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SmokeLong Quarterly

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Cheering

Story by Srdan Papic June 15, 2006

Ivana and I are sitting on the stands above the lake. We’re talking about football. She’s all upset with the way our team is playing. She’s cursing, making threats and excuses, one minute she repudiates them and the next she forgives them. I am just waiting for her to take another sip of beer and all I am cheering for are those two or three drops that will slip onto her lips, moisten them, and then the gleam of the streetlight that will flicker on those lips, too, the same as it has been on the water below our feet the whole time.

About the Author

Srdan Papic was born in 1977 in Zrenjanin, Serbia and Montenegro. He has published several books of short stories in Serbian. His fiction has appeared in The Taintmagazine, The Carve Magazine, and Carillon magazine and in The Transfusion Journal, Harvard University. He can be reached at srdanpapic@yahoo.com.

This story appeared in Issue Thirteen of SmokeLong Quarterly.
SmokeLong Quarterly Issue Thirteen
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The SmokeLong Grand Micro Contest

Deadline November 15th!

The SmokeLong Grand Micro Contest (The Mikey) is now an annual competition celebrating and compensating the best micro fiction and nonfiction online.

The grand prize winner of The Mikey is automatically nominated for Best Small Fictions and any other prize we deem appropriate. In addition, we will pay the grand prize winner $1000. Second place: $500. Third place $300. Finalists: $100. All finalists and placers will be published in the December ’25 issue of SmokeLong.

Previously published as well as previously unpublished work will be considered.