The short fiction of j hardy carroll
I. OPERATION RESOLUTE SUPPORT USMC CAMP DWYER, AFGHANISTAN “War,” the colonel announces, “is hell.” He sits behind a metal field desk, a MacArthur corncob pipe jutting from his teeth like a gearshift. Looking at his face, my mind is filled with rugged adjectives. Granite jaw. Iron hair. Steely eyes. The wind howls up the Hemland…
You know me. The name Jimmy B. Jimmy is almost as famous as Mickey Mouse, especially after last November when I was elected President of the United States by the largest margin in American history. But that’s not why you know me. You know me because for twenty-five years I’ve been the infomercial guy who…
He peers over his spectacles at the empty chapel, the Book of Common Prayer turned to the proper lectionary reading for the third week of Pentecost. His eyes fall on a line on the page: lighting upon the disciples, to teach them and to lead them into all truth. But what if there are no…
The little shit almost smiled when he brought me the envelope from Corporate. “No deviations, Howard. It is to be read exactly as written.” I’d been with KGIM since the Nixon administration, working my way up from cameraman to morning sports and weather to the Big Slot, the daily six-and-eleven newscast. I’d won countless awards…
From the archives People are spending so much of their lives doing things they’d rather not be doing. I’m not sure if all of history has been like this, but now at least it seems that a big chunk of the populace is being forced to do things for which they have no passion. In…