The short fiction of j hardy carroll
“He’s making a bomb in there.” “No way.” “Then why all the chemicals? Why the bags of fertilizer? He’s like whatshisface. Timothy McVeigh.” “Yeah? Prove it then, Mr. Smarty.” “I can’t prove it yet. All’s I’m saying is we need to watch the place for a while.” “How long is a while?” “I don’t know. Couple days,…
None of the survivors was a sailor, so the compass and sextant were useless to them. The featureless horizon of winking sea, the unremitting glare, the boredom. They were talked out after the second day, aware that further conversation might lead to severe disagreement, or worse. Despite the makeshift awning, their skin burned purple in…
“It’s doing my head in,” Johnny spat at the television. “Bloody Scotland. We never should have let the bastards back of the net.” Tosh was having none of it. “If you’re going to get all mardy, I’ll leave you to yourself. You don’t give a bleeding shit about football anyway.” “I do when it’s the…
My great-grandfather James Lewis was a Millerite preacher, as devout a man as ever lived in the village of Dresden. Washington County had more than its share of devout men in those times. Joseph Smith himself was said to have dug up his golden tablets from beneath a tree on my family’s homestead, though Old James…
“Don’t break the bloody thing!” He snatched the little helicopter from my hands. “You’ll damage the camera, holding it like that.” “Da gave it to both of us, Jimmy,” I said, trying not to cry. “It’s as much mine as yours.” “Alright, alright,” he answered. “Tell you what. You can have the first go. Remember, fly…
He had this bear, Paddington. You know, the kind with the little hat? I think it was a present from my sister. One day, I came in to Teddy’s room and found him crying. He was inconsolable. I asked him why he was upset and he pointed to his bed. On it lay the bear.…
“What is it with these modernists? First it was the bloody London Eye. Now it’s the Shard. Looks like a mistake, you ask me. Hideous. Turn one of the grandest cities in the world into a bleeding circus. You’d think they all went mad, putting up shite like this. My London is the city that…
Our township has the lowest crime rate in the Newark area. I’m not saying that I am directly responsible, but it’s worth noting that the rate went down the year after I became Chief of Police and has stayed down ever since. American Lawman did a story that included a sidebar interview I gave when we…
The move to Oregon was supposed to solve all the problems, though he had not exactly promised this. What he said was that the move to Oregon would be good for them. A fresh start. After all, nobody in Oregon knew them from Adam. It wouldn’t be like it was in Atkins, where she couldn’t…
“Laos. I was born in Laos,” said Phil for what seemed the millionth time in his life. “But I’m American.” “Yeah? How’d you manage that?” asked the man in the window seat, the seat Phil had paid twenty five extra dollars to reserve. He had filed onto the plane with the crowd of passengers to find this man asleep…