The short fiction of j hardy carroll
The notice of eviction was right where I’d left it, taped to the door. She had changed the locks, so the master key didn’t work. I looked at the city constable. “You want me to knock again?” He shrugged. I knocked so hard my knuckles rang. “Mrs. Mulwray! The constable is here with me. You…
Her writing desk stood in the corner. It was too elegant for the room, polished cherry bound with gold. She told me it had been her grandmother’s, passed down through the generations, implying it would be mine. She always wore the key on a slim golden chain around her neck. The funeral director had given it…
When I told him I was ready to take the vow, Brother Xavier’s kind face wore a look of concern. “I’ve been here for a month now, Brother,” I said. It felt strange to talk, “During this time I have spoken twice. When I arrived, and now.” He smiled. “I believe I understand it now. The vow…
Me and Red tramped all over. The Apple Butter Route to the big G, the BN down south to the Bitter Biscuit line. Couple of boxcar Willies such as you’d see about anywheres. I met him when I was just sixteen, run away from the Oklahoma dirt farm where Pap would take out his meanness on whatever was…
He bought a basket of new plums, ate them while he watched the girl exchange pleasantries with the miller. He was struck by her beauty, her freshness. “Who was that maid?” he asked the miller after she had gone. “That’s no maid, sir. She’s the daughter of Florent the silk merchant.” “Is this Florent a member of the guild?” “A…
The night city is not the day city, though they share the same streets, the same alleys. Light becomes a commodity. The men of the night city, free from the day of park-sleep and bench-sleep, daylight indignities of filth, of squalor, the sordid shame of open begging in the face of bottomless scorn. They come into their own…
By slouching over the broken steering wheel like an octogenarian, I could just see through a spot of clear glass in the shattered windshield. My breath came in gasps. My left leg felt numb, far away. I could feel blood running down my face and neck. My ruined car was making hideous sounds– the fender scraping the ground, the clatter…
It was Pa broke down when the government man left. Ma was steel-eyed and cold. She gave me that look of hers, looked quick to Pa, slumped useless head in hands, then back over to me. She didn’t need to say anything more. I’d heard the what the government man said same as she had. If we didn’t take…
This city is hard and getting harder. A forever throng of millions from every scattered nation, lined up chest-to-back, a herd of malodorous cattle on an island twenty-two miles long, forced to scrabble for whatever crumbs fall down from our masters’ table. Our masters sell the lie that we might one day join them. They advertise diamond wristwatches on bus stops to the…
Getting away, she called it. We need to get away from it all. He thought it was more like bringing everything with them. Packing up the comfortable city life full of conveniences unimaginable a century ago, things like hypoallergenic pillows and gluten-free pasta. They brought their stove, their tent, their memory foam mattress, their propane appliances, LED lamps,…