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.'

Fliers

 She wakes up the way she always does, quickly and slowly. Her pulse, quick quick slow, quick quick slow. Quick, the adrenalin that flashes in her and it feels like she’s ready to run, to fly, the fooled, frail, exhausted body. Slow, being the fog. The numb-skulling pea-souper that doesn’t lift till two in the afternoon. All because of the goddamn pills; the pills she took first for performance anxiety, then when Frank died, and now she is enslaved to their little white wiles.

The August 2014 edition of Long Story, Short Journal is 'Fliers' by UK writer Nichola Bendall, with artwork by Zoë J. Murdoch. The story brings us intertwining narratives of three individuals struggling against lives of confinement, when flight is what they desire. Against the backdrop of political elections, 'Fliers' employs a subtle use of satire, encouraging readers to consider the consequences of both action and inaction. CLICK HERE TO READ 'FLIERS'.