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  • Endless Joke
    Endless Joke
    by David Antrobus

    Here's that writers' manual you were reaching and scrambling for. You know the one: filled with juicy writing tidbits and dripping with pop cultural snark and smartassery. Ew. Not an attractive look. But effective. And by the end, you'll either want to kiss me or kill me. With extreme prejudice. Go on. You know you want to.

  • Dissolute Kinship: A 9/11 Road Trip
    Dissolute Kinship: A 9/11 Road Trip
    by David Antrobus

    Please click on the above thumbnail to buy my short, intense nonfiction book featuring 9/11 and trauma. It's less than the price of a cup of coffee... and contains fewer calories. Although, unlike most caffeine boosts, it might make you cry.

  • Music Speaks
    Music Speaks
    by LB Clark

    My story "Solo" appears in this excellent music charity anthology, Music Speaks. It is an odd hybrid of the darkly comic and the eerily apocalyptic... with a musical theme. Aw, rather than me explain it, just read it. Okay, uh, please?

  • First Time Dead 3 (Volume 3)
    First Time Dead 3 (Volume 3)
    by Sybil Wilen, P. J. Ruce, Jeffrey McDonald, John Page, Susan Burdorf, Christina Gavi, David Alexander, Joanna Parypinski, Jack Flynn, Graeme Edwardson, David Antrobus, Jason Bailey, Xavier Axelson

    My story "Unquiet Slumbers" appears in the zombie anthology First Time Dead, Volume 3. It spills blood, gore and genuine tears of sorrow. Anyway, buy this stellar anthology and judge for yourself.

  • Seasons
    Seasons
    by David Antrobus, Edward Lorn, JD Mader, Jo-Anne Teal

    Four stories, four writers, four seasons. Characters broken by life, although not necessarily beaten. Are the seasons reminders of our growth or a glimpse of our slow decay?

  • Indies Unlimited: 2012 Flash Fiction Anthology
    Indies Unlimited: 2012 Flash Fiction Anthology
    Indies Unlimited

    I have two stories in this delightful compendium of every 2012 winner of their Flash Fiction Challenge—one a nasty little horror short, the other an amusing misadventure of Og the caveman, his first appearance.

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Entries in Cigarettes (1)

Friday
Nov172017

In Transit

"I was afraid you wouldn't come," she said.

The man didn't answer but sat in the chair across from her, at the outdoor table she had already propped with a matchbook to prevent it from tottering.

They watched the sparrows hop among the sunlit cobblestones, flit between the legs of the tourists. Light and shade.

"So…" she said. Her voice sounded distant even to her. Less a whisper than the passage of a ghost. "You came."

He smiled with little warmth, leaned back, closed his eyes. "Indeed."

"I'm glad." She fumbled in her purse for cigarettes, found them, lit one.

"You smoke." Too incurious to be a question; even his indifference stung.

She waved a dismissive hand that only made her feel matronly. Or worse, like a girl feigning womanhood. 

Christ, how does he do it? Make me feel this way?

She smoked her cigarette greedily, lustily even, like someone trying to ignore the firing squad as it gathered in the yard.

The man sighed, wafted away the grey swirl between them, looked at her for the first time.

"So why? Why are we here?" he asked.

"Very philosophical of you."

"Funny."

"Because we didn't finish the conversation."

"That was a long time ago. I don't even remember the first part of—"

"Oh, I think you do."

Something transited his face, something elusive and brief, a rogue orbit. As if a decision had happened behind some locked door. A bad one. A cataract. A shadow on an X-ray. 

"Go ahead, then. Talk."

"How does someone pick up a sentence they started writing ten years ago?"

"Look. I don't have time for this. What is it? Money? I can—"

She gasped. "Fuck you."

"Yeah. Allegedly you already did."

He stood. Looked at her briefly. Mumbled something.

"What? What did you say?"

"I said, I never knew what you wanted from me." And he walked away, into the milling sightseers.

She watched the people through a film of tears and then the tiny sparrows that hopped like popcorn on a griddle. 

"Just your apology, Daddy. That's all," she whispered.