Month: January 2023

Ctrl + Shift + C

~ annemcsommers ~ 5 Comments

Hello hello, the word of the week is PASTE, and I was inspired in large part by a program asking me if I wanted to retain all the information on the clipboard after it closed. Follow our narrator as she presses v and pastes something she doesn’t expect to see.

It seemed ridiculous really that her marriage was over, due to a malfunctioning paste, or rather her missing the c key when performing the copy.


Maybe the real blame lay on her husband for not clearing the clipboard, or really for having the affair in the first place, that was probably what did the marriage in.


The worst part was that she didn’t feel angry, sad, or betrayed when she read the incriminating text, just relieved, because she had a reason to file for divorce.


If she was honest with herself, her marriage didn’t end with the text, or the affair, and she couldn’t really identify when they had made the transition from husband and wife, to flat mates that sometimes got each other off.


The whole thing had just happened by degrees, the proverbial frog in warming water, and the message on the shared computer was just the moment that she realized that the pot was boiling over.


It probably said something about her marriage after all, if she found out he is cheating after ten years together, and the only thought that was running through her head was that soon she would have the entire bed to herself.

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Welcome to My Parlour

~ annemcsommers ~ Leave a comment

This was written for the weekly picture prompt on The Writer’s Mess pictured below.  Meet Selina, psychic running her small shop, a hole in the wall, to get by.  It wasn’t exactly honest work, but well, what did they expect?

It had taken Selina a lot of time to get her space set up, balancing that right combination of mystery and tacky.  The fabric draped the walls, doing triple duty in ambiance, noise reduction, and hiding how shitty the small space actually was.

A single shelf of spell books, some literally just nicely covered phone books, gave the air of ancient knowledge.  The phone books were of course labelled “Do NOT Touch,” and depending on the clien,t she either told them they were fragile or dangerous.  The rest were either legit second-hand finds, or home crafts that had taken hours.  The room was lit solely by fairy lights, giving it a soft low that made the space feel more intimate.

On the table sat a single book, her “ritual” book, and her crystal ball.  She had a few tarot decks, pulling out the expensive “old” ones for the true believers.  She didn’t haul them out often, but when she did, it was because the client was the kind who visited enough to pay the rent.

Overall, it was a scam, from beginning to the end, but it paid the bills, vacations, the new car that she never brought here, less someone catch on.  Some days she almost felt guilty, but then the same old lady who paid her to contact her late husband would see her in her normal clothes at the grocery store and tell her to go back where she came from, and suddenly, the guilt was gone.

The Tale of a Travelling Bard- Part One

~ annemcsommers ~ Leave a comment

The first short story of the month, and it is a three parter, though each part stands alone.  Follow the story of a bard with a tragic past, an unlikely success, and a dark secret.  I will admit one part of this was written right after watching Witcher Season 1, and I had bards on the brain. Welcome to part one, the story of how the bard got his start in life, this one is pretty dark.

The way my story starts changes depending on the day. On a good day, my family knew that I was smart, and crafty, and that the farm life wouldn’t be enough for me. So when the travelling merchant came through and needed an assistant they offered me up, knowing that I would live a far better life with him than at home. They knew that I would get all manner of opportunities and have the chances they never would, and I would makes something of myself.

On my darker days, I was given to a questionable passer through in exchange for almost nothing in the way of goods cause I was pretty much worthless. Okay, I know that sounds a little self deprecating, but look at it from my parents point of view. They had their two good size strong boys, the heir and the spare to take over the farm. Then what they really needed was a girl, the marry the first born son of the farmer to our west. They had better land, more established, but we had a river access, and if the farms could be combined through a marriage of some sort, they would be golden.

Then I was born, and it was like, oh, oops lets try again, and they got my beautiful little sister a 11 months later. Maybe it was being weaned too early to make way for my sister, but I was tiny, frail, and sickly. I was smart, that I wasn’t lying about, but I took a lot of time, effort, and food and never gave much back. When the travelling merchant showed and wanted an assistant, giving him me was a good way to have one less mouth to feed. Maybe they hoped I would do well, but well, I doubt it.

I was only with the merchant for about a year, when he gave me to a blacksmith, who had no use for me, and who gave me to a stable keeper who also had no use for me, who gave me to an innkeeper, who had less than no use for me, but whose wife had desperately wanted children, and was unable to bear then. So she got me, and by this point I was a little less sickly, I had learned to read and write, mostly by irritating people until they taught me so that I would do something other than talk to them, but I got it.

Life at the inn was pretty easy, there was plenty of food and drink, and ll I had to do was clean up, help out with the horses a bit, which was breeze after the stable keeper gig. The best part though was the stories. People who stopped at inns travelled the world wide and they brought back the most amazing stories from their travels. I soaked them up, used the bits I got from tips to buy parchment and wrote down every scrap of them I could remember.

I knew at some point it would be expected that I would take over and run the inn, but my “Father” was fairly young and in very good health, and found me quite irritating in large doses, so he suggested I go off and explore the world a bit. Ironically, it was his recommendation that I go with a travelling merchant. A different one that my first, but it was a relatively safe job. I could go round, and collect my stories, and some day when I took over the inn, maybe I could change it up a bit, put on a show?

I had dreams a plenty and I was on my way…to jail. I didn’t do it, and by it, I mean the innkeepers daughter. She was a floozy by any account, but I was an innkeeper’s son and you do not screw, literally or figuratively, with the child of an innkeeper.

I suspected my rather large companion was not quite as innocent as I, but I was small, and stupid enough to get caught, so I was thrown in prison, where I knew I would languish until I died.

The Dawn of Panty-Girl

~ annemcsommers ~ 4 Comments

Hello hello, the word of the week is lead, and I am taking it to mean that heavy toxic substance on the periodic table.  Follow Kacey, as she makes a break from being one of the popular girls, and lives with the consequences.

The teacher stood at the front of the room holding up a pair of underwear at the end of a ruler like they were the most disgusting thing she had ever seen, demanding to know whose they were, and Kacey’s stomach felt like it was full of lead.

Those were her underwear, the ones that were missing from her gym locker after her shower, and from the smug smirks and giggles, she knew who the culprits were, not that there had ever been much doubt in the first place.

It had started last year when she was still one of those girls, but then life happened as it is wont to do, and she could no longer stand by and watch as they tormented classmates for things out of their control, so she broke free.

Being an it girl in high school bears more similarities to being in a gang* than one might expect, in so far as you didn’t get out, they kicked you out, and those who did leave typically suffered for it, though here the death was social in nature.

She didn’t regret it though, getting out, because her friends now, as few as they were, were actually her friends, and there was no pressure to perform to standard so that she could stand at the edge of a circle of girls that she knew spent their hours without her talking trash about her.

There were however, moments like these, where her underwear were being waved like a flag by an irate teacher that made her wish that high school would just end, and that she wouldn’t be known Panty-Girl, but alas there were three more months left of classes, so she raised her hand, accepting her new identity.

*Special add on here, I know that this is overly dramatic, and that being a girl in high school is very different from being a gang member.  That said, if you have ever been a high school girl and gotten too close to one of these groups you know that they are brutal and relentless, and in the moment this is what it feels like.  I will say the above is not my story, it is fiction, but what I went through makes me incredibly glad I was in University before social media came out.