Come Home, Son by Donal Moloney

"With these paintings, it’s vital that I don’t go on autopilot. Either they are imagined stroke for stroke or they are bogus gestures. This morning I set up the fruit and the lights, I mixed the paints, but soon my mind wandered."

Image via Pixabay

As constellations shift in the heavens a vulnerable son leaves home, his father observing both from a distance, waiting for a chance at reconnection in Donal Moloney's 'Come Home, Son'. Story selection by guest editor Madeleine D'Arcy. READ 'COME HOME, SON'. 

Salisbury Beach by Sean Conway

Our father, Charles Hartley II, hanged himself in the attic in the spring of 1977. I was five years old. My brother Kelly was eleven. May 25th: the same day that Star Wars opened, though I didn’t make that connection until later.

'Salisbury Beach' is the May 2017 offering from Long Story, Short Journal, by author Sean Conway. Visit a seaside town on the decline, where a young boy's life is spinning wildly on carnival's tilt-a-whirl, from his first tastes of both love and bereavement. READ 'SALISBURY BEACH.'

Volcanoes! by Hubert Vigilla

This thing is Greg all over. He read a Greek mythology book and the assignment was to make a board game, so here’s our beat-up Fireball Island from the garage with “Olympus! The Game!” written on one side in white out. He’s hot-glued some of his action figures at the corners. Superman (minus the cape) is Zeus, I think. I can’t really figure out the rest so I ask.

     “Dad,” he says and rolls his eyes. “That’s Batman, Wolverine, and Spider-Man.”

     “But which Greek gods are they?”

     “They’re just Batman, Wolverine, and Spider-Man.”

     “That doesn’t make any sense.”

     He points at a sticky note that reads, “This is very creative, Greg!” A-minus, smiley face. Greg beams and presses his tongue through the gap where a baby tooth used to be.

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Photo © Kerry Sellers

The September 2016 edition of Long Story, Short Journal is 'Volcanoes!' by Hubert Vigilla. This story invites readers into a stay-at-home father's fantasy world, where tomorrow's lunch is left going stale on the counter while a rumbling volcano is growing in the garage. READ 'VOLCANOES!'

In My Father's House by Jane Hammons

 It is summer and in the shallow valley bordering the Lincoln National Forest where my father lives, the light fades slowly. His house is made from fake adobe bricks. They were not molded by native hands from the ancient clay of the earth; they were not fired individually in round earthen ovens. He bought them at Capitan Lumber and Hardware, but still they are the dusty color of real adobe. Smooth and irregular, their corners are rounded like the edges of the earth. Pap, my grandfather, helped him build this house so that he could move out of the trailer parked behind the Win-Place-Show Laundromat near Ruidoso Downs Racetrack. This is my first visit to the new house, the only home my father has owned since he and my mother divorced more than 20 years ago.

'In My Father's House' by Californian writer Jane Hammons is the April 2015 edition of Long Story, Short Journal. The story takes readers on a Greyhound Bus to the desert home of a family who lives beyond gypsum sands, bat-filled caverns and nuclear weapon testing grounds. Despite radiation, separation, and illness, this is a tale of love and thriving. READ 'IN MY FATHER'S HOUSE'.

Balan

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© Patrick Warner

"Gerry gripped a bath towel around his waist. The autumn chill spread goose-pimples across his naked torso. His mother pressed in behind him and when he straightened they almost knocked heads. He palmed the air with his free hand. ‘What do you expect me to see?’"​

'Balan' brings us into the mind of a young man whose confidence outweighs his skills of perception, whose understanding of his family and his place in the world is about to change drastically. This tale is in turns funny, heart-wrenching and startling: an honest examination of the first days of the recession from Hennessy Award-winning writer Valerie Sirr. CLICK HERE TO READ 'BALAN'.