The short fiction of j hardy carroll
Pard was stone dead. I didn’t have time to ponder it. That red-paint injun grabbed his bloody hair and sliced off the top of his scalp with a long steel blade. I heard of this practice, but this was the first time I seen it with my own eyes. He turned and clubbed me good…
She crouched under the bridge, cold and hungry and scared. The only bag she’d been able to find was the Pan Am carryon her real dad had brought her as a souvenier, blue and white with a globe. She looked around her bedroom and thought of what she most cared about that would still fit…
Daughter You will have questions I cannot answer except to say that reality is but an illusion, a projection of our expectations. We are taught to make our eyes glide over the world, to create symbols and labels so that we can more easily dismiss them. We are trained to turn our awareness inward, towards…
I placed my finger on my king and gently toppled him. Dr. Tartov studied the board. “You revealed yourself in your opening,” he said. “The Latvian Gambit is almost never employed by black because it allows such an early advantage for white. I was surprised to see it because it is always reserved for tournaments,…
The dew lay heavy on the grass, the lowering clouds a harbinger of afternoon thunderstorm. As previously arranged, the boatmen and surgeon turned their backs to the principals, for these affairs were now a prosecutable offense. Van Ness produced the walnut case, a fine set of Wogdon & Barton’s finest pistols. Pendleton selected one and…
George greeted me with his usual smile, ushered me up onto the shoe bench as he got out the tin and rag, his long fingers deft and surprisingly unstained. “You still got any shoes with me?” he said, peering up. “I know I had those oxfords.” “No, you finished them last month.” I looked at the…
They will not trouble him here. This has become his place. He will tell no one about it.
“Who is that man in all the pictures, Mama?” “He was your grandfather.” She grips her purse. “My father.” “Your daddy?” “Not exactly. He was with my mother for a while, when she was young.” “Did I ever meet him?” “No. He died before you were born.” “But you knew him.” “A little. He wasn’t…
Mrs. Stouffer fussed around the dessert table with shakers of Christmas glitter-candy, liberally dusting everything in sight with red and green sparkles–– a chafing dish of cheese blintzes, an apple tart, Mrs. Glück’s “famous” chocolate torte. Finally, the glitter ran out. “Thank God,” muttered Mrs. Dogsbill. “That table looks like a kindergarten art room.” “She…
I swore as I walked in that this would be the last time. I’d sworn this before, of course. Last year. But it had not been the last time, nor even close. But last year we were still getting away with it. Neither his wife nor my husband had any idea. Well, maybe an idea,…