I would like to thank Randi for the invitation to participate. And for her editorial assistance. Please look out for the other stories in this event. You are in for some real treats.
Ryan O'Shaughnessy's life was absolutely awesome. At least, that's what he told anyone who was silly enough to ask.
But jokes to one side, he had every reason to be happy with his lot in life. His parents Bridey and Mick O'Shaughnessy loved him, as did his fiancée, Coleen Murphy.
Although their sharing an apartment before entering holy wedlock caused a frisson of angst amongst some of the older members of their families, their parents didn't mind and Father Kenneth, the parish priest, was a wise enough old bird to know when to hold or when to fold.
They were saving for the downpayment on a house a couple of miles from the area of town in which they currently lived.
The development they were looking at was going to be an absolutely stunning home, with amazing appliances, well-finished rooms and garden areas both front and back that looked as good as those shown in House Beautiful, Fine Gardening magazine and Home Gardening magazine.
Ryan deliberately chose "was going to be an absolutely stunning home" because although Ryan and Coleen had put a reserve on their new property no actual construction work had commenced and probably wouldn't for another six months or so. The photographs were all AI generated.
All seemed well in the world of Ryan and Coleen until someone breached a dyke, or perhaps it would be more apposite to say that a dyke had breached something, but more on that anon.
Ryan worked for a major office management software company. If you are in business to any degree, lesser or greater, then you'll more likely than not have used software designed and implemented by Müll-Computer-Unternehmen or MCU as it was more widely known.
What MCU did was to provide what is known as white label products for major business concerns with accountancy suites, communications systems, control systems, Virtual Reality systems, HR systems and the like. But the client could pretend that it was their own software that was running. Which was why MCU charged more than their rivals did, but the clients were always happy to pay the premium rates.
One of the advantages for Ryan, apart from the fantastic salary, was that he didn't have to spend time tied to his desk (to coin a phrase) and could work from anywhere he chose. Including the apartment he and his fiancée shared.
Due to a delay in the dental office Ryan had his teeth cleaned and polished late in the morning, so he decided to phone the office, tell them he'd be in later and drop in at home and grab a bite to eat.
He didn't bother to tell Coleen about his change of plan as she had told him she'd be out all day with his mother in a small city about 100 miles away to look at some wedding dress designs.
When Ryan opened the apartment's door and walked through into the living area, he had the shock of his life when he witnessed his fiancée and his mother indulging in what he later learned (courtesy of Bing) was known as scissoring, or tribadism.
When they realized that they were no longer alone together (to coin another phrase, I feel I'm on a roll here!) in the room, they disengaged their vulvas and slid away from each other, wearing shocked expressions.
They were stunned into silence, looking at Ryan almost as if they hoped he might vanish from their sight. But they both knew that wasn't going to happen. Swiftly, they began covering themselves with random bits of clothing and cushions from the large couch they'd been canoodling to the max on only moments before. "Not gonna rest my head on those cushions any longer," Ryan thought, barely able to keep his dental office coffee down.
"Mother... Coleen... just what the fuck is going on? I didn't know either of you were lesbians!"
Bridey shook her head. "Coleen isn't a lesbian, as such. I'd guess you could call her bi-curious, and I was helping her to explore that side of her personality, sort of."
Ryan frowned. "That's bull, mother. You were helping my fiancée cheat on me. That's what you were doing. And since when were you gay, Mother?"
"I wasn't cheating on you, Ryan," explained Coleen, interjecting. "Like your mom said, she was just helping me work through my feelings."
"What feelings? The feelings that you wanted to cheat on me?"
"But it's not cheating, not really. Because if you'd have caught me with a man, well, yes, that would have been cheating. But I'd never do that, Ry. I love you too much to do that."
"Just not enough to stop you having sex with my mother. Anyway, 'exploring that side of your personality'? What if you'd have realized you were totally into girls and that you didn't want me in your life any longer?"
"I wouldn't have done that. I love you too much, honey. You know that."
"Actually, I now know no such thing."
He turned to his mother. "What would Dad say if he knew what you'd been getting up to with my ex-fiancée?"
She shrugged. "Your father and I have an arrangement. He knows I'm bi-sexual and he's okay with me having my silly little dalliances, unimportant events in the scheme of things, so long as they don't interfere with our marriage, the core things that involve us, affect us."
Ryan happened to notice that the expression on his fiancée's face, ex-fiancée, now, had suddenly shifted to one of hurt and anger when she had realized that Bridey only thought of her as being a silly little dalliance and an unimportant event.
He then realized that the participants in the affair had radically different views on their affair and what they'd expected from it.
Without another word Ryan glanced down at the occasional table by the door and grabbed the two cell phones he saw there, stuffed them in his pockets and ignoring their shrieking protests, left the apartment and firmly, but quietly, closing the door behind him.
Without their phones they wouldn't be able to call his father to spin him a yarn, and although there was a phone point in the apartment the last time it had been connected to the phone network was probably during the Bush 1 or Bush 2 administrations.
He took the elevator to the ground floor and once outside the building he phoned his father. "Hi, Dad. I just had a fucking hell of a shock. I went back to the apartment unexpectedly and I found Mom and Coleen in bed together having sex." He heard his father's gasp of horror.
"Mom told me that you and her have an open relationship and that you didn't mind her having sex with women. Is that true?"
His father sighed. "Not... not entirely. Rather than you come to the house and risk your mother trying to blindside us with BS, I'll meet you at Monty's Sports Bar in a half hour. Is that okay, Ry?"
"Sure, Dad. I'm not expected at the office for a while, so Monty's sounds good to me."
When Ryan had parked his car in the parking lot and walked into Monty's, the screens were playing some European soccer games and his father was sitting at one of the back booths with a pitcher of beer and two pint glasses on the table.
He motioned to them. "Proper Imperial pint glasses and a pitcher of Goose Island IPA. I thought about some whisky, but I know we're both driving, so I decided against that."
Ryan sat down, poured himself a drink and said: "I got home and found them both fucking on the sofa in the living room. Then Mom gave me some bull about you being okay with it? Is that true, Dad?"
Mick took a reflective pull on his drink. "Not entirely, Ryan. Not entirely. Years ago, I found that your mother had gotten too close to a female colleague. In fact, like you, I caught them having sex.
"It nearly led to us breaking up but she explained that she had needs that I, as a man, couldn't meet. You were only a toddler and as I didn't want to break our family up, I decided to stay and work something out.
"What we worked out was that we had a postnuptial agreement drawn up that would allow your mother to have female friends, but that the stipulations would be nobody we knew, that they wouldn't be from our own area or town and that there would be no lasting relationships between Bridey and the other women.
"To my mind, fucking Coleen, your fiancée, damn it, has totally smashed through our postnuptial agreement. Are you going to be able to forgive Coleen over what she's done?"
Ryan shook his head. "No, Dad. Not at all. If she'd fuck me over by fucking my own mom even before the wedding, what's to stop her fucking other women or even other men, too, once we were married? I can see how Mom managed to baby trap you into signing the postnup because you had me to think about, but would you have married her if you'd known then what you know now?"
Mick shook his head, sadly. "I doubt I would have, to be honest. I feel so angry with her. She's fucked up our marriage and now she's fucked things up between you and Coleen."
"Yeah, but to be honest I can't help but think Mom's done me a favor, in a way. What I mean is, she's shown Coleen up as a flighty, unfaithful little bitch. You know we'd planned on having a big family? What if I'd have fathered six kids with her, then caught her cheating on me? Would the kids even have been mine? That would be far worse than finding out now, and eventually, being able to move on, you know?"
"I agree, Ryan; you make a fair point. There's no possibility you can forgive Colleen? What about your mother? Will you forgive her?"
"What? For being the slut who stole my fiancée? Not in the foreseeable future. You going to forgive Mom?"
"Not again. I forgave her once before and it look like she threw it back in my face. Divorce, as laid out in the postnuptial agreement, seems like the only option for me, if I'm to retain some level of self-respect."
They finished the pitcher, decided against another, and at the door to the establishment, they shook hands, hugged and parted ways.
Ryan returned to the now empty apartment and replaced the phones where he had found them. Although logically he knew the apartment was still the same, it somehow felt tainted, filthy in a way he couldn't define but knew for a fact.
He knew he could no longer live there. As for the two cheaters? They were nowhere in sight, which pleased Ryan because although not by nature a confrontational man, he was so wound up that he would have confronted the two cheaters and he realised with surprise that he couldn't have guaranteed it wouldn't have degenerated into a physical confrontation.
He collected some clothing and bits and pieces and was able to move into the spare room of Danny, a good friend of his who, having known the family for many years, had been shocked by how things had gone down.
Over hot sweet tea that evening (Danny's mother had come from England and instilled the benefits of hot, sweet tea into her family members), Danny revealed that whilst he had always liked Ryan's mother, he had always felt weird vibes coming from her. Nothing definite, but that there had always been something there behind the facade, he'd always thought
The next day, Coleen sent an email apology to Ryan:
Dear Ryan,
