Menu

More apps built by Reedsy

reedsymarketplace

Assemble a team of professionals

reedsystudio

The writing app for authors

reedsylearning

Writing courses, events and memberships

reedsydiscovery

Get your book reviewed

reedsyprompts

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.

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 5 of 10

Revenge takes a turn into a painting portal

Weekly Contest #348

Revenge takes a turn into a painting portal “Thanks for coming to help, Aaron. This is my mom, Elsa” We left the hospital at the same time. This way I could follow her to the house and still have a getaway car in case things go south. These are some nice digs. And she lives here by herself? Some people have all the luck. “Nice to meet you.” Elsa is an elderly woman with the signs of living a long life on her face. The lines reflect years of sadness and joy. She looks a little shell shocked now sitting quietly in a cha...

10 likes

Read story

Good Hand, Bad Hand

Mark Adams

Weekly Contest #347

Tap Tap Tap Cesar gazed out the window of his room, the view overlooking the rest of the city. He stayed at the top floor of the fate casino – an eternal citadel that loomed over the rest of the city, watching all those who stood below. He leaned forward in his chair and sighed, his ears ringing as he held the weight of his head in his hands. He looked over at the time on his glimmering gold watch and forced himself standing before he looked behind him one more time. “I’ll be back Mal” Cesar said ...

3 likes

Read story

Always by your side

Weekly Contest #347

You know I’m always by your side Iris. The text message said. My lips formed a small smile. She always did that. Giving huge promises that even the dumbest ones knew she wouldn’t be able to keep. I was used to it by now though. Even liked the childishness of it a little bit. I put my phone in my pocket and returned my gaze back to my awfully tidy desk. My bag innocently stood on top of it, moving ever so slightly with my every heartbeat that it was nearly unnoticeable. I reached for it but my hand came to a halt. I gulped, hardly swallowing ...

3 likes

Read story

Who is Masson?

Alejandra López

Weekly Contest #347

Everyone in this town knows the story of the O’bryan family. In the remote town of Whillertown, a tragedy occurred Twenty five years ago. Whillertown was a small place, the number of houses could be counted on your fingers and toes. On a mound of land, right in the middle of a lake with green waters, stood the O’bryan mansion. The family was not especially wealthy, but they had more money than anyone else in town. One early morning, flames rose over the mansion, trapping the entire family inside. According to forensic investigations, someone...

7 likes

Read story

The Devil Keeps Score - Snippet from Chapters 22 & 23

Kalie McLaughlin

Weekly Contest #347

Content Warning: hints and mentions of suicide, self-harm, & death, but none visualized. Strong language. She checks the letter once more. The street signs on the corner matches the ones on the letter. A part of town she’s barely been in except for the rare call out for potential tetanus from some kids playing around.She keeps reading the letter again and again, checking the message itself and not just the address:Meet with me. Winnie and your mom will remain safe. — MolochThe words don’t change. That still her sister and mother written ...

2 likes

Read story

The Secret that Everyone Knows

Amaryssa P

Weekly Contest #347

You will know today. I tear the note to shreds, sprinkling the bits into a glass of water on my nightstand. Noticing the note’s envelope is still intact, I take it — important red wax seal and all — and stuff it in the garbage. This is stupid, Archer, I find myself thinking. After all these years of waiting…you throw away your one opportunity to find out the Secret? All these years of waiting have built up into this one spectacular anti-climax — my eighteenth birthday. What exactly have I been in the dark about? Well, there’s a Secret. No on...

2 likes

Read story

Ouija Me

Catherine McKenzie

Weekly Contest #347

Look, I’m not a stand up kinda guy. I’m weak-minded, lazy, and selfish but obviously self aware. There’s one thing though that I decided I would never do and never have. I will never play with a Ouija board. It’s not for any religious reasons. I’m atheist and don’t believe in angels nor demons. I’ve been very proud of keeping that one rule for as long as I have. But I am especially weak-minded when I get attention from pretty women, and Sharlene is gorgeous.At some point, her circle of friends started hanging with my circle of friends. We we...

8 likes

Read story

The Unexpected

Garrett Dunn

Weekly Contest #347

A car sped down a dimly lit road late at night. The hum of the engine blended with the faint glow of the dashboard, casting soft light across the driver’s face. For a moment just a moment his attention slipped. His eyes dropped to his phone. When he looked back up, a figure stood in the road. The brakes screamed. Rubber burned against asphalt as the car lurched forward, then shuddered to a violent stop just inches from the man’s legs. Silence followed. The stranger didn’t move at first. Then he stepped closer, breath uneven, shoulders rising...

2 likes

Read story

The One Rule

JoAnne Noto

Weekly Contest #347

He only had one rule.Never open the red door.It wasn’t locked. That was the point. No chains, no warnings, no signs—just a plain red door at the end of a plain hallway, like it didn’t matter.Like it didn’t need to.“Don’t open it,” they told him on his first day.He’d laughed.“Why?”They hadn’t laughed back.“You won’t be able to close it.”So he didn’t touch it.The building had a rhythm to it.He learned that first.Every place did, if you listened long enough, the hum of the lights, the soft rattle in the pipes, the distant shifting of something ...

13 likes

Read story

Cause and Effect

Vanessa Osbourne

Weekly Contest #347

CW & A/N: Mentions of past child abuse, gaslighting/coercion, mentions of past drug/alcohol abuse, OD, cursing, absent parents, religious psychosis???, matricide.) (Also kind of ties into the prompt of: Center your story around someone who finally achieves their biggest goal — only to realize it cost them everything.) The sky’s the color of someone else’s faded memory, muted to a grey as bleak as the outcome of all life. It begins and ends the same way: with a bright light, and with a perpetual darkness. In between we fill it with th...

2 likes

Read story

DANGEROUS GAMES

Melinda Madrigal

Weekly Contest #347

DANGEROUS GAME They were born in the same house, under the same roof, raised on the same rules. But Austin, Brooklyn, and Dallas learned very early that rules were only suggestions-especially when something worth having was on the line. What they wanted wasn’t simple. It wasn’t small. They all wanted the house. Not just any house-their grandmother’s sprawling estate perched on the edge of a dying costal town. White columns cracked with age. Ivy creeping up like secrets, and a locked study no one had entered since the night their grandmother ...

11 likes

Read story

Where She Buried Him

Weekly Contest #347

Flowers grew over the ground where she buried him.She groaned, rolling over in her mass of blankets, alarm-clocked awake by the shrill beeping. She slapped wildly at the damn off button. Finally making contact, her arm slumped back to the bed as she exhaled, exhausted. Mouth dry and bleary-eyed, she groaned again, clutching her eyes and forehead in one last frustrated huff before her heart rate began to slow. She blinked, eyes darting about the room between her fingers.Satisfied, she sighed and thrust the blankets off, swinging her feet over...

2 likes

Read story

One Night's Ripple

Kelsey Anderson

Weekly Contest #347

“Come on, Summer. You haven’t been out with me since before you dumped Paul!” The voice on the phone whined. “I’m afraid you can’t carry a tune anymore!”It wasn’t a lie. It’d been a few months since she dumped her cheating ex-boyfriend. Not to mention, she couldn’t remember the last time she went to karaoke with Beth. She could taste the salted tequila and lime.“You’re right, I should probably get out. I mean, what harm could it cause?”The friends set their plans into motion, agreeing to meet in an hour. Summer turned on her bedroom light an...

4 likes

Read story

Wanted

A Fields

Weekly Contest #347

He found her hiding behind a cloud of cigarette smoke. The empty beer bottles clustered on the scratched plastic table like flies on a carcass might have explained the red rimming her eyes and the tremble in her hands as she lifted another half-empty bottle with resigned habit.Her mascara must have been waterproof, because there were no smudged tear tracks, but her face had recently been scrubbed, bare of the blush she always wore, paled and gray in contrast to the scalding red of her lips. That was how he knew she had been crying, half her ...

4 likes

Read story

Diary of an Unknown Woman

Elizabeth McGregor

Weekly Contest #347

{TW: Miscarriage, Sexual Violence, Physical Violence, Death} Sextilius 4 1634 We are starving. Johannes is sick, and he isn’t getting better. Fortunately, Jack is a skilled hunter who never misses his mark. That’s one of the reasons I married him, though there wasn’t much of a market so to speak. He was among 4 bachelors in the community, and the only one not twenty plus years my senior. Usually he takes about two days to search for game, a half day hike into the slowly encroaching trees that surrounded was usually enough for him to eye an e...

2 likes

Read story