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Discover weekly, the best short stories

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

150+ Funny Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. The world can get dreary and overwhelming, so when you’re looking to have a good laugh, take a scroll through our free collection of funny short stories.

Funny Short Stories – Page 2 of 10

How I Trained a Mermaid

Submitted to Contest #305

After nearly a month stranded on this island, she was by far the ugliest mermaid I’d ever seen. I felt sorry for her. It. Is it is an it or a her? Whatever the case, she’s hideous and I don’t mean to demean or belittle her. She’s truly an overripe fruit that was left in the sun. I first saw her when the initial rescue lifeboat left the fuel tanker to come rescue me. This little dot bobbed on the horizon in front of a mega ship, and I thought, “That’s what they sent?” I was in the national news – “Local Sea Captain Found Alive on Island.” The...

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Driving Along

Submitted to Contest #305

Driving Driving a car is a test of one’s nerves. It is not for the faint of heart.I haven’t driven in years. I got tired of backseat drivers telling me how to drive, which roads to take, or getting scared every time I turned or hit a bump. Ummm…chill with that. I started getting tired of it.Why don’t you drive and let me sit where you are sitting right now?I tried not to let it consume me, and I kept getting into our Mustang, dropping the top down, and driving here and there and everywhere.That is until I got sideswiped by an aggressive driv...

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Grind

Submitted to Contest #305

(My story does not have description of violence and gore, but alludes to them, makes light of them.) At the intersection, I could go right and head home. But turning left would take me to him. And I wasn’t supposed to go to him. It was part of the deal, that we never saw each other. Of course, on occasion, I would stop by the bakery. Just to get a look at him. He was the owner, and also the baker, and didn’t work the counter. But if I peeked up and to the left, the doorway to the kitchen was always open. And there he was. Navy blue T-shirt, ...

7 likes 0 comments 0
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The Noodle Incident

Submitted to Contest #305

This is my first submission, I did write 1k words in under 1 hour after choosing one of the five at random. The work is extremely derivative of Calvin and Hobbes, literally telling the story of the unexplained Noodle Incident. Names are changed, but all the homages to Bill Waterson's famous characters are there. Not sure if that would disqualify this, but I really like it, so I am trying anyway.I did briefly edit, but, as I said, not very experienced. I stared at the crowd and told the biggest lie of my life. We never meant for it to be such...

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Left or Right

Submitted to Contest #305

My fingers drum the steering wheel. My teeth scrape my lips. Decisions, decisions. Terrible decisions. I look right and then left. Not a soul in sight. Even one car in the way could have been used as an excuse to take the opposite road, but no, the decision is mine.Right. The road home. To my family, who love me, who care what happens to me and would be wondering where I was. Work ended half an hour ago and it was only a twenty-minute drive home. Right is the safe choice, the loving choice. Right was right. My shame told me to go right.Left ...

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Principal Ares: A Sandcastle, A Food Fight, A Talent Show, and Unicorns

Submitted to Contest #305

I stood on the stage in the gymnasium of Olympus Heights Elementary. My perfectly tailored suit felt like a straitjacket. This was it. My new domain. My new war zone. See, a few months back, after a particularly spirited disagreement with Athena about the proper way to conduct a siege (she insisted on “strategic withdrawal” while I favored “indiscriminate slaughter”), Zeus, in his infinite, infuriating wisdom, decided I needed a “time-out.” Not just any time-out, mind you. A mortal time-out. And not just any mortal time-out, but a “character...

8 likes 6 comments 6
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We're all family here

Submitted to Contest #305

Ok, one more time. Shoulders straight, chin up.I smirk and lean over the sink.“You know what? I quit!”Love it. Now do a middle finger.I show the middle finger and I depart. Oh no, too much of a twirl. Again.The door opens, and Jack walks in, heading straight to the urinal, not acknowledging me.“Alright, Jack, mate! How’s it going?”He turns over, his eyebrow raised and scuffs. “Close your zip, big man.”I look back at the mirror, and my zip is all the way down, with my shirt pushing through it like a tissue.“Heh, thanks mate. How embarrassing!...

13 likes 2 comments 2
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What Would Tim Do?

Submitted to Contest #305

Everyone needs a friend like Tim. Tim was the fearless goofball of our gang. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for a laugh or on a dare. He had a penchant for poor decision-making and an inappropriate response to the precarious situations he invariably found himself in. But, he wasn’t dumb. In fact, his wit was the stuff of legends! In short, Tim was a guy who made you say “He did what!? He said what!? Oh wait, you mean Tim? Oh, okay then, I get it.” Tim was our brilliant fool.Tim, for his part, thrived on the fuel we added to his fire. H...

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Everywhere I Almost Turned Back

Submitted to Contest #305

At the intersection, I could go right and head home. The route is known, paved not just in asphalt but in the dull certainty of repetition. The kind of road where even the squirrels seem to hesitate.Lately, certainty had started to feel like a trap.But turning left would take me—well, the map doesn’t say anymore. It did a minute ago. Now it’s blinking, confused, like it just woke up from a bad dream. The screen stutters. "Recalculating," it offers, and again, "recalculating," trying to maintain dignity.Left isn’t a route. It’s a dare. A shru...

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They Die

Submitted to Contest #305

Zero floored it, the tires burning a hot smoke as the powerful V8 thundered in his Charger. Then just as quickly, he slammed on the breaks, screeching echoing off the buildings. At this intersection, he could turn right, head home and forget about it. “No, I feel the obligation, the obligation for acceleration!” Zero spun the wheel left, and headed to destiny. The Charger purred like a tiger cat on the prowl, and Zero looked for his first stop. It had only been a week since the signal came down, and the unmasking of the prune faces everywher...

7 likes 4 comments 4
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Nightmare Nook, Inc.

Submitted to Contest #305

It was a dark and stormy night, as all good horror stories begin, but this one had a twist.Instead of a lone cabin in the woods or a haunted asylum, our tale unfolds in the decidedly less spooky, yet surprisingly well-appointed, breakroom of "Nightmare Nook Inc.," a burgeoning company specializing in… well, nightmares.Business was booming, largely thanks to the stellar efforts of their top three "fear specialists": Pennywise, Jason Voorhees, and Freddy Krueger.Today, however, the usual hum of existential dread and the faint smell of popcorn ...

6 likes 2 comments 2
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Doppelganger

Submitted to Contest #305

He looked between us once more and said, “It’s either her or me…” He was right of course, one of these two: either my good friend Niles Curmudgeon, or my boss Sylvia Brightenite, was a monster in disguise, a doppelganger here to steal the company's secrets. In my hands I held a torch, a machine designed by our own company, appropriately named TorchCorp. I could roast one or both of them alive in an instant if I thought that the best option. But how could I torch my good friend Niles? We’d worked at Torchcorp together for five years. We’d des...

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The Great Office Uprising: A Tale of NAP Reports, Tuna, and Triumph

Submitted to Contest #305

Chapter One: The Last Paper ClipThe fluorescent lights hummed a funeral dirge over my cubicle. I stared at the mountain of "Urgent" files—neatly color-coded, alphabetized, and entirely pointless—and felt my soul crumble like a stale cookie. Across the aisle, Aaron from Accounting was muttering to his spreadsheet, still sporting the neon clown nose from yesterday’s mandatory "Wellness Wednesday." The office smelled of burnt coffee and existential dread.I picked up my stapler. Not just any stapler. The stapler. The one I’d named "Steve" during...

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All Bottled Up

Submitted to Contest #305

“You know what? I quit.” The towering ebony man covered in teal and aqua feathers threw his hands up, about faced and got two steps toward the door before he was stopped by the force that was Maggie. “No no no.” The slender woman put a hand on his chest and he stopped as if facing an impenetrable wall. A second hand joined the first and she steered him back to the desk; gentle taps and soothing cooing noises coaxing him into a chair. He crossed his legs and pouted, but settled into the chair with a theatrical sigh. “Now. Be a good boy and co...

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Cold Turkey

Submitted to Contest #305

Good, God, doctors are the dumbest creatures on earth. The stupidity of his clients, despite them having a medical degree, boggled Mark’s mind as he lit a cigarette at the start of his ten-minute break. Well, now it was an eight-minute break because Cora had stopped him in the hall to ask him, yet again, how to set the parameters for adding customer profiles in the program so that new patients would update under the protocols they just created and not the old ones. “It’s in the updated index file,” he told her. “I get an error me...

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RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

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