The short fiction of j hardy carroll
Graz the Ragman trundled his barrow through a landscape he did not recognize, though he had lived all his life in Dresden. Where the Frauenkirche had stood was now a tumble of scorched stones, smoke and dust hanging in the air like a shroud. The baker where his mother had sent him for the Sunday loaf of rye…
I walked past the War Cemetery every day on my way to work, but it was years before I noticed him. A tiny old man dressed in khaki, kneeling on hands and knees. Always khaki, always kneeling, every day. Some days I didn’t see him at first, but he was there, kneeling among the gravestones, perhaps hidden…
“If it was a war,” Susan argues, “Then where are the bodies?” “Perhaps they were eaten. Maybe they rotted. I don’t know.” Dr. Thrang stays out of it, busying himself taking samples and looking at them through his spectrometer. “I think it was something else,” she says, folding her arms. “Nuclear war would have destroyed everything.”…
A thin winter’s moon cast its watery light across the pool beneath the Tower gate. A pair of boatmen rowed the prisoner with muffled oars. Beneath the stinking burlap hood, the chained man was also gagged, lest he attempt to bribe the rowers. He was known to be a silken-tongued devil, and Cromwell was taking no chances. The oarsmen backed water as they waited…
Our moms had been best friends since kindergarten. They got married on the same day, a double wedding. Both got pregnant on their wedding night. Ralph’s birthday was August fifth, mine August eleventh. Next door neighbors, closer than any brothers. As kids, we loved the war movies, especially the John Wayne ones. The Flying Tigers. They Were Expendable, Sands…
Stuart ordered a cup of coffee. He poured cream into it and stirred it in. He swiveled his stool part way around to keep an eye on the building across the street. The man sitting next to him was eating a donut, breaking it in half and dunking one of the halves into the coffee,…
Abbot Gírad d’Cist took an avid interest in the drawings the master mason etched in smooth plaster to help guide construction, especially those that depicted how Angers Cathedral would look to an observer. He clapped his hands in delight. “You must understand, Excellency,” said the master mason, “we are years away from what you see here. Decades.”…
“You entirely create your reality. It is only by complicit agreement that the world as you understand it exists, your shared human beliefs giving it shape and substance. It is not that the tree falling in the forest makes no noise if nobody is there to hear it; it is that without a hearer, the tree itself cannot be.”…
A small-town doctor who buys a daily half gallon of whiskey causes gossip. During the course of a week, I’d hit six different liquor stores in three different towns, none of which I lived in. I’d dispose of the empties the same way, hauling the bottles to the landfill or a dumpster behind a bar. I never drank in…
Algar worked his shoulder. The wound was painful, but the bleeding had slowed. With some difficulty he shucked off his woolen jerkin. He took a deep breath, uttered a prayer and waded into the haelwaters. The cold was stunning, but he braced himself and went to the center of the pool. The boil of the falls fell fierce…