Len Rely

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jun, 2023

Stories (29)

29 Stories

535 karma pts

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“Confessions of a Time Traveler” by 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...

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“The Lions of Revenge” by 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...

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“The Magic Bullet” by 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...

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“From Iron I Came and to Iron Shall I Return” by 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...

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“The Office Must Be Destroyed” by 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...

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“The Boy and the Lion” by 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...

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“Mecha-22” by 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...

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“The Taking of Deborah Warr” by Len Rely

Submitted to Contest #238

The two Debs shared the same first, middle and last names and were best friends even though DC was a responsible, caring parent and a career woman while “little” Debbie was as stout as a stump with a wild mess of dark hair. She liked her flipcakes done in the style of the teen show “8 Smiles” so that is how DC prepared them as she heard the sound of her daughter coming down the stairs and kissed her on the cheek before leaving for work in her Bundy Bella da Cossa convertible.She had only gone a block when she realized she had left something ...

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“Tiat” by Len Rely

Submitted to Contest #235

Tiat lived in the wild. As far as he knew he was the only person who did. The woman who taught him to read had died, her house collapsed in a storm. That is what happens with natural things, they return to the ground, so it was of no concern to him. The woman herself was in the ground now.What did concern him was that things were changing. The trees were leafless and covered with ivy up to their crowns. There were no spring buds, in fact there was no sound except for the crows. The crust of leaves on the ground was from three years ago, brig...

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“If There are No Men on Mars Then I am Not a Man” by Len Rely

Submitted to Contest #233

      I have not spoken to another human being in twenty-five years. I was at that time, the best astral projectionist on the planet, able to extend my consciousness an almost unlimited distance away from my physical body, and so I was chosen to search for extraterrestrial life, living or extinct, in a place where men cannot go. It was the most pressing question on the human mind and what fools we were, for as long as my body lies preserved unconscious in a lab I am unable to return to it. I canno...

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“Nereid's Tale” by Len Rely

Submitted to Contest #231

          A small, red sun rose over a snow-covered planet of the Nereid system, the lights of a semicircular hangar carved into the side of a mountain overlooking a narrow green belt that followed the equator. Hundreds of unclothed, pale-skinned humanoids with artificial bodies toiled at their stations; a community that acted as one mind with no concept of citizenship, laws, disobedience, individual expression. Unconformity leads to selfishness and unpredictability and therefore ex...

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“The Eternal Soldier” by Len Rely

Submitted to Contest #230

 In a temporary mess hall in Mille, France on September 1st 1944, it seemed that every table belonged to a different nation. General William “Dark Horse” Ramsay (who was then a Brigadier) was seated in the back, and would remark in his autobiography this date and location. Also present was a young Vasco Remy with his fellow guerrillas, future international trainer in irregular warfare whose memoirs from Spain are now a bestseller; but at the time Gen. Ramsay honestly did not know who these men were. Generals did not often see hand-to-ha...

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“Bert and Ernie Go Skydiving: a Tribute to Salman Rushdie” by Len Rely

Submitted to Contest #230

 Bert and Ernie Go Skydiving: a Tribute to Salman Rushdie The only “weather” in the stratosphere is that the temperature is always below freezing (because there is nothing solid to capture the Sun’s rays), and the wind is always moving even on a calm day. So the only question of seasons is whether ice particles will melt and slow down as they descend, like a damaged single-engine plane labeled “Corporation for Public Broadcasting” that has disgorged its two passengers, dropping like a pair of atomic puns over the English Channel. The ...

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“Skinwalker” by Len Rely

Submitted to Contest #229

    Gather around me if you wish to hear my tale, for I am a shaman king from the old country. My world is not yours, my words are not the ones spoken today. I am a wanderer of the path that separates men from beasts, and on certain nights preys upon other men. I do not do this because I dislike them or because I have no control over my actions, those are the motives of a criminal. I do it because I am a relic from a time when human predation was both normal and understood.     &nb...

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“The Man in the Stocks” by Len Rely

Submitted to Contest #228

 Just twenty-five years after the infamous Pied Piper deceived the good people of Hameln, something equally sinister occurred in the history of our town. Now to understand what happened I want you all to picture the town square as you see it now, the center of all commerce and misunderstanding, and imagine the following stores and houses along the milkman’s route which stood from left to right as I point to them… The saying that arguing between God and science is “like a butcher arguing with a baker that his bread is not meat” originate...

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