The short fiction of j hardy carroll
The boy let out a wail of dismay loud enough to be heard by the bus driver, who naturally assumed it was an emergency and braked so hard he threw the passengers sharply forward and spilled all manner of travel cups and canisters, drenching many a sweater and lap. It was just after they’d had stopped for tea,…
When he first left England he was a young man with no particular destination. He found himself months later in the hills of Cambodia, squatting by a cook fire and sharing millet from a single bowl with three strangers, the act of eating their only common language. His name was acquired perhaps in Tibet or Nepal. By this time,…
Father Estrella was drunk, but not too drunk to hear confession. Marco used to joke it was better to have a drunk priest hear your litany of recent sins, since any righteousness on his part would be offset by the hypocrisy of his own weak soul– not that Father Estrella was ever especially righteous, even when sober. “Say three Hail…
I hadn’t yet gotten around to telling her when Janie melted down and had to be taken home. I figured the Saturday Market would be a safe place to break the news, being a public place and all. Bringing Janie along made it a real family affair. Right. We walked around the stalls drinking coffee from paper cups.…
When Chet regained consciousness he had no idea of the time. They had taken his watch. They had taken everything, even the emergency fifty he kept beneath his insole. His mouth was swollen and it felt like they’d broken some ribs. He raised his head and looked around at the alley. A short cut had…
A hundred fathoms down, the sun looks like a ten-watt porch light. The suit, which felt so heavy on the surface, is now a second skin–except the boots, which seem even heavier. You move slowly on the bottom, breath loud in your ears as you clomp through the ooze like the giant in The Brave Little Tailor.…
Horst checks everything for the third time in an hour. The machine gun is loaded and pointing down the valley. Ammunition cases are stacked where the loader can get them, the satchel of grenades open at his feet with the handles facing upward, as specified in the regulations. He checks his belt to make sure his knife and…
NORFOLK– MARCH 17 Authorities arrested a man today they believe is the “Forest Skinner,” suspected of committing a series of unsolved murders around Norfolk County during the 1970s and 80s. The suspect, who was wearing what appeared to be a handmade suit of unidentified animal hide, was severely malnourished and offered no resistance. The arrest was the result of a CrimeLine…
She stood as they always stand when I make my presentation, stiff and even haughty, as though an armour of professionalism will somehow shield them from what I am about to show, will somehow protect them from feeling anything. Of course it does not, it cannot, but I play along. I get paid either way, so…
The words rolled over her then, crushed her flat as piecrust beneath a rolling pin. She watched him shaping the words with his mouth, this doctor whom she had grudgingly agreed to see after her husband had had what he thought was the last word in their long argument. Go. Now there was another word. Cancer. And…