The short fiction of j hardy carroll
Cuandon had a good Saturday. He told me he’d run the airport scam twice, each time picking up the tourists by yelling the name of a hotel from the van window, then taking them up to the mountain shack until they paid the ransom which he calls a “travel fee.” I was down in the…
I couldn’t help but look at the calendar as the day approached. Three more days. Two more days. Though only ten, she felt it too. Only once did she ask me why she had to go, why she couldn’t live with me. The question floated over my sea of bitter resentment me like a scrap…
Father Arnaud hung his surplice on the teak peg and turned to face the bright-eyed visitor. “You were at Mass?” “Yes. I’ve been coming every Sunday for the past four weeks.” “Yet you did not take Communion.” “No. I’m not Catholic.” “Then why do you come to Mass?” The ancient priest gave his most winning…
I says to him, heck Bill, why not stay right here? I mean it ain’t like you can open regular, not with these national guards and all. And we can’t go home. He says, where do we all sleep? That ain’t a problem, I says. I got about nine thousand square feet of foam panels…
She started skipping her meetings, staying home with her face glued to Fox News. Normally she don’t watch the news except Hannity. Mostly it’s reality TV, game shows, and the occasional 90s comedy. I started paying attention, using my laptop to double-check the sources. As the days ticked by and things started closing down, I…
“Only a couple days, Chinhua. It’s just play-acting.” She bit her lip, sorry she’d answered the ad in the South China Morning Post. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just tell them?” He paled. “My parents are very traditional. Gay is not a thing they would ever understand.” She sighed, then took the notepad he held out. It…
They hang together, these al Kafir, cling to one another as flies do when they discover a carcass, setting about tasks with tremendous attention and then scattering at the slightest disturbance. Their skin bakes an unwholesome red in the sun, and despite their mastery of machines and firearms they are helpless as children, especially when…
Abdulla studies himself in the mirror, turns this way and that, smooths his coat. The mirror was his mother’s pride, said to come from a famous Tel Aviv department store, a seven-foot slab of silvered glass in a gilded frame. Abdulla remembers that it took four men to bring it up the stairs to her…