The short fiction of j hardy carroll
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…
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…
Salman bangs on the roof of the truck. “Here she comes.” Chaim watches through the windshield as the woman crosses the street, an imitation SKS slung across her shoulders, her hiking boots shimmering with newness. He considers pretending he only speaks Hebrew but decides against it. Doubtless she’s been hazed enough. Besides, she’s pretty. “Chaim?”…
Fifty-seven years of stagecraft. Miller, Albee, Mamet, Moliere. And Shakespeare. Troilus, Henry IV, Oberon, Macbeth. Stunned at his pale face hanging in the mirror as he wiped the Ben Nye from his eyes with cold cream. This he could still do without thought. Ironic, or maybe apt. He closed his eyes again, tried to summon…
Ellie’s voice in the darkness. “Mommy.” “What is it, honey? You have another bad dream.” In answer she crawls into the warm bed, face wet and hot. I hold her slim back as she sobs. I stroke her hair. “You want to tell me about it?” “It’s Mister Nervous,” she says. “He comes in because…
Terrors shall make him afraid on every side, and shall drive him to his feet. -Job 18:11 When it gets dark I begin to worry in earnest. A quick trip to the shopping center usually takes all of two hours, but it’s now closer to six. For the tenth time I check to see my…