other materials that made his life a little easier. “Now this is the life,” thought Chipper, “I don’t have to worry about stuff like local hunters, which I frequently had to back when...

5 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Eyes Open, Tabby!

Weekly Contest #357

What the hell was that?Ninety minutes of two fools bumbling around. If I didn’t know better I’d say they did it on purpose, a couple of pals using a premium stalking experience as a way to pass a boring afternoon, but random pairing makes that impossible. ‘FastLashes’ was late to most of her marks and it took her three attempts to identify her Stalker. As for ‘Maximum_Infiltration’ ... I've monitored CCTV with more stealth than him. Lashes had to have been pretending not to see him. Had to. I don’t know why but there’s no way he was able to ...

32 likes 27 comments 27
Read story

midas in reverse

Weekly Contest #357

my name is harriet guster. i'm 9 years old. i have progeria, a disease which makes you look a lot older than you really are. my brother geoff and uncle reggie both say it makes me look "dis-ting-wished". i don't know about that. my favorite hat is a purple beanie with a white pom pom. reggie says ma made it when i was in her tummy. she went to heaven though when i was born. reggie says she liked to crowshay -- i don't know the right spelling. in school we learned about king midas, who everything he touched turned to gold, and he got real ric...

22 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Behind The Curtain

Weekly Contest #357

"Picture a Goddess with a crown of gold lying in bed. She is going for her afternoon nap, but the sunlight keeps bothering her, and so she draws the curtains. You, Edy, are the curtains." One foot forward, then a small shuffle backwards. A small sigh, followed by a yawn and a roll back of the shoulders. She will shake her head to knock the overthinking thoughts out, and then she will turn to reach for her coffee, which I've already pushed into place. She will take a sip of the perfectly temperatured beverage, before placing it down and open...

12 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

Fourteen Thousand Feet Above the Desert

Weekly Contest #357

14,000 Feet: Sky The aircraft climbed steadily through a sky so clear it seemed impossible that storms existed anywhere in the world. Below, the desert stretched to every horizon in shades of rust, gold, and amber. Ancient mesas rose from the earth like monuments carved by a patient god. Rick Harrington pressed his forehead briefly against the window and smiled. Fifty.The number felt strange. For most of his adult life, he had measured time in quarters, acquisitions, earnings reports, and market cycles. Birthdays were obligations squeezed b...

16 likes 9 comments 9
Read story

AIRI

Weekly Contest #357

It used to be common practice to ridicule early robots. Network evening newscasts routinely ended with viral clips of falling, stumbling, clumsy androids “stupidly” unable to complete the simplest human tasks—the reliable fodder of late-night television, YouTube, and social media. But with each public failure, their creators quietly learned, adapted, and corrected.In 2036, a small, privately owned company purchased a premium, just-before-halftime advertising slot at Super Bowl LXX to introduce the Autonomous Intelligence/Robotic Individual: ...

13 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Tradecraft

Weekly Contest #357

By the time Víctor Salazar told her he trusted her, Maya Reyes had already sold him to the men who would kill him.She had done it at four that morning. A rooftop two districts east. Rain. He slept through it, one arm flung across the cold side of the bed where she had been.A burst of code. Nine hundred milliseconds. His escape route through the old port, gone to her handler before the city woke.Then she had walked home through the wet neon. Climbed back in beside him. Lay there dry-eyed and listened to him breathe until the sky went grey.Now...

11 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Betrayed by Myself

Weekly Contest #357

"You really think it was her?" With one of her fries she points at a young woman who just exited the building on the other side of the road. I've met the woman in my passenger seat last year at my company's summer party in San Francisco. She is one of the middle managers in my company, currently overseeing a team of about eight engineers in charge of operations. Since then she has become one of my closest confidants. "I'm pretty sure. I've seen her following me for the last couple of weeks." "So? Means that you're right or that you're parano...

8 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

A Hunger at Lethe End

Weekly Contest #356

I shuffle around the house in a daze and pause before a photo of Cassie and me. The slow pooling of dread shivers up my skin. She looks so utterly carefree in this photo. Her arm is slung around my shoulder and we’re both wearing matching red-striped swimsuits, ones that we barely took off during the island summers. We were practically feral back then. Our parents worked during the day and we had free rein of the forest and the beach to live out the fantastical stories that we spun in our heads. I kept this photo, but I really should have hi...

9 likes 0 comments 0
Read story
RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

Bring your short stories to life

Fuse character, story, and conflict with tools in Reedsy Studio. All for free.