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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.

150+ 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 3 of 10

The Kidnapping

Sage Alquist

Weekly Contest #344

Recovered Journal of Lila Hart(Entries believed to have been written over approximately thirty days. Some pages appear torn out.)Day 1 of documenting— I thinkI woke up on a mattress on the floor.At first, I thought I was still dreaming. Everything felt thick and slow, like when you wake up after taking cold medicine. My mouth tasted like metal and cotton.The room was small.Concrete walls.No windows.Just one bare bulb in the ceiling.I remember trying to sit up and the world tilting sideways. My head hurt so badly I thought I might throw up.I ...

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The Sixth Day

Sage Alquist

Weekly Contest #344

The alarm rang at 6:42 a.m.It always rang at 6:42.Emily slapped at the phone without opening her eyes, her hand finding the screen almost before the sound began. The vibration buzzed through the wooden nightstand, a familiar insect hum against the quiet room.Silence.For a moment, she lay still, wrapped in the warm heaviness of sleep.Then something stirred beneath the surface of her thoughts.A faint unease.The kind that comes when you dream about something ordinary—your kitchen, your car, a conversation—and wake up feeling like the dream leak...

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Saeculum

Weekly Contest #344

It was a single drop of rain, resting gently on her cheek. That drop, as cold as ice against the summer heat of her skin, made her head spin like the amusement park ride they were currently ascending on.“Here we go!” Emily shouted, holding on tightly to the wheel in the boat. “Oh no…” Sophia gripped tightly, squeezing her eyes shut, her squeezing the arm of the girl next to her. She remembered the day she met Emily, on the campus of DryArt Academy, the new art academy that had opened in town. Sophia could not believe she had actually gotte...

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Static

Weekly Contest #344

I envy those with functioning internal monologues. Not that I don’t have one— I do, I just can’t hear it. These voices talk so loud that I can’t hear myself think. Ever since I can remember, there has always been a scattered barrage of words and static buzzing sounds clouding my mind. And you know the worst part? I can’t seem to figure out exactly why they’re there. I can’t think clearly enough to discern who it is that is speaking in my head. My parents have taken me to doctors, and I could tell from the suspicious glint in their eyes that...

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The Eighth Morning

Kevin Enners

Weekly Contest #344

I wake up at 6:17 a.m. The radio clicks on by itself three seconds later. The same station. The same song. A soft acoustic thing that sounds like it was written for people who never had to bury anyone.I don’t look at the clock anymore. I don’t need to. My body knows when the day begins. It always begins the same way.I lie still and listen to the house breathe. Pipes ticking. The refrigerator is humming. A floorboard popping in the hallway where Laura will stand in exactly forty seconds and ask if I want eggs or cereal. I count anyway. Thirty...

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The Purity Protocol: Genovirus-X

Danielle Lovell

Weekly Contest #344

Document 1: Personal encrypted drive of a Senior Intelligence Analyst, Department of Homeland SecurityDate: February 27, 2026Medium: Digital text file, hidden in a partitioned drive.I’m documenting this because I haven’t been able to sleep for weeks, and the historical record is likely already being scrubbed. When this administration took over, they promised massive changes, but nobody on the inside realized how quickly the guardrails would disintegrate.It started with the Executive Orders last year. Militarization of the border, the invocat...

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The 10K at the End of the World or: The Incident in Salinas

Charlie A

Weekly Contest #344

“...BILLIONS WILL DIE FROM ASTEROID ‘2156 KATE’ IN 2026…”“...SURVIVORS WILL ABANDON THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH AND LIVE UNDERGROUND…”“...THE WORLD ABOVE US WILL BELONG TO THE DOGS AND CATS…” An excerpt from interviews with a manic depressive, possibly paranoid schizophrenic, January 13th, 2018 - Salinas County Gazette The detective was sweating under the lights in my room. It was designed to make me sweat but I was perfectly fine. The noise from the heater filled the room, though. I was very confused at first. “So six years ago, you met this m...

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One Small Step for the Dead

Alejandra L.

Weekly Contest #344

“All systems nominal.” Neil settled into his chair as he turned to glance at Buzz. They were getting ready to be the first people to set foot on the moon—July 16th, 1969, the day that would be remembered in history.But the three days in between hadn't been empty.As the Earth shrank into a marble behind them, the reflections in the Columbia’s triple-paned windows began to change. It started as a smudge—a gray, translucent shape that Neil initially thought was a fingerprint on the glass. He reached out to wipe it, but his fingers met cold, smo...

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One Woman Show

T'keyah Nicole King

Weekly Contest #343

Only six hours, 54 minutes, and 53 seconds remained in the Creative Arts Writing Competition, and my insides were trembling. The assignment was to write about something you wish you could forget, and it quickly turned into an epistle to my anxiety, 2,589 words about something that forces you to remember every aching moment. I felt it radiating from my brain to my fingertips as I wrote the melancholic expressions of my life in pieces. I was confronting the invisible monster under my bed. The feeling of a elephant's feet caving into my chest t...

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The Ordinary Man

Kai Johnson

Weekly Contest #343

“Ring, Ring, Ring” David stared absently at the ceiling. He had woken up before the alarm had even sounded, just like the day before and the day before that. He left his bed, brushed his teeth, washed his face, and changed into fresh clothes. It was all the same to him, each event melting into the next. But as David began to leave, his steps slowed and yet his heart could not have been beating faster. He gulped as he stood in the doorway, he felt positively ill and anxious. Maybe I will do it tomorrow David lingered there, frozen in deliber...

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Dozen

Amanda Smith

Weekly Contest #343

6:00. Every day for the last dozen years, Cass had eaten the same pleasant, predictable breakfast. One egg, hard-boiled. Two shakes of pepper, three of salt. Toast buttered to the edges, then glazed with jam. Four strawberries, green tops severed. Orange juice decanted into a small glass jar. Coffee, black.That is, until this particular Saturday morning when she opened the refrigerator to discover that her eggs were missing – not out—missing entirely. Cass’s lips pursed and then parted almost imperceptibly as her eyes darted around the gleam...

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In a Singular Minute

Kritapas Chaloemsakdiwat

Weekly Contest #343

One second, we were messing around in the bedroom, another we were staring at the bright cloudy tree sprouting into the sky. Me and my sister Liv were playing with our toys in our bedroom when suddenly it was like the sun came to visit our little suburban house through the window. Flashing to peek at us only to dip out of sight when we turned. We saw it through the window. An orangey ball of cloudy smoke rising higher and higher into the sky every second. It looked like tree, though a bit round. It was mesmerising, I couldn’t take my eyes aw...

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On Tonight’s Episode

Weekly Contest #343

*note- this story deals with mental health, abuse, and contains imagery of violence and gore Emily parked her car and rested her head on the steering wheel. For a few minutes she sat, eyes closed, drawing in deep breaths. She leaned the seat back and smoked a cigarette, flicking the ash into a paper coffee cup, until she could taste the filter melting. Her eyes snapped toward her kitchen window as the lights flickered on. You’re procrastinating. She scolded herself. Just get on with it! Emily pulled into her garage. She eyed the stack of br...

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Who we Shouldn't Trust

Tharushi Manathunga

Weekly Contest #343

Trigger Warnings: Suicide, Murder, Blood, Obsession, Alcohol Use, Psychological Trauma, Death ◇ CALIX ◇I shove my way through the crowd, my feet stumbling over others. My vision is blurry- I drank too much. My friends have gone to get some water. I don't even know how I got here. The beat of the music pulsates throughout the room as my ears try to leave my body. Lights at the party flash and bang, and I see a flash of red hair in the crowd.I see her.Anne.My pace speeds up as I attempt to catch up to her. But I can't find her. Where is she...

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Down the Lane

Derek Odom

Weekly Contest #343

Latrus steered his car down a narrow lane overrun with grass and tree roots and neglect. He had been on the way to the hardware store, where he worked as a clerk, when something caught his eye, scurried off the road and onto the lane. Too big for a dog but too small for a deer, and just a glimpse of brown fur before it was gone, bounding into the forest on legs that seemed impossibly long.After a mile or so, the crooked lines of an old hunting shelter leered ahead like a shipwreck. It wasn’t big, about ten feet in all directions, but it had ...

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