Prose Discourse: Fiction
Short Story to 10,000 Word
Mark Farrell
IT GROWS IN DARKNESS
Rain runs down our necks, the wind strips our faces red, raw.
We try to beat the cold from our bodies by slapping our arms, whilst ducking under doorways, hugging walls, dodging the sometimes horizontal downpour.
At home we spray the mushrooms with bleach. It only slows them. They had colonised the bathroom walls, curtains, and ceiling.
They weren’t leaving.
It’s March.
I hear the phone buzzing from the kitchen. I picture it moving on the countertop, powered by the vibration of its ring tone.
I count to three before lifting the phone to my ear.
“Patsy went last night.”
I rub the top of my head against the edge of the doorframe, dropping my phone arm by my side.
Finality.
Mullingar meant two things to me, JP Donleavy and St Loman’s, the psychiatric hospital where I visited my mother back in 1975.
Apart from thumbing the odd lift to Navan it was the farthest I’d ever been from home.
The smoke snaking from the cigarette clenched between Patsy’s teeth, was making his left eye tear as he skipped through songs on the 8-track. He stopped at “Gentle on my mind” by Glen Campbell.
Not a word was spoken until Patsy pulled into a pub car park.
“Lunch,” he said.
“Stay there.”
He walked into the pub returning with a packet of crisps and a bottle of red lemonade.
“Back in a couple of ticks,” he told me a smile, a wink, and a skip back to the pub.
The sun burnt the plastic seats in the car, my bare legs stung and stuck to the seats.
The burning plastic mixed with the cloying smell of the air freshener hanging from the rear-view mirror.
I opened the windows and put my head out.
It was not enough.
I got out of the car; the crisps and drink tucked inside my blouse.
That pine-tree shaped and scented air freshener reminded me of the times when Patsy used to visit us at home. He would let me sit in the parked car playing the 8-track while he sat in the kitchen with my mother.
There was an upturned wheelbarrow under the pub window. I sat on it listening to the murmur of voices from inside the pub.
Finishing my lemonade, I tossed the bottle into the hedgerow in front of me, startling a rabbit out of the bush, it ran past, momentarily casting a look back at me before disappearing behind a parked car.
Suddenly the door opened and Patsy walked out, his gait unsteady, crushing a piece of paper into a fist and stuffing it into his shirt pocket. Hitching his pants, face flushed, turning his head he spotted me.
“In the car, colleen. Time to go.”
He whistled as he walked towards the car.
The light shifted as the sun glinted off my discarded lemonade bottle and slipped behind a cloud.
Patsy was already turning over the engine.
“What time will we get to the hospital, Uncle Patsy?”
Van Morrison sang “Sweet Thing” on the 8-track. Patsy reached out and turned up the volume. He sucked on his teeth. Then he turned away from me, exhaled, and looked out the driver’s side window.
“We should be there in half an hour. I need you to prepare yourself for this, girl.” He brought the car cigarette lighter to the tip of the waiting cigarette, drew on it and exhaled through the open window.
His words rolled and tumbled in his mouth. I could smell alcohol on his breath.
She would smell like that when she would sneak in to kiss me goodnight, believing I was asleep.
I was sitting opposite my mother in St Loman’s. She sat with her head to one side, her eyes unfocused. She smelt of soap.
I focused on my bitten fingernails, my iodine-stained knees whilst Patsy’s words were lost in the collective mumble.
The face I knew did not recognise me, not even a glimmer of light.
I stood up.
I ran.
Patsy gave chase through the double doors to the outside terrace. The ground rushed up to me. I collapsed by the gates. Patsy dropped down beside me, grabbing a clump of his wavy dark hair and closing his eyes. We lay there for 20 minutes, wordless.
That was the last time I ever saw her.
It’s raining, it’s Mullingar, of course it’s raining.
The rain spatters on my phone screen are making the display go wild. Perhaps I should take it to St Loman’s.
Now a stranger writes:
“I don’t want to unsettle you or intrude on your life.” Too late now my friend, I mean brother.
By the third paragraph he had informed me that he was taken from my mother in 1975 and given away.
He wrote that he had tried to contact my mother, our mother, but failed. It was only after my mother died a year ago that he had finally made contact.
I entered the pub. No smoking allowed anymore. I smelled only old frying oil, beer, mouldy carpet, and toilets.
Three men sat at the bar.
Behind them hung a faded print of a pair of bare feet. Above them J.P Donleavy. Attached to the left big toe a tag stating “A Fairytale of New York.”
On the jukebox, Billy Bragg was singing “Gentle on My Mind,” I don’t know this version.
He walked in, shook out a bunch of wet flowers from under his heavy overcoat. He dragged his shoes over the back of his calves. He stood for a moment before spotting me. His hand reached up and tugged on his wavy dark hair.
He took me in with a long look, shuffling from one foot to the other.
He held out his hand. I laughed. Brushed it aside and hugged him.
After a minute of silence, he stepped out of our embrace and remarked I had our mother’s eyes.
I saw Patsy again.
About the writer:
MARK FARRELL is former chef – and fully paid-up member of the glorious Irish diaspora. Like many of his generation, he moved from rural Ireland to London in the 1970’s. Now living in Cork Harbour, having found his way back home via years in London, the USA, and South Africa, at age 60 he completed his first short piece and is currently working on a short story collection about the Irish who left and wandered off on the way back. A restless spirit who mistook three continents for a shortcut home, he somehow convinced himself that getting lost in foreign taverns was “intensive literary research.
Image: “…as it isn’t, it ain’t.” (AI-assisted digital image) by O:JA&L staff creative. 2026. Public domain via Midjourney AI.
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The O:JA&L Free Presses Masters Series (from OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters) gathers acclaimed writers for concise, downloadable chapbooks that pair fresh work with candid reflections on craft. Each installment—often framed by an interview with an associate editor—opens a window onto how masters of poetry, prose poetry, flash fiction, and related hybrid forms build voice, compression, and surprise. Designed as a reader’s invitation and a writer’s toolbox, the series celebrates literary art that moves fast, cuts deep, and lingers long after the last line.
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Prose Poetry and Flash Discourse
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Brian Clements on Prose Poetry
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Mark Budman on Flash Discourse
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The Buttonhook Press Master Series: Michael Martone on Flash Fiction
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The Buttonhook Press Master Series: Roberta Allen on Flash Fiction
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Master Series: Peter Conners on Flash Fiction
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The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Maxine Chernoff on Prose Poetry
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The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Pedro Ponce on Flash Fiction
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The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Kent Dixon on Flash Fiction & Nonfiction
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The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Jim Meirose on Experimental Discourse (XP)
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