Regret short stories
27 stories tagged regret on SuperShort Novel. Start with a hook; First 3 endings free on this device; then $0.99 / story or subscription..
Return to Sender
A box of broken belongings revealed that Mara's ex sold her grandmother's ring and her mother secretly bought it back.
HorrorH-007The Voice in the Transcript
A daughter revisits a saved voicemail from her dead father and finds a new warning that points to a recording hidden in the family home.
RevengeR-037Return to Sender—Ten Years Too Late
A mailbox returns an unopened 2016 letter. Opening it would make a stranger remember her as the sender of a confession she never wrote.
HorrorH-045Room 19 Lets You Change One Regret
A woman on a New Mexico frontage road uses Room 19 to visit her brother in jail, then learns the motel kept the self who never went.
HorrorH-048The Camera Showed the Daughter I Never Had
A Polaroid prints a child from a pregnancy she could not continue. Naming the girl would put footprints in a real apartment.
HorrorH-046The Diner Served My Dead Mother's Usual
A night-shift cook serves a dead woman's usual at the family diner. Eating it buys one conversation—and erases a living face.
RevengeR-038The Guestbook Showed Tomorrow's Divorce
A wedding guestbook writes the couple's legal status a day early. Tearing a page would lock a dissolution she never filed.
HorrorH-044The Payphone That Called Yesterday
A Chicago woman uses a Division Street payphone that calls yesterday, spends ninety seconds taking back cruelty, and refuses to spend the rest on a warning.
HorrorH-051My Voicemail Changed After My Father's Funeral
A dead father's answering machine takes messages dated tomorrow. Listening would lock her into a fight with the wrong sibling.
HorrorH-047The Wedding Dress Remembered Another Groom
A sample gown zips itself and shows another wedding. Each minute in it unsends texts from the life she is actually living.
HorrorH-053The Receipt Printer
A Vermont woman learns her mother's hospice death is already on tomorrow's diner receipt—and each pre-printed slip steals a memory from today.
HorrorH-082The Elevator Keeps One Floor
An elevator offered me one visit with my dead neighbor, but returning would erase every memory of her.
HorrorH-086The Mug That Remembered No
A mug let me undo the times I refused my sister, but every repaired no shut a door in my present life.
HorrorH-093My Grandmother's Alteration Chalk
A tailor can erase the words that drove her granddaughter away, but the family chalk takes a skill for every sentence it removes.
HorrorH-074One Bite Before the Frost
One bite of my dead mother’s apples let me hear what she had never said—and erased something she had.
HorrorH-084The Receipt for One More Hour
A bus offered me an hour with my dead best friend, but every ride used an hour I owed someone living.
HorrorH-058The Bell That Kept Her
A restorer can keep her mother alive by ringing a harbor bell twice, but the first return exposes what devotion cost their family.
HorrorH-072The Clay Handprint
A mothers clay handprint can hold one person in the same morning until the kiln opens.
HorrorH-062The Compass That Pointed Home
A kayak guide follows a compass that permanently bars familiar places, until its clues force her to reconsider who needs finding.
HorrorH-070The Darning Egg
A darning egg repairs one family rupture by transferring the wound to its owner.
HorrorH-091The Key That Borrowed Sleep
A night clerk finds a way to give her exhausted mother perfect sleep, then discovers who has been paying for her own peaceful nights.
HorrorH-089The Last Clean Apron
A cook inherits an apron that can return her mother's words, but every conversation costs a memory she cannot replace.
HorrorH-076The Motel Bell Takes a Name
Our motel bell could erase a guest’s grievance, but afterward the guest could no longer recognize me.
HorrorH-078The Quilt That Keeps the House
Every stitch I removed from Grandma’s quilt repaired our house and added a year to her face.
HorrorH-066The Seam That Remembered
A costume maker can unpick one cruel sentence, but the garment takes a kindness with it.
HorrorH-060The Tide Glass
A mother uses a beach-found bottle to erase an argument and discovers the relationship she paid with was built during its aftermath.
HorrorH-095The Voicemail Before the Late Bus
An old answering machine offers a daughter one message to her younger mother, at the cost of the day she most wants to recover.
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