The short fiction of j hardy carroll
The Americans seemed bored. “I will tell a story,” said Magnus, smiling across the fire. “In this village there once lived two brothers, each jealous of one another. The younger made a bargain with the devil. In exchange for his soul, Satan gave him a mill that would grind anything he desired. Satan showed him…
“My mother begged that I always remember my caste,” said the boy. “Though we are only Sudra.” “Devansh, there are no castes here. In the cane vineyard, all are made equal by the work they can do, the acres they can harvest. Queen Victoria must have her sugar.” “How came you here, Sidra?” “I came…
A story is based on an experience of Susan Travers, the daughter of a Royal Navy admiral who became a driver of French Foreign legion general Marie-Pierre Koenig, the only woman the Legion ever admitted into its ranks.
“I don’t understand. Where will you go?” “Somewhere. Anywhere. Sasha, this place is killing me. It is killing our daughter. You hear her cough in the night? Do you think this is a normal thing? Do you think people in Kursk or Vladivostok have such children that sound as though they should be in a…
May 11, 1926 09:00 The Norge’s keel resembles a warehouse as we ascend, piled with sleds and skis, tents and snowshoes. We lack only the dogs to make ourselves an Eskimo village. 0930 Byrd’s cursed Fokker gallingly flew alongside us for a quarter-hour this morning, as though to say to Amundsen “no matter what you do…
The FBI ASAC’s office walls were plastered floor to ceiling with maps of the various open serial murder cases scattered across the country. As the local law liaison, only one of them interested me, the map of central Iowa that had most red circles of any in the room, ten. Ten of the thirteen gone…
When Tamura Takashi was growing up, his grandmother told stories of the terrible night American bombers turned the sacred city of Nagoya into a lake of fire. “The next morning was so odd,” she said. “There was nothing left. No buildings, no trees, no people. Only miles of ashes as far as the eye could…
My memory was going. That’s what I wanted to believe. I kept losing time. Two hours, then three, then a whole day. I would be in one place and then I would be in another with no memory of how I got there. I talked to my husband about it. He said I was working…
The wife of Ambassador Kubisch led her guests into the foyer while the maid retrieved their coats. “I’m so glad you and the children could come tonight,” she told Mrs. Welch. “It doesn’t quite seem like Christmas without children.” Mrs. Welch gave an uneasy smile, pulled her daughter closer to her side. “Thanks for having…
Marisol carefully washed herself in the basin. She used the perfumed soap Olán had given her for her birthday. The lavender scent was strong, but did little to mask the odor of the businessman’s cologne that seemed to hang about her room. She went to the dresser and counted the money for a third time.…