Search
Browse
  • 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.

Networked Blogs

 

 

Tweets
Places I Hang Out
Blog Archive
Friday
Aug302024

Aircrash

“Dear diary, today nothing awful happened.”

Days we can say that are okay days. Days like today when the worst that happened was the squabbling of ravens in the treetops. Unlike yesterday when a sound from behind Wolf Mountain momentarily quickened your heart beat. The sensation of something staggering to its feet… and selecting. Targeting. Glitching.

Your mother, boarding, grips your hand, like she knows.

You recall all this, the world’s contrasts:

Fruit stands in a scorched land where even the wasps curl up in defeat.

Cold malnourished things outside colder walls. Wanting in. 

A sound, a shear, a lurch, the sudden change in pitch.

A hundred people breathe in, shakily. Oddly, no one screams. One small child cries out, in a dream. But for the hundred or so clutching their armrests, lawyers and loggers and lovers, this is no dream. Through windows like portholes, the world yaws and rolls and comes blistering to greet them. To greet you. 

Your mother, in a pale and godless voice, says, “Now it’s all over.” 

***

So sing for me.

***

Play songs of road trips, don’t let me

Take only sips, but yeah let me

Grasp your snake hips, you can’t fault me,

Lick your full lips, uh, they’re salty.

Dreaming of this, almost telling me,

Belief in two slips ain’t no felony.

***

Hey, hey, stop. Enough. You knew this day was coming. Shhh. Don’t fret. Isn’t it better to lose the cowl of anxiety and know your fate is no longer conjecture?

The man with the haircut and cattle bolt, the cannibal shrink, the dancing albino giant with the tiny hands, these and more were not me but my emissaries. Oh, how they wished.

But I’m here now.

You have the look of spit smeared on a sidewalk. Once shiny, now drying, like a life begun yet still unlived. Take this chance, your very last. Take it.

Your scars are relief maps of your past. Retrace them.

Make of the world’s tender fury your art; capture it, let it breathe.

***

Once we gathered in the city, and we attended the opening of the gallery, the book in my jacket pocket heavier than heaven. Kurt would have laughed his scrawny ass off. I tried to explain myself, but alcohol had lashed my lips to my teeth. I don’t remember how we lost each other, but I do recall wandering the early hours in arterial rows and faking my own death. When the sun began to tease its rebirth, dim grey peach over the mainland, I could hear children in boxlike homes chewing on Frosted Flakes and wishing they had wings.

PrintView Printer Friendly Version

EmailEmail Article to Friend

Reader Comments

There are no comments for this journal entry. To create a new comment, use the form below.

PostPost a New Comment

Enter your information below to add a new comment.

My response is on my own website »
Author Email (optional):
Author URL (optional):
Post:
 
Some HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
« Downside | Main | The Green Unruly »