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Alev Gefen

Author on Reedsy Prompts since May, 2025

Stories (21)

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21 Stories

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Empty Frame

Alev Gefen

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

Alev Gefen

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

Alev Gefen

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

Alev Gefen

Submitted to 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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The Weight of Why

Alev Gefen

I keep replaying that Tuesday afternoon when Aki called me, his voice cracking through the phone like broken glass. "Leif's in the hospital," he said. "Car accident. Charlene and the kids..." He couldn't finish the sentence. Didn't need to.Three weeks earlier, Leif Johansson had everything. Senior partner at the law firm, beautiful family, that sprawling house in Westchester with the infinity pool. He was the guy who had his shit together while the rest of us were still figuring out our 401 (k)’s. The one who remembered everyone's birthdays,...

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Loose Strings

Alev Gefen

"Hello?""Ms. Makkonen, this is Dr. Kaurismakki.""Yes, Doctor, I've been expecting your call.""Ms. Makkonen, I'm afraid I have some unfortunate news.""Is it Eiro?""Mr. Lahti has been unconscious on arrival. We lost him.""Linda, honey, can I come in?""Just a second... OK, Mom. Go ahead.""Was that Dr. Kaurismakki?""Yeah... Eiro didn't make it.""Mom, can you give away my violin? I'm not going to play anymore.""What?! But you're so good! Your father and I are proud of you. It'd break our hearts if---""Mom, my heart is broken, now. Playing the vio...

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Signal Lost

Alev Gefen

Submitted to Contest #320

The notification pinged across nine different phones simultaneously: Weather window confirmed. Departure 0600 tomorrow. Don't forget the drone batteries. —Derek Leia Fong double-tapped to heart the message in their group chat before switching to her Instagram stories. The Ring light cast perfect illumination across her packed gear as she filmed herself doing final equipment checks. "Day zero of the Kholat Syakhl expedition," she announced to her 50k followers, using the mountain's indigenous name that most people couldn't pronounce. "Nine fr...

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The Upload

Alev Gefen

Submitted to Contest #319

Jim's thumb hovered over the "Share" button, the blue glow reflecting in his wire-rimmed glasses. Three years of following, of believing, of documenting every moment with the Teacher—and it had come to this.The video was forty-seven seconds long. Shot in portrait mode, because that's how the world consumes truth now: vertical, digestible, instant. In it, Manny spoke quietly to a small group outside the community center, his words about second chances and helping the forgotten cutting through the evening air like they always did. But this tim...

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The Space Between Notes

Alev Gefen

Submitted to Contest #317

8:30 a.m. I am running late. The train waits for no one. The Takadanobaba station hums with controlled chaos. I slip into the packed Yamanote Line car, bodies stacked like books on a crowded shelf. This is my third week in Tokyo, and I'm still fascinated by how forty people can share six square feet without making eye contact. Back home in Helsinki, this would be unbearable. Here, it feels like meditation. At Azabu Hall, Professor Iinuma is already writing on the blackboard when I duck into the classroom. After the quiz, I venture to the nea...

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The Foundling

Alev Gefen

Edward Brennan had always known he was adopted, but the story his parents told was simple enough: a teenage mother couldn't care for him, so the Brennan family—prominent immigration lawyers in San Francisco—had welcomed him in. His adoptive mother was Irish-American, his father third-generation German-American, and Edward had grown up bilingual, moving seamlessly between cultures in their Pacific Heights home.The Brennan house overlooked the bay, its walls lined with degrees from Harvard and Stanford, photos of handshakes with senators and j...

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Hero Rising

Alev Gefen

Ellis "Tank" Dayton stood six-foot-eight in his steel-toed boots, his massive frame filling the doorway of the community center like a protective wall. The kids called him Tank not just for his size, but for how he bulldozed through every obstacle the Meridian Corporation threw at their neighborhood."They're coming again tomorrow," said Kiara, looking up from the eviction notices scattered across the folding table. "Twenty more families."Tank's jaw tightened. Meridian had been systematically buying up properties in East Haven for months, off...

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On the Margins

Alev Gefen

What a day... All the guests are laughing and singing their lungs out. They threw a party for this kid, and he's crying. Granted, he's only eight... days, that is. Eight days old and throwing one of the loudest tantrums I'd heard in years. The grownups don't give it a second thought, as they twirl around the room in a delirious haze of wine and merriment. They named the kid Isaac, but he sure isn't laughing. Still reeling from the shock, I'll bet.The smell of brisket and kugel drifts from the kitchen, mixing with the sweet wine on everyone's...

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The Blue Blanket

Alev Gefen

The phone vibrated against Lukas' chest at 2:47 AM. He didn't need to read the message twice."They're coming. Tonight. Go now."Veronika was already awake, her motherly intuition sharper than any alarm. She held their son, Theo, swaddled in the blue blanket her grandmother had knitted, the one thing from her childhood she couldn't leave behind. The baby stirred but didn't cry—as if he understood the gravity of silence. "The van?" she whispered."Behind the old dairy. Petro's cousin." Lukas was already stuffing documents into a plastic bag—birt...

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Crosshairs

Alev Gefen

They called him Orion because of his size—six-foot-seven in combat boots, shoulders broad enough to block doorways. But Captain Mark "Orion" Belmont earned his reputation through the precision of his rifle scope and an almost supernatural ability to track enemy movements across the Syrian conflict zone.From bombed-out buildings and rocky outcrops, Orion could spot insurgent activity from distances that made other snipers shake their heads in disbelief. Three confirmed kills at over 1,500 meters. Seven successful reconnaissance missions behin...

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Monuments

Alev Gefen

Jason folded the letter with an audible swish. His wife Rhiannon looked up from her book, marking her place with a finger against the spine. "Is everything all right?" she asked."Yeah, another bit of good news for today..." Jason chuckled wryly. "Orion Tech decided to forgo my proposal.""Shame on them," Rhiannon said, setting down her book entirely now. "You've put more guile and guts into it than anybody I know. And they're not even half the workaholic you are.""People in my department would agree, but they also claim that I'm... rebellious...

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Author bio

Alev Gefen is a short fiction author and poet. With a passion for cultures and languages since childhood, Alev has always sought out the company of classic literature and dictionaries. The 2020 lockdown inspired Alev to explore themes of spirituality and endurance, which she addressed in her debut publication, *Faith-Forward: Poems About Hope, Inspiration, and Strength.*
((C) 2021). Her follow-up books include *Love Lines: Poems About and From the Heart* ( (C) 2023) and *After Forever* ( (C) 2025). Alev interweaves themes of cultural identity and language into her short fiction and poems, having emigrated from Belarus in 1996. She has lived in Philadelphia, PA; Washington, DC; Shanghai, China; and Tokyo, Japan. The latter's language and culture are her lifelong passions, as Alev had studied and worked there in 2010 and 2017. She currently resides in Redondo Beach, CA, and frequents West Hollywood. Apart from writing, she enjoys painting, music (rock/metal, classical, and world), and spending time with family.