The short fiction of j hardy carroll
He’d lost a lot of jobs, especially at first. When he bucked at what he considered a shit assignment, the editor told him an abrasive manner did not suit a cub reporter and fired him on the spot. After that he’d drifted around freelance for some years until he’d finally had enough. He moved to…
The blackberries had overgrown Wayne’s entire yard, twining their malevolent thorns between fences and over trees, consuming the patio furniture and even reaching into the house. Weed killer did nothing, and his pallid attempts to trim it only resulted in broken clippers and a severe rash. He found a Craigslist ad for yard clearing and…
You believe that you live in one world, he said. A world where fiction and fact are different. Separate, like rooms in a house. You pass from one to the other and only think of the doorway. I don’t understand, I said. What does this have to do with what I saw last night? He…
He led me blindfolded onto the quay. “I know you bought a boat, Seth.” “Humor me,” he said. We walked across the dock, the boards tilting and bouncing. “Ok. You can take it off now.” He stood on the bow of a gleaming sailboat, grinning all over his face like the boy I’d married. “Ta-da!”…
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…
Kenny held his reading lamp to his forehead until the last possible minute. He heard her coming down the hall and switched it off. His door opened and she put her head in. “Up and at ‘em. You’ll miss your bus and I can’t take you.” “I don’t feel well,” he croaked. “My head hurts.” She…
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…
A race of immortal beings on a Danish Island, but they still need to learn a trade.
“Go away.” She looked down the hallway, remembering the first time she’d seen it. She’d been pregnant with him then, so big she almost touched both walls. Funny the house seemed so much smaller now. Maybe that’s how everything always was, different than you remembered it, smaller or dimmer or not as pleasant. She sighed.…
“You’re limping, Houshang.” Hamid smiles up from the chessboard. “Stubbed your toe again, I suppose?” “A blister from my long walk around the city yesterday.” I chuckle. We both know why I limp. I am a lifelong communist. My boiled cynicism often serves as much to poison as shield me. Hamid is a Muslim cleric…