Len Rely

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jun, 2023

Stories (33)

33 Stories

604 karma pts

?

“Big Girls Are From Venus” by 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 ...

1 comment 1
Read story

“The Lynching” by 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...

0 comments 0
Read story

“The Time of the Gathering” by 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...

3 comments 3
Read story

“The Evolution of Meat” by 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). ...

2 comments 2
Read story

“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...

0 comments 0
Read story

“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...

0 comments 0
Read story

“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...

0 comments 0
Read story

“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...

5 comments 5
Read story

“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...

2 comments 2
Read story

“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...

2 comments 2
Read story

“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...

3 comments 3
Read story

“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 ...

2 comments 2
Read story

“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...

1 comment 1
Read story

“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...

5 comments 5
Read story

“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...

2 comments 2
Read story

Author bio

Len Rely has not written a bio yet!