The short fiction of j hardy carroll
Saturdays we got up even earlier so as to get the chores done before setting out. If Carl’d stayed sober Friday night, then the delivery would be ready. That hadn’t been the case for months. It was just getting light when I got to the still. Jody was already there, wrapping the mason jars in…
Longwood House, the only residence on the island large enough to accommodate the Imperial Retinue, has proved unsuitable. Rats scuttle along the hallways with impunity, the acrid tang of their urine and copious droppings in every room. Ever the soldier, he seems oblivious to such discomforts, instead nursing a private resentment because Governor Lowe refuses…
He could be a right bastard if you stood in his way. Taller than most, but it wasn’t his height, nor his gray beard, nor even his stiff and lordly manner. No, it was them eyes. Never was there eyes like that in a mortal man. What color, you ask? Why, perhaps gray or blue.…
It is always night in the jungle. Mosquitoes whine in my ears. The heat feels like a damp blanket. I can’t breathe. And they are coming. We can’t see them, only hear their horrible yelling and screaming in the dark. Where are they? Where the fuck are they? I bolt awake, rub my grainy eyes as…
Captain Truxtun could hardly contain his agitation. “They what?” he stammered. “Refuse to work, begging your pardon,” said the foreman. “All of them?” “Yes sire. To a man.” “And what is their complaint?” The foreman shrugged. “What ain’t their complaint is more to the mark. I think this time it has to do with cocoa…
The East India Company Director sighed. He took off his glasses and set them on the dossier. “Is it really as bad as all that?” “I’m afraid so, sir,” said Briggs. “In fact, it’s actually worse. The Chinese are well aware of our vulnerability, especially regarding tea. The tonne price is increasing almost daily.” “What of…
He is like the landscape, ancient, fissured, desiccated. He is the last one left who saw it with his own eyes. His voice scrapes like wind through dry branches as he tells the story he repeated all his life. “When the Turks came, all of us ran to the mountain. We rolled stones down the…
May 11, 1926 09:00 The Norge’s keel resembles a warehouse as we ascend, piled with sleds and skis, tents and snowshoes. We lack only the dogs to make ourselves an Eskimo village. 0930 Byrd’s cursed Fokker gallingly flew alongside us for a quarter-hour this morning, as though to say to Amundsen “no matter what you do…
A piece of Flash Fiction for Armistice Day, 11/11/1918. This was supposed to be the end of war, but if was really the start of a much worse type of war.
Some say it was glorious, that the Goryani were heroes welcome everywhere. This is nonsense. We were hunted like rats. You do not remember, but Bulgaria after the war was full of informers. This was not done out of love of the communists, nor even out of fear, but to settle old scores. The greatest…