The short fiction of j hardy carroll
Horst checks everything for the third time in an hour. The machine gun is loaded and pointing down the valley. Ammunition cases are stacked where the loader can get them, the satchel of grenades open at his feet with the handles facing upward, as specified in the regulations. He checks his belt to make sure his knife and…
She stood as they always stand when I make my presentation, stiff and even haughty, as though an armour of professionalism will somehow shield them from what I am about to show, will somehow protect them from feeling anything. Of course it does not, it cannot, but I play along. I get paid either way, so…
My Dear Claude– The experiments continue despite my so-called “setback.” It was an accident, despite what you may have heard. You’re absolutely correct in your assessment of my current state of mind. I am indeed frustrated that my colleagues see me as a fraud and even a madman, all the more since my dismissal from…
“I won’t do it. I can’t. Please.” He put his arm around her. “Really, Susan. It will be fine. This thing carries thousands of people across every day. There’s never been an accident. It’s safe as houses, as my Gran would say.” “You don’t understand. It’s…it’s…” She began to cry again. “Look, darling. We’re nearly to…
You’d never know we grew up in that place. It took us a half hour just to find where the house had stood. Everything was changed, from the road name–we grew up on Route 217, now known as Adelaide Lane–to the placement of the creek, to the very trees themselves. It was Jay who figured…
The old man scratched his privates as he made his way across beshitted carpet to his trash-strewn kitchen, the charnel reek of feral urine and rotting meat, the dozens of nameless cats crying and howling and winding about his legs. He picked among the heap of cans piled atop the grease-crusted counter seeking those yet unopened. He was amazed by the knocking at the front…
I never could stand the daylight. The harsh glare, the endless vista. The exposure. Being outside in the sun underscores the insect-like nature of human existence, these pathetically insignificant creatures crawling around on the skin of a stone ball hurdling through space on a pointless trajectory. Daytime is so unspeakably depressing that I can’t bear to be out in…
Lord Henry scowled. “Don’t tell me you believe all that rot about his being the Son of the Sea and Sky, Darius.” Darius stared across the battlements at the gathering clouds. Had he ever seen that sort of blackness before, that much weight of water? It was as though the sea floated above itself. “That…
She wasn’t a particularly good nanny, but my parents could afford her. We made do with other kinds of hand-me-downs, so why not a nanny too? I heard she had worked for the Oscars and had taken care of all five boys after Mrs. Oscar died. It never occurred to me that Miss Meyers might…
“This here is what I got,” the man said. “Old London Underground double-decker.” “What’s it run on?” asked the other. “Petrol,” said the man. “It ain’t been converted.” “No good to me that way,” answered the other. “There hasn’t been any petrol for months.” The man looked wise. “Oh, it’s to be had– for a price.” “Not…