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Len Rely

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jun, 2023

Stories (37)

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18 Followers

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37 Stories

686 karma pts

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The Soul of the School

Len Rely

Submitted to Contest #335

Mr. Medema was by all accounts the school’s most respected algebra instructor, except that there was no contendership for such a title since respectable people don’t wear their respect on their sleeves. His round face that wrinkled when he smiled combined with his slim, black clothes and his habit of bowing was almost like someone in the hospitality service. One of last semester’s graduates destined for the Governor’s School stopped by to thank him with a hug and a kiss on the cheek, a surprisingly personal gesture for such a thankless profe...

6 likes

The Shadow Earth

Len Rely

Submitted to Contest #316

The Shadow Earth hypothesis is the theory that out of an infinite number of parallel Earths, one of them was knocked out of rotation by a cosmic event and now revolves on the far side of the Sun, invisible to us, in some dark place isolated from the rest of the human timeline. Imagine if a version of everyone who has ever lived, everyone you have ever known, was hurled into a place of unrequited darkness and separation from our own species. To this day almost nothing is known about them or their fate except for two unconfirmed aspects that h...

10 likes

Beware the Pact

Len Rely

Submitted to Contest #313

This world is not mine. You can see I am not one of you, that I am a stranger here. Each night when I creep into the woods I plunge my hand into the soil, and wherever I am standing I pull up a latch that opens a door to the stairs that lead down to my black underground lair. The floor is a grate in case I need to drown someone who followed me; on the left is a sentient computer with no hardware that is merely an extension of myself I use for appearances. At the back is a form-fitting bodysuit with clawed hands preserved in a mold; when I zi...

2 likes

The Forgotten Ones

Len Rely

Submitted to Contest #293

In my previous life I was a young psychical researcher, and like many of my kind I decided to visit the site where a farmer named Orion Williamson mysteriously vanished into thin air in July 1854 while walking across a field in the town of Selma, Alabama. Many others had gone there before me, some of them locking arms and walking across the site en masse which I thought was terribly foolish, without any result. But as I told my romantic partner most feverishly, it was a case where the exact spot was known to history so why is it st...

10 likes

Big Girls Are From Venus

Len Rely

Submitted to Contest #289

The two girls were unlike any streetwalkers they had ever seen, in fact there was a debate over whether they were streetwalkers that should have made the Channel 9 news, live at 11:00. Nobody seemed to know them, they didn’t walk from the projects nor were they dropped off by a driver. The usual gang were standing at the corner behind Mack’s Furniture when one of them said “here she comes”.Chelsea came trotting around the corner wearing a two-piece outfit that showed about six inches of her stomach, even though she weighed somewhere between ...

7 likes

The Lynching

Len Rely

Submitted to Contest #286

From “A Practical Guide to Anarchism”…Since our hero never knows when or why the state is going to crack down on him, one must have certain munitions prepared in advance. It is necessary in any profession to have a canard, a decoy waiting in the wings when called for. For example if you prepare taxes, everyone thinks the number of outstanding returns you have is the number of clients waiting to file. It wouldn’t occur to them you have a return with a blank name, pre-approved by the IRS, dated to before the tax laws changed whi...

3 likes

The Time of the Gathering

Len Rely

Submitted to Contest #282

Mrs. Valentine pushed the front door open, her arms heavy with shopping bags and called for the girls with a shrill voice. Her blonde, substantial daughter Millie and her two waifish college friends Julia and Judith came running into the foyer after perming Millie’s hair in the dark and painting her nails for the talent show. Her long-suffering handyman James was up on a ladder painting the wall even though it was Nine O’clock at night. The three girls assembled in front of her as she put the bags down.“This floor needs to be waxed and you g...

5 likes

The Evolution of Meat

Len Rely

Submitted to Contest #279

This unpalatable tale comes from one of our affiliates. As you know, in 2004 forensic inspectors reopened the underground nuclear reactor at Chernobyl and discovered some purple saprophytic fungi growing on the reactor parts, feeding off of radiation making it one of the few known organisms that can live completely without the Sun. What you may not know is that same year the reactor cooling pond next to the plant was drained (because some locals had been fishing in it and posted photos of a giant Wels catfish with two mouths).&nbsp...

13 likes

Confessions of a Time Traveler

Len Rely

Submitted to Contest #274

      The alias I have used for the past 25 years is not my real name. When I was an active agent I was sworn to silence but now I am free to tell the story of my travel to the past, the advantages it gave me in work, money and relationships, and the nightmare when it was taken away. I was a low-level operative whose safehouse and reporting location was a foreclosed textile building in downtown Richmond, Virginia. I would always return from various cities to this building using my key; the lower f...

5 likes

The Lions of Revenge

Len Rely

Submitted to Contest #273

           The deputy stepped out of his vehicle with a look of confusion and ambled over a small tree that had fallen across the driveway. In the six months since he had been assigned to this jurisdiction this was the most remote address he had seen, possibly the most remote in the whole of New Jersey. A dark-colored farmhouse with an adjoining barn leaned wearily against the side of a wooded mountain. FBI vehicles had been seen coming and going weeks ago, a training exer...

14 likes

The Magic Bullet

Len Rely

Submitted to Contest #272

        1980 was a good time to be alive because everyone still did what they were supposed to. Parents let their kids disappear for hours at a time, school buses meandered on the road packed with out-of-control miscreants, teens drove home drunk from prom and scout troops showered naked together. But it was a relatively boring time because the world was so safe.              The state lottery offices were closed on account that it w...

15 likes

From Iron I Came and to Iron Shall I Return

Len Rely

Submitted to Contest #267

To the Woman I met in Space, Long life to you and the Empire… I am the old man who assisted you when your ship moored at Tellemacher Station. I hope your life on Cheszer 2 is free and without incident, I know that everyone there is young and unbound by traditions, the castes of marriage and military service. I have heard, although I do not know it to be true, that everyone there is a freemantle, that one can go from door to door and find unattached men and women at random, which seems strange to me as there is not a single woman in...

7 likes

The Office Must Be Destroyed

Len Rely

Submitted to Contest #267

      Special agent Aschach (pronounced Ah-shock) entered the office building a different way than the others. He looked up and saw a wingless helicon parking on the roof as the Sun started to set, probably that associate relations manager who was getting the axe tonight. He had to get inside the Time Management Bureau before that part of the building changed hands. He knew that between 6:15 and 6:27 no one would be looking at the office diplomat who was his escort (not because they were afraid of...

4 likes

The Boy and the Lion

Len Rely

Submitted to Contest #242

 The castle was in the young boy’s eye, like the glint of a small gray linnet that lives in the eye of a falcon whose home is the sky. It stood on a hill in the distance, he had been inside it only once when his mother was mistress to one of the gentlewomen there. He thought the word “mistress” meant something honorable, not a word that means a boy has no father.Inside the castle was glittering stained glass that cast its glow on canvas and velvet walls, woodwork carved from uniquely large knots filamented with spirals of gold dust. But...

9 likes

Mecha-22

Len Rely

Submitted to Contest #239

              There is a legend of a massive space vessel, a colony ship that had traveled slowly for centuries from some long-extinct civilization, which was attacked mercilessly as it finally neared its destination and launched a thousand lifepods into the solar system like a squid releasing its eggs before dying. Eleven of them made it to Earth; nine landed in the sea, one hit a volcano and melted, and one came down somewhere in the Himalayas.    &nb...

10 likes