Free short stories to read online

Wrendell publishes short serialized fiction for adult readers. There are 40 stories here and every one of them is finished, free from the first line to the last, with no account to make, no paywall and no locked chapters. A story is three episodes of about eight hundred words, which comes to roughly ten minutes of reading.

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Everything on Wrendell

Eleven Years of Thursdays by Helen Abbott — Family Drama, 27 parts, about 63 minutes, complete and free. Claire’s mother died in July. In September a landlord calls about an apartment eleven minutes from the house Claire grew up in, three months behind on rent, paid in cash the first week of the month for eleven years. Somebody is still living in it.
My Neighbor’s Cat by Helen Abbott — Romance, 4 episodes, about 13 minutes, complete and free. I feed the cat that turns up at my back door at seven every morning. In October he arrived wearing a collar with a note taped to it, from the neighbor I have never once met, telling me to stop. So I wrote back. We have been writing for six weeks now, and the cat has been carrying it.
My Father’s Sunday Calls by Helen Abbott — Family Drama, 3 episodes, about 5 minutes, complete and free. My father called me every Sunday at four o’clock for almost a year, and I never once picked up. Forty-one voicemails sat unplayed in my phone. Then he died on a Tuesday, and there were not going to be any more.
My Husband’s First Wife by Helen Abbott — Domestic Suspense, 3 episodes, about 10 minutes, complete and free. I’m the second wife. He never once asked me to change anything. He simply moved the mugs to the other side of the cupboard, and then the coat, and then my hair, until a woman called the first wife’s name across a parking lot and I turned around.
My Husband’s Second Phone by Helen Abbott — Thriller, 5 episodes, about 17 minutes, complete and free. My daughter said the gym bag was buzzing. My husband’s phone was on the kitchen counter where it always is. There was a second one sewn into the lining, with a single contact saved, and a message that said don’t bring the kid.
The Seven Second Delay by Nadine Greer — Horror, 3 episodes, about 11 minutes, complete and free. I host the overnight show alone, midnight to five, with seven seconds of delay between me and the transmitter. The same man gets through every night, and what he wants is my shift.
Sound Events by Theo Vance — Horror, 3 episodes, about 10 minutes, complete and free. My son talks in his sleep, and the app on my phone logs every sound it hears with a timestamp. It logged eleven of them on a night the room was empty.
Every Tuesday at Station Two by Cass Ewing — Horror, 3 episodes, about 11 minutes, complete and free. Our company meets every Tuesday to check the pump, raise the ladder and eat badly. Pack six keeps coming back logged as inspected in my handwriting on nights I went home early, and one of our runs is still open.
The Twelfth Stop by Lorna Keough — Horror, 3 episodes, about 11 minutes, complete and free. I have run the same eleven stops for nine years and I could do it asleep. There is a woman waiting at a stop that is not on my schedule, and the only way to be rid of her is to write down her name.
Keep, Auction, Wreck by Miles Redding — Horror, 3 episodes, about 11 minutes, complete and free. We empty houses after the funeral. At the Dunlavy place every object already wore a numbered index card in a dead woman’s printing, and at two in the afternoon the box wrote one for me: keep.
Four Minutes Ten by Marcy Loeb — Thriller, 3 episodes, about 11 minutes, complete and free. Eleven open lines in four months, all of them from a house that burned down in 2022, and nobody on the other end ever spoke. It took me until the eleventh to work out that somebody else out there was hanging them up for him.
Cash on the Third by Paul Ridgway — Thriller, 3 episodes, about 11 minutes, complete and free. Somebody mails a hundred and ten dollars in cash every month for a unit our own paperwork sold off in 2019, and every Wednesday at 3:11 its code opens a gate that only opens outward. Whoever keys it is not coming in. He is in here with me.
Room Tone by Erin Castellano — Mystery, 3 episodes, about 11 minutes, complete and free. I type police interviews at my kitchen table, paid by the audio minute, and I have never met one person whose voice I know. Three unrelated cases, one man asking about the same door. I am starting to think my own transcripts were the script.
The Flag on Box 1181 by Gwen Tarrant — Mystery, 3 episodes, about 11 minutes, complete and free. Eleven years box 1181 has taken mail and never sent any. Tuesday the flag was up, and the card inside forwards a dead man’s mail into town. Friday I have to carry the Postal Service’s confirmation back up that driveway.
Three Forty Light by Roy Mattison — Thriller, 3 episodes, about 11 minutes, complete and free. Every Tuesday at 0214 the same truck crosses my scale three hundred forty pounds lighter than its paperwork swears it is. Nobody upstairs cares about three hundred forty pounds. I pulled the file, and now Tilden knows my name.
The Two O’Clock Wash by Nora Feld — Romance, 3 episodes, about 10 minutes, complete and free. I work the overnight at a laundromat on Sixth, and for fourteen Tuesdays a man came in at two in the morning with the same green duffel bag. He never washed anything. He just sat.
Thursdays in Chair Four by Claire Mosley — Romance, 3 episodes, about 10 minutes, complete and free. My father had dialysis every Thursday, and for two months I sat across from a man in chair four and assumed he was waiting for somebody, the way I was. He was not waiting for anybody.
The Tomatoes Were His by Ada Rowe — Romance, 3 episodes, about 11 minutes, complete and free. I inherited my aunt’s garden plot, thirty dollars of dirt, and the man in plot eleven who says the tomato hanging on my side of the fence is his. He is wrong. He is also the only person in this town who knew her.
Lesson Six by Nell Halloran — Romance, 3 episodes, about 11 minutes, complete and free. My new student is forty one and has never held a license. He pays cash out of a bakery envelope and he needs to pass by November. I thought I knew why. I teach people to drive for a living, and I have never been so wrong about anyone.
Property of Nobody by June Whitaker — Romance, 3 episodes, about 11 minutes, complete and free. He lost something on the 5:41 every Thursday, and every Thursday he came down to my window to claim it back. It took me four months to work out that he was leaving them there. It took longer to find out what he was trying to put down.
The Thursday Lid by Linda Marchetti — Family Drama, 3 episodes, about 10 minutes, complete and free. Every Wednesday I fill my father’s pill organizer, and this week Thursday’s lid came back full. He says he forgot. I counted the bottle. He does not forget.
Half a Tank by Greg Sandoval — Family Drama, 3 episodes, about 10 minutes, complete and free. My brothers and I share our dead mother’s car, a week each, under seven rules on a legal pad and a mileage log I keep clipped to the visor. The log and the odometer have stopped agreeing, and I am the one who has to say so.
Halfway on Route 9 by Amy Fenwick — Family Drama, 3 episodes, about 10 minutes, complete and free. Every Sunday at five I meet my ex-husband at a gas station halfway between our towns and move our son’s booster seat from his car to mine. This week the seat comes back with a receipt folded in the cup holder.
The Letter Opener by Doug Ostrowski — Family Drama, 3 episodes, about 11 minutes, complete and free. My mother-in-law is in rehab with a pinned hip and I am the one with her house key. I water the plants, run the taps, and bring in the mail. My husband will not set foot in the place. This week I open something that is not mine.
Purple Dauber by Beth Callahan — Family Drama, 3 episodes, about 11 minutes, complete and free. My grandmother won’t drive after dark, so I take her to bingo, and lately she writes a check at the table between games. My mother wants the checkbook gone. I know where the money goes. I just haven’t said.
Four Minutes Fast by Megan Pruitt — Science Fiction, 3 episodes, about 9 minutes, complete and free. For six Thursdays a man sat in booth four for eleven minutes, paid for his pie with a 1994 five, and left. I knew who he was. I knew where he was going when he left. He didn’t.
Nine Minutes on the Ramp by Travis Underwood — Science Fiction, 3 episodes, about 10 minutes, complete and free. For nine runs straight, the truck I’m paid to watch has pulled onto the same empty ramp and waited exactly nine minutes. The log says it never happened, and pulling the stop has already cost me $90.
Keep Her Company by Gail Ferraro — Science Fiction, 3 episodes, about 11 minutes, complete and free. I teach a Tuesday night class on living with the talking box in your kitchen. This fall, one of the boxes started coming to class.
New Earth Tonight by Rebecca Sorensen — Science Fiction, 3 episodes, about 11 minutes, complete and free. My daughter calls me from the Moon every Sunday at seven, twenty minutes, with 2.6 seconds of lag. I taught science for thirty-one years, so I should have looked harder.
An Inch a Week by Jim Hadley — Science Fiction, 3 episodes, about 11 minutes, complete and free. I pay eleven dollars an acre for an inch of rain a week, and the gauges swear I get it. So why is my milo knee-high and dying while my neighbor’s, who never paid a dime, stands waist-high and green?
Let the Record Show by Joan Pemberton — Humor, 3 episodes, about 10 minutes, complete and free. Nobody else wanted to be secretary of our homeowners association, so I said yes, and I took the minutes word for word because the bylaws said to. Our president makes jokes. Our vice president seconds everything. We are now paving the duck pond.
A Chance of Dog by Erica Holloway — Humor, 3 episodes, about 11 minutes, complete and free. I have a degree in atmospheric science, a broadcast certification, and three minutes of airtime. The station owner’s Great Dane has none of those, and somehow he is winning.
Hello, Mother by Sean Mulroney — Humor, 3 episodes, about 11 minutes, complete and free. I took one screen out of my mother’s kitchen window, and now her parrot lives in the neighbor’s oak. She video-calls him Sunday at six, so my brother, my sister and I bought an understudy.
Slow, Slow, Quick, Quick by Ron Esposito — Humor, 3 episodes, about 11 minutes, complete and free. My daughter signed me up for ballroom dancing without asking. My partner is a retired drill sergeant who counts like the room is on fire, and I have eight Tuesdays to find a way out.
Found Tortoise, Very Calm by Tara Kincaid — Humor, 3 episodes, about 11 minutes, complete and free. I found a sixty-one pound tortoise walking down the yellow line and posted about her online. Now strangers keep claiming her, each under a different name, and my girlfriend wants her gone by Saturday.
A Hair Sharp by Paige Oberlin — Fantasy, 3 episodes, about 10 minutes, complete and free. The old upright in Mr. Stockdale’s front room has not been played in nine years. When I tune it slowly, it plays anyway, and it always stops in the same place.
Feet on the White by Calvin Truax — Fantasy, 3 episodes, about 11 minutes, complete and free. When I shove my stop sign up at a speeding car, the whole street freezes for thirty seconds. Now the city has a camera on my corner, and it keeps losing exactly thirty seconds.
Exactly As Written by Renee Dufresne — Fantasy, 3 episodes, about 11 minutes, complete and free. My great-aunt left me a tin box of recipe cards. When I cooked my grandmother’s pot roast exactly as written, she sat down at my table and asked for the end piece, and now my brother and sister want different cards.
Clean and Dry by Mitchell Haas — Fantasy, 3 episodes, about 11 minutes, complete and free. The poodle in my tub cleared his throat and asked me, very politely, to say yes. I run a one-chair grooming shop, and nobody warned me what yes would do to my nose.
Thirty Days, Not a Month by Lorraine Petty — Fantasy, 3 episodes, about 10 minutes, complete and free. On the first of every month, a young man lays his hands on my father’s glass counter and pawns a little more of his luck to make rent. A man who buys from me is waiting for it to forfeit.

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