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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.

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    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 Wharf (1)

Saturday
Feb012014

Of Wharves, Loneliness, and Monsters

Yes, I know I've been discussing horror movies on a writing blog, and my justification is that I'm writing about them, aren't I? Okay, that's fairly lame, but it's my train set and I'll crash the engines into the bridge supports if I damn well want to, okay? But I also don't want to forget those little orphaned pieces of writing, or indeed writing news, that can so easily end up scattered amid a flurry of desktop files or even somewhere out there in cyberspace, where no one can hear them digitally scream.

First off, Indies Unlimited just published Indies Unlimited: 2013 Flash Fiction Anthology—their latest collection of Flash Fiction Challenge winners from last year—and I am particularly proud of my own small contribution. You can buy the anthology here, but I'll also repost my story with its prompt. Remember, these are accompanied in the book by the beautiful photography of K.S. Brooks, and I really urge anyone to get their hands on the full-colour print edition. So here's the prompt, followed by my story: 

This is where it had been happening. Back in the summer, when Gary Kessler disappeared, everyone had thought he had drowned. When they found his body, they knew differently.

Then there was the little Hamilton girl, Old Tom Billings, and half a dozen more.

Most of the time they never found the bodies. Sometimes they would find parts. The town council didn’t want to hear about it. They stuck their heads in the sand and hoped it would go away. Deputy Aldridge knew differently. He had seen it. He saw it take Sheriff Wilson, and he knew it had to be stopped. He came here tonight to put an end to it. He just had to wait till dark.

***

Till Dark

Although he’d seen terrible things, a pretty sunset never failed to bring a tear to Deputy Aldridge’s jaundiced eye. And this was as pretty as any, down by the lake that lay placid as mirror glass under the warm hues of a fading day.

No time for sentiment tonight, however—he had come to stop a monster. A thing he called, simply, The Horror. The town had suffered enough. He would wait until full dark, the time it always indulged its predations, and he would end its thrall. Checking his Glock 17, he felt a strange calm descend.

Crouching in the dwindling light, senses alert to the gentle sounds of evening—the creak of a frog, water sounds, a distant train—he recalled the awful endings already endured by the townsfolk: the Kessler kid, rangy adolescent limbs torn off; old Tom’s unspeakable final minutes; and worst of all, little Lucy Hamilton. His nightmares about her fate alone fueled the raging insomnia he’d picked up after Gulf War I. No, it would end tonight. Only one of those killings had been prompted by cunning not bloodlust: Sheriff Wilson. His old friend had come so close to solving the mystery.

Aldridge was tired. No more. All light had leached from the sky, barring a sprinkling of stars. It was time. All was quiet. Even the frog seemed to hold its breath. Deputy Aldridge sighed, inserted the Glock into his mouth, pointed up toward his brainpan, and put an ending to The Horror.

Second, and this is a simple one, I wrote a haiku recently. It's my first, but I kind of like it. Here it is:

Now I am alone

I hear the windchimes sing, though

there's no longer wind

And last but not least, now and again I join Dan Mader and co on his blog for the free writing exercises he hosts there every Friday. The latest one had a two-minute limit which, as anyone who's ever attempted it knows, is actually very difficult in terms of building any coherent narrative. They're more ephemeral and impressionistic, usually. But on this occasion a tiny short story appeared unbidden, which you can read among the other excellent entries here, but I also felt like I wanted to embellish it a little, which I've now done and will post here for posterity... or because I hate to see lost little orphans. (Oh, and yeah, it's still short. Just not that short.)

Wharf

"It's down at the wharf." Lauren was insistent. Her frown was adorable, always was. "The thing in the water."

"Then we'll go there." I wanted to see it, after all.

"You'll see it." Trembling, tears beginning.

We were fast. Wharf rats ourselves, really. Running between the ancient guano-spattered pilings and docks, laughing in that serious way we always had. One that was also kinda sad, truth be told. 

Lauren needed this and I wanted her to. Show me, I mean.

But we looked everywhere. All over hell's half-acre and then some. Red neon Firestone signs from pure memory. A tawdry motel named The Shamrock. These were the years soon after the noisome winds blew garbage like soiled snow through the rusty alleyways and gunmetal gantries. These were the quiet days following. The high plains whistle inside our flinching ears.

And we kept looking awhile. Beneath the water and out. Backs of warehouses, well inside loading bays, deep within oily backwaters, long-dead feathers floating on scum. Alert we stayed. Studied reflections aplenty and craned our necks to the mostly birdless sky. Where light came. But we never once saw Lauren's creature. Sure didn't mean it never existed. Just never saw it is all.