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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 Italian (1)

Friday
May232014

This Dumb Matador

The light's dwindling fast from a fresh spring day. 

"There's a shiny black Crown Victoria top of yonder rise."

"Heat?"

"That'd be my guess."

"Keep driving, then?"

Out there on the edge of town the moths arrive, gather, start to cluster around streetlights. Gianluigi blinks, sighs, gets all righteous pissed.

"Carlos, you pull a U-turn here, and assumin' that's a cop, might as well scream you a badass motherfucker, see if you can't catch me. Seriously. You some kind of dumb matador type?"

Ha, matador type! Makes me laugh. Ain't even Spanish. Though I can't help but remember things: the bright, late sun shining off of warehouse walls, broken cinderblocks, graffiti mockery, reeking garbage, a dead dog beside a blackened grate, was only a half hour ago, if that.

"Yeah, well. Whatever. Hey, been wondering, since when did everyplace end up with them automatic doors with the yellow-and-black stickers?"

"Huh? What?"

"You know, science fiction shit. That shit's everywhere."

"Uh. Enough. I ain't interested in one single goddamned freakish thing you say no more, not ever. Please. Shut the fuck up and drive, yo."

"Sure, not a problem. Sunset's a thing, huh?"

Ever hear a wolf pack start to howl? Think about crystal chandelier tsunamis? Bridal falls in a hellstorm? How ladybugs get the worst STDs? Those are truths, like it or not.

Gianluigi looks right at me, his dry raisin eyes hard as bessemer coals. Harder.

"You're a fat, oily caucasian with nothin' to redeem you, and I'd save a chickenshit nazi child molester before I pissed on you if you were fully ablaze."

"Ha. Well, that's the chalk calling the snowfield white."

"Nah, puttano. Sicilian. That ain't caucasian. Ain't nigger, either, before you say it."

Don't want to say it but think it: Sicilian? Nah, brother, you plain American. Like me. Like most all of us. You think these delicate green leaves give one sacred everliving fuck about those ancient buried roots ten brown lifetimes below? Yeah? Exactly. 

We both hold our breath but the cop never chases us, if he even is a cop, or ever was a cop, and before you know it we are far away from the big city when the bombs start fallin' like toxic black raindrops and I realize I'll never smell Sofia's neck again or ever again feel her sweet, warm breath on me, whatever, goddamnit. The horizon ignites and shears, over and over, while we drive.

You ever watch an iguana twitch on the end of a spit? Given the chance I'll roast all you fuckers alive, see if I don't. You see if I don't.