Category: Original Fiction

Three of a Kind

~ annemcsommers ~ Leave a comment

So this week’s story is a little out of character, and I am not sure what I was thinking when I was writing it. It feels a little like a summary of a longer story, but follow the story of Shilah, Stephan, and Grayson, who find a different way to look at happily ever after.

Every morning she woke up, miserable, exhausted, over tired, and then she remembered. A smile slowly crossed her face as she turned at the edge of the bed to take a long look at her lovers.


It wasn’t common, and most people would never be able to handle this kind of relationship, but for them this was it.


Shilah and Stephan had been friends since they were kids, and half way through high school they met Grayson. Until that moment Shilah had been able to ignore the crush that Stephan had on her, and it seemed that Gray changed everything, throwing it all out of balance.


Soon Steph was more into Gray than Steph, and then it seemed he bounced between them until her and Gray finally started dating.


It flamed out after two and a half years, not due to lack of love, but due to lack of resources. They both had things they wanted more than each other, and at some point there just wasn’t enough time being made.


They said they would be friends after, and well, they were. A year later when Gray and Shilah went to a fundraiser for her Mom’s work, it was as friends, and soon it spiralled into more. A year and a half later it started to spiral back out.
By that time Steph was living with them, a small door-less office had a bead curtain to delineate the transition into bedroom. He had tried dorms, living alone, roommates, and after two months a couch surfing had finally, reluctantly accepted the office conversion.


When Shilah and Gray had started melting down, Steph had stepped up to help out, by going to Shilah’s work events, or watching stupid sci-fi movies with Gray. Gray and Shilah had in turn stepped up their friendship with Steph with treats from the grocers, or an afternoon out at the park to people watch.


When a classmate had casually commented on her partners, Shilah hadn’t even really parsed it. When the subject of polyamory came up, and she got several pointed looks, she explained that they were just good friends.


It was a kind girl with purple hair and big glasses that explained that she understood, but did Shilah know that they could be more?


It was like the genie had been let out of the bottle and from then on, it’s all she could think about.


In the days that followed it was always with her. Even when she wasn’t actively thinking about it, it was still there, lurking in the back of her mind.


Multiple google searches, followed by history clearing just in case, had given her a better idea of what she was looking at and to her surprise it was a lot more than the threesome that she was thinking about.


Honestly, with her own lack of interest in the bedroom lately due to midterms, it was what they were already doing. The thing was though, that sex changed everything and while they had been together in a few configurations, this would be different, more, and if they fucked this up it would be the end of a friendship that she wasn’t sure she could take.


Even bringing it up could ruin everything, and once she put it out there, it was a bell that could not be un-rung.


She was not however as cautious as she had thought, she realized as she looked up at the screen. The three of them were sitting curled up on the couch watching a movie with a triad relationship and she doubted it was an accident, especially with the way that Steph wouldn’t meet her eyes.


It had only taken 5 or 6 times of Steph looking away and flushing before Gray had realized something was up and by the end of the film, he two was flushing.


Bell rung.


So she started to talk, laid out her case, and then fled, mortified, to the small café down the street mumbling coffee as she stumbled out the door.


She sat on one of the overstuffed couches drowning her sorrows in a coffee that was mostly sugar, letting the crappy music wash through her when she heard a familiar cough.


She looked up, and there were her boys, red faced and awkward as they sat on either side of her.


They sat in silence for a while until, almost so quietly she couldn’t here him, Steph said that they were in.


That was 23 years ago, and against all odds, here they were, still together, still happy, still them.

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The Reddest of Flags

~ annemcsommers ~ 4 Comments

So this week I fell off the posting wagon between finals, final assignments, work, NaNoWriMo, renovations, and an upcoming visitor, I forgot to edit my Friday work, and forgot to schedule this, my six sentence story based on the word valet. Follow our non-specific narrator as they drive up to a place that is out of there league, and realize that this is no ordinary dinner.

I knew that a mistake had been made the second I pulled up to the restaurant, which was far more fancy than he had let on.  The complementary valet parking stood out like a giant red flag, warning me that there was danger within and I should have turned around right then and there.

I walked into the place, glad I had dressed up, but not meeting the income level to wear clothes that would pass muster in a place like this, so I held my head up and did my superhero walk, because confidence covers a multitude of sins.

I sat down at the table, waiting for him and when the pre-paid champagne was offered I figured out what was going on, turned it down, and I asked for directions to the bathroom.

I sat hyperventilating in the stall, and the text that said he was running 20 minutes late was like a blessing, the out that I had been waiting for. 

I slipped out the front, palming a 50$ to the host at the front door to say I hadn’t arrived, retrieved my car and sped out before I could be spotted, sending a text about a last minute emergency, and making a plan on how I was going to break up with Mike, because tonight I discovered that this was not a man I wanted to marry.

You Are Not Alone

~ annemcsommers ~ Leave a comment

Hello Hello and welcome to CAMP Nanowrimo! Also, this week’s microfiction Monday where I will be writing the prompt :Write a piece under 300 words, where a character walks into a room and sees that the room is empty, and that is a terrifying thing. Follow our non gender specific narrator as they walk into the empty room.

I could feel the pounding of my heart in my throat, threatening to choke me as they walked away laughing, telling me that it was very funny, but they had better things to do with their time than attend to pranks.

It wasn’t a prank though, it was in here, it tried to kill me and I locked it in this room, and it was empty now, and oh god I had never realized how terrifying an empty room could be.

I wanted to call them back, demand that they stay, or let me come with them, but it was like the words died on the way out, only a rasping noise escaping, not audible over the rumbling engine of the police cruiser parked in front of my house.

I stood paralysed, as the noise faded out, as my ears became adjusted to the silence, and the only sound I could hear was the pounding of my heart, the rushing whoosh of my own blood in my head.

Then I heard it, the scraping, shuffling noise, and for an instant I was relieved to know that it was real, that it wasn’t all in my head, then reality came rushing back along with the terror, and I knew that this was it, for me, it was all over.

A Life on the Silver Screen

~ annemcsommers ~ 5 Comments

Hello hello, and welcome to this week’s six-sentence story, based on the word of the week SCREEN. I revisited a character from the week WRAP, who was making their debut film. Follow our narrator 32 years later as she looks back on her life of fame, and asks the hard questions.

It had been 33 years since she looked up at the silver screen, and cringed as she watched herself in the movie that had launched her career.


Things were much different now, she had the money, the fame, the career, and it was both everything she ever wanted, and nothing at all.


She had heard the line “if you aren’t enough before the gold medal, you won’t be enough with it,” but she hadn’t heeded the warning, and now she sat starting down 60 with a list of accolades as long as she arm, feeling empty.


It wasn’t, as some of the traditionalists would say, a lack of family, because even alone as she was, there was no part of her that regretted the choice not to marry, to have children, and if she had any regrets it was letting go of friends to pursue this dream.


It was only when she had the money to retire that she asked herself what she was doing, why she had done this, and it seemed that there wasn’t really an answer to that question, at least not for her.


She felt like she was 20 years late to her midlife crisis, too late to make changes, so she pressed send on the email to her agent, agreeing to the audition for the kooky grandma, not because she wanted it, but because she didn’t know what she wanted, and why not keep on going with what she had.