Month: October 2021

Not Quite Right

~ annemcsommers ~ Leave a comment

So this was written a little out of desperation, and the reason I am going down to bi-weekly postings of short stories in the new year. I grabbed a random prompt from Agirlnamedjana’s prompt account on tumblr.

“When they tried to dig up the body, to everyone’s surprise, it was not empty. There were more bodies in the casket than expected.”

I wrote the following in about 30 minutes, and I highly recommend her blog for anyone who is looking for some inspiration.

We all stood around the open casket, dirty, sweating, and horrified. It was supposed to be empty.

We were crime enthusiasts, or at least thats what we liked to call outselved. It was a litle weird, but we had all watched a few too many procedural crime dramas, which led to true crime dramas, which lead to this, which even I admit was really freaking weird.

We had been following the case on the news, until it it ended in the supposed death of the suspect, who had been proven the kiler post mortem. The thing is, the crimes didn’t stop, not entirely. Well, they did in our town, but those of us who fanatically track this stuff online found that there were crimes with similar MO’s a few states over.

There were just enough difference that it wasn’t flagging on any databases, but there was something about these new murders that just made you know that it was the same screwed up guy. Then they stopped and another set of similar, yet different murder started in another state.

Some were saying partner, others copycat, but my little group of weirdos, we had a different idea entirely. With a copy of the autopsy, forensic results, and deterctive note. I know, you want to know where we got them, but even I am not entirely sure. Suzie started to imply sexual favors and we all decided we weren’t going to ask any follow up questions.

Anyways, everything we had was conclusive right down to dental records, except this one small thing, the reason none of us could let this go, the damage from the grenade that ended up going off in his hand, it was his right hand, and this guy was most certainly left handed. Why would he have been throwing with his non-dominant hand.

Some illegal hacking, more of Suzie’s favors, and we had some CCTV footage that had a guy that looked super similar leaving the scene, and then around town for a few days, and then turning up where the next murders started.

It should have been enough, a slam dunk, but the cops wanted this over with. The bad publicity from not catching this guy for so long was haunting them, and they wanted it over. There would be no more investigation. Even if it did look like he had faked his own death and was murdering people elsewhere, because, well, it was elsewhere and so not their problem.

We reached out, I swear we did, to other communities, other cops, but ultimately, we got nothing. No one wanted to touch this with a ten foot pole. It was bad news, and spoke of police maleficence that no one wanted to be the harbinger of.

So we stewed, and then we sulked, and then we came up with a really dumb idea. If, and it wasn’t really an if because we knew it was true, the killer had faked his own death and was on a killing spree, then there was an empty coffin in the local cemetary that would prove as much.

We snuck in shortly after dark, and even with 6 of us, it took a suprisingly long time to dig down to the casket. Six feet is a lot of dirt, and by the time we reached it, we were all painfully aware of why people used machinery to dig graves nowadays.

What we were not expecting when we finally popped it open, was the smell. I, I don’t really know how to describe it, decomposing human flesh smells so much worse than I ever could have imagined. There was a body in there, and if it hadn’t been for Suzie’s gasped “We were right.” I wouldn’t of looked.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. The casket wasn’t empty, we were wrong about that, but the killer in question was a man, 6’3”, dark hair, and all three of the bodies jammed in the casket were short blond women. I could hear the sirens approaching and I wasn’t sure what I was going to say, after all, we were right, but oh, so wrong.

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Make a Wish!

~ annemcsommers ~ Leave a comment

This is less than 250 word story based on a picture and I hate it. I decided to post it anyways because there comes a point when you just need to stop looking at a piece and put it out there…

It started as a single shooting star, and a wish.

Every day was a battle that I fought just to keep going until tomorrow.  Even as I lay sleeping, I dare not do so deeply, for fear of what might happen if I don’t keep one ear tuned to the sounds around me.

First I lost my mother, then my father, and now it is just me and my three sisters, and I know I won’t be able to keep them safe, not here. 

When I looked up at the sky and saw the shooting star, I remembered what my mother said and I made a wish.  A wish for our little family to be alone, safe from the things that go bump in the night. 

When I awoke in the morning it was to a great shuddering of the earth, the first meteor had struck. In the days that followed they fell from the sky like rain, killing and sparing at random.  We huddled in our small shelter for days, waiting.

When they finally stopped, when we were finally safe I left our shelter and looked out at the devastation and I began to weep. It was then I recalled something else my mother had told me.  Be careful what you wish for.

Banana’s

~ annemcsommers ~ 5 Comments

This was written for the six sentence story word prompt of the week VIDEO by girlontheedge. I wanted to focus it on ADHD for ADHD awareness month, and ended up with this, which is a self portrait in parts, but I think i pieces of it are relatable even if you aren’t on the spectrum.

She pressed the back button on the video for the third time, and yet again was distracted from seeing the critical moment unwind. By the time she finally managed to watch the ten seconds that inspired a wave of gasps and applause, its impact was overshadowed the irritation of taking ten minutes to watch a two-minute clip.

She sat hyper-focused on the computer, in part to ignore the disaster that surrounded her.  The garbage overflowing, the sink somehow full again, and the fridge that sat either empty or full of food gone bad, depending if she had emptied it, or just thought about emptying it.

She went back to her doom scrolling, and threw a song on her phone, set to repeat, and listened for the following hour as she browsed.  She finally got up for a snack, when hunger overwhelmed her indecision on what to eat, and found ingredients sitting on the counter, and remembered with a start, that she had sat down to look up the recipe for banana bread.

For the Greater Good!

~ annemcsommers ~ Leave a comment

So this one is based on the idea of “For the Greater Good.” It’s dark, and somewhat violent. See end notes and tags for more warnings. I am running a little light on saved content. Starting in the new year I am switching the short stories to biweekly posting for my own sanity. I may end of doing the same for microfiction, but the six sentence stories will remain weekly

How did it come to this? He thought, as he lay gasping for breath. He was so cold, and he realized with a start that the warmth seeping up from below him was a pool of his own blood.

Karl had grown up in the poor part of town. He learned young that things like laws only applied to people like him. The rich, the powerful, they could bend the world to their will. Money passing into the right hands changed the course of investigation, and Karl watched the man who murdered his mother walk away with a slap on the wrist.

In another life, he would have called that man father, but in this one he had no proof and so he remained destitute. Orphaned at 12, the victim of violent crime, and a little on the homely side, he was never at the top of any lists to be adopted.

He walked out of the group home at 18 with 200$ to his name, most of which he had pick-pocketed, and a small suitcase of hand me down clothes. With no references, and no address, legitimate jobs weren’t an option. He was one of the lucky ones, he found a place, a crew that would take him on, and kept him from freezing to death come winter.

He wasn’t much to look at, but Karl could tell a story. His mother had called it his gift. So he told the other boys in the crew a tale of a better life. All they had to do was make things change, make people see what was going on right in front of them.

At first the boys laughed, and Narry, the leader of their band of misfits did too. As long as Karl paid his portion of the tax, he was allowed to say what he wanted. The older boys always thought he was ridiculous, but the younger ones, the new ones, they looked up to him. He took care of them, and always told them there was room to do better.

It took eight years, but after Narry moved on, and Karl stepped into his place. A year later he had collected enough to get buy him and his friends a home. He used the tax he collected to pay the mortgage, to fix it up. He got them clothes, food, and schooling. The degrees earned translated into jobs, which meant that they left the home, physically that is. They never stopped being his boys.

It was a surprise just short of his 40th when he was interviewed on his work turning lives around, running what they called a halfway house. He tried to explain that wasn’t what he was doing, it wasn’t a noble endeavor, but they ate it up. Soon he was being invited to run for city council; being told the world needed people like him. His boys lobbied for him, voted for him.

They helped him carry out his good work, as they changed the world, one political office at a time. He expanded the house, made more of them, helped more boys like him get a good start. When he was high enough up, he could finally see his world start to take shape. Him and his boys did what had to be done. Years on the streets had made them used to doing the hard work, the dirty jobs, what needed to be done, but others were too lazy, or too selfish to do.

There were those who opposed him. People never did like change, but he knew that it had to be done. It was necessary, after all for the greater good sometimes a few had to suffer. He tried to make sure that didn’t happen though; he tried to bring them all into his new world.

It ended, in a flash, with a bang, and he lay here gasping for breath. It wouldn’t matter now, if they tried to undo what he had done. It couldn’t be unwritten, people had changed and adapted to this new way of life. For all the opposition’s objections, their declarations that they would fix things, he knew they wouldn’t. Not really. So his life’s work would endure, in spite of their efforts. Karl, a man who was willing to die for the world he believed in, finally did so.

Cara flinched at the knock at the door, and her and her brothers were ushered into the living room, and into the crawlspace below the coffee table. The light from between the boards was covered by a thick rug their father shifted over the floor above them, and they were plunged into darkness. They stayed there silent, and listened to their mother answer the door. What she said was indecipherable, but they heard the door close and lock. Then a gasp from her father, and a loud cry from their mother.

What had happened, had something gone wrong? Then the rug lifted, the crawlspace opened and she flinched back into the darkness. Had they found her?
Her Father’s hands pulled her out and into a hug and ask she looked at him she could see he was crying.

Her Mother was crying as well, and stood clutching a newspaper. Cara ran to her. “Mama, whats wrong?”

Her mother held out the paper, and Cara read. “WAR IS OVER” Karl Leads Dead”

She blinked in shock, and read it again, out loud this time for her brothers that were pestering her. She continued,

“Karl Leads, who claimed political power 12 years ago, was finally killed by a sniper in a joint mission of Allied and Royal special forces. With the death of their leader, the great army has conceded defeat on several fronts and offered their unconditional surrender.

Leads, who initially ran for office on a platform of social change was responsible for the deaths of 2.3 million citizens, accounting for approximately 20% of the continents overall population, and 80% of it’s wealth.

It was only two years ago when this conflict spread beyond the borders of the small country of Blarnia, but in those intervening years approximately 17 additional countries were seized. While today marks the first day of freedom for 18 countries, and over 10 million people, it will be a long hard recovery for many. Even so we will mark today as Liberation day in honor of the sacrifice of the men and women who died ensuring the freedom of the all, and stopping this tyrant before he could go any further. Happy Liberation day!”

Okay, so warnings, Genocide, War Crimes, End Justifies the Means ideology.I always wanted to write something from the POV of the villian. I think this would have had to be a novel to truly do it justice, but as it is, I hope you get a taste into the other side of the story.