The short fiction of j hardy carroll
I stare at the snow. “The yard almost looks nice,” I say before realizing there’s nobody to hear the conversation. Habits of a lifetime are not easily broken. His shoes stand by the door, right where he stepped out of them. The fever and coughing kept getting worse, so we decided on the hospital as…
reno’s dad was only a door away and we couldn’t ever talk so in the silence we did what we could, sometimes whispering and in the morning when he knocked his wife across the room made her fall palms-down against the hissing griddle of newly-burnt potatoes we watched the wall, the window, anywhere but the…
His pupils so dilated that his eyes are shining black with a thin corona of brown iris. They seem to be a cave into which I will tumble. My body shakes with an urge to flee, close the door behind me, drive to the airport and forget all of this. Yet the eyes compel me. “Yes,” I hear myself saying. “I wish to hear it.”
She clutches her pearls in what has become a habitual gesture. At least her eyes are dry. Cried out, probably. “I’m glad you came, anyway,” she says, the last word an accusation. “It was the least I could do,” I answer lamely, thinking so that’s what I did. The least I could do. “Your brother was……
Dan pauses in the hallway and closes his eyes to listen. He made more noise than he wanted when he climbed through the basement window. Stealth is the most important part of this operation. He hears footsteps on the stairs, so he slips into the men’s room and locks himself in the stall. His heart…