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Alev Gefen

Author on Reedsy Prompts since May, 2025

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47 Stories

251 karma pts

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Notes in the Margins

Linda found them while packing for conservatory—five years late, but finally going. The shoebox fell from the closet shelf, spilling envelopes across her bedroom floor. All addressed to her. All in Eiro's handwriting. All stamped but never sent.She sat cross-legged on the carpet, hands trembling.Dear Linda, I've been practicing the Brahms concerto you love. I keep messing up the third movement, but I'll get it right before I play it for you next week. I want to be worthy of someone with your talent.The next one: I wrote another measure of yo...

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Through Thin Walls

The Singapore humidity clings to my skin like an accusation as Melissa signs the marriage certificate. Her hand trembles—she thinks I can't see it, but I've spent forty years reading tremors. Amy's hands shook like that on our wedding day, when she believed I'd make her happy.I'm dying. Six months, maybe less. The tumor presses against the parts of me that remember guilt.Last night, I stood outside Melissa's hotel room and listened to her call her mother in Mandarin. My Mandarin is rusty, but good enough: "He promised me everything, Mama. A ...

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The Subjunctive Tense

Sabine discovered that love operated on Pacific Standard Time while loneliness ran on Eastern European Time—three hours behind and ten ahead, depending on how you counted.She'd memorized the conversion without trying: 7 AM in Seattle meant 5 PM in Prague, her morning coffee aligning with Tom's evening beer. Their days overlapped like a badly shuffled deck of cards, each pulling different suits at different times. She kept a widget on her phone's home screen showing Prague time, right next to Seattle's, two clocks that never quite agreed on w...

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Building Solidarity

"Hi, I'm from 4B. About the noise—""Oh thank God you're here. Did you bring tools?""Tools? No, I came to ask if you could keep it down—""Keep what down? The ceiling? That's literally the problem. It's sagging. Didn't the super send you?""Nobody sent me. I live upstairs. The hammering at 2 AM—""That wasn't hammering. That was my roommate trying to prop up the ceiling with a broom handle. It kept falling down.""Your ceiling was falling at 2 AM?""Well, it started falling around midnight, but we didn't want to bother anyone, so we waited two hou...

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47 Watermelons and Other Reasonable Complaints

From: building.management@hawthorneapts.com To: all.residents@hawthorneapts.com Date: Monday, March 4, 2024, 8:15 AM Subject: Re: Re: Re: URGENT - About Your "Emergency"Dear Residents,We are aware of the "situation" in the lobby. Pest control has been notified. Please use the side entrance until further notice.Additionally, whoever left 47 watermelons in the freight elevator over the weekend, please remove them immediately. The elevator now smells like a farmer's market having an existential crisis.Reminder: The freight elevator has a 2,000-...

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Fusion Cuisine

He'd taken notes. He'd made a shopping list organized by grocery store aisle. He'd even practiced his British accent in the mirror while saying "puff pastry" because Gordon Ramsay made it sound so elegant, and he wanted to impress Adra when he served it."It's just beef wrapped in stuff," he told himself, standing in his kitchen at 2 PM, five hours before Adra would arrive for their two-year anniversary dinner. "How hard could it be?"These would later be recognized as the most dangerous words ever spoken in his apartment, narrowly beating out...

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When the Rain Won't Stop

The rain hammered the corrugated roof of the school's entrance like angry fists, each drop exploding into a thousand smaller ones that ricocheted off the pavement. Emi Ohara pressed herself against the brick wall, her school uniform already damp from the spray that the inadequate overhang couldn't prevent. The fabric clung to her skin in uncomfortable patches, cold and clammy like something diseased.Four-thirty. Her mother was an hour late.The other children had long since disappeared into waiting cars or under the colorful umbrellas of punc...

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The Wheat and the Poppies

Lieutenant Colonel Eduard Petrenko stood before the mirror in his apartment overlooking the Dnieper, adjusting his uniform for what he knew would be the last time. The blue and yellow patch on his shoulder caught the amber light of the setting sun. Outside, the air raid sirens had been silent for three days—an ominous quiet that pressed against the windows like held breath.His wife, Renata, moved through their small apartment with deliberate grace, her movements carrying the weight of understanding. She had not asked questions when he came h...

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Inherited Patterns

The papers were innocuous at first glance—bank statements tucked behind medical journals, a second phone in Kevin's golf bag, receipts from restaurants Amy had never visited. Drake Hoskins found them six weeks after the funeral while helping Amy sort Kevin's home office."Amy," Drake said, voice catching. "You should sit down."She laughed, that brittle sound she'd perfected since becoming a widow. "What, did Kevin hide another mortgage? We're already at three."Drake's trembling hand held out a marriage certificate. Singapore. Dated two days b...

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The Phantom Ring

Lonnie found the ring by accident while looking for aspirin in Joaquin's nightstand. The drawer stuck halfway, the way it always did, requiring that familiar jiggle-and-pull maneuver she'd perfected over the years. Behind the bottle of ibuprofen, tucked into a small velvet box she didn't recognize, sat a simple gold band with a tiny emerald—exactly like the one he'd proposed with three years ago, except they'd never gotten engaged.She held it up when he came out of the shower, steam following him into the bedroom like a ghost. Water droplets...

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Current Resident

The skull arrived via Amazon Prime on a Tuesday.Samantha Quynh stood frozen on the threshold of her new Brooklyn apartment, staring at the package that hadn't been there five minutes ago. She'd just walked down to check her mailbox—the hallway had been empty. Now this box waited at her door, addressed to "Current Resident, Apt 4B" in handwriting that looked scratched into the label. No return address. The cardboard felt unnaturally cold for August, leaving her fingertips numb.Inside her studio, she opened it with kitchen scissors. Nested in ...

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Empty Frame

The security footage would later show nothing.I've replayed it exactly forty-seven times now, frame by frame, and all you can see is me—Kieran Hayes, thirty-four, divorced, two years into a job I took because it required minimal human interaction—walking toward an already-empty tomb at 5:51 AM, stopping, and having an animated conversation with the morning air. The timestamp never glitches. The image never warps. Technology, it turns out, has its limitations.But I'm getting ahead of myself.I was pulling the graveyard shift at Memorial Garden...

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Thirty-Seven Mississippis

The dust tasted like concrete and old prayers.Alma's right leg was pinned beneath what used to be a beam from the ceiling—she couldn't tell anymore. Everything looked the same in the dark: gray, broken, wrong. The earthquake had lasted maybe forty-five seconds. She'd counted. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, like her lola (grandma) taught her during typhoons when Alma was small and afraid of thunder. Count between the lightning and the roar, lola said, and you'll know how far away the danger is. But this danger had been directly beneath the...

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Immersion

Julian opened his eyes to a halo of fog. His skin tingled under the pulsing water. He welcomed the steamy embrace, counting down the minutes. Soon, he would wade into the long-awaited pool—a new gene pool that welcomed him all too eagerly. Or so he thought. Fifty weeks practically flew past him, leaving behind two badges of honor: aching eyes and a fluent tongue. In that same fluent tongue, Julian signaled he was ready. He stepped out from behind the shower curtain and wrapped a towel around his torso—a makeshift tallis. The clergyman was wa...

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What We Carried

Weekly Contest #323

"I can't undo it... I shouldn't have, in the first place..." Terri Malone's mind raced as she barely made it to the sink. The nausea was becoming too familiar. It has been haunting her for ten weeks. Ten weeks since she let Martin drive her home after the office holiday party at the Doheney Four Seasons. They should have said their goodbyes at the door---no, in the car---and Terri should have turned the key to her apartment immediately. She did, but Martin insisted on coming in. The framed photo of Terri and a dark-haired man with almond-sha...

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