The short fiction of j hardy carroll
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.…
It started as a lark: a single card, pulled from a deck in a New Age store in Camden Town. Seven of Swords. The proprietor, a vision of swishing purple scarves, took it from him, held it up with bejeweled nails. “Betrayal,” she smirked. “Somebody peaching on you, love?” He had thought nothing of it, but…
“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…
It started with Chopsticks, except that he played it perfectly the first time he saw the spinet. He was eighteen months old at the time. From there he moved to Für Elise and the Moonlight Sonata. At ten he memorized all of Chopin’s nocturnes and was making a serious go at Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto. So…
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 old world does not willingly show itself except at night, when it comes into its own. My son and I went for ice cream. Crossing the apartment lot, he pointed at a narrow set of steps just visible between Building B and the equipment shed. “Where do those go, daddy?” What you fear, you…
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…
I didn’t participate in the interrogations. My role was to observe. Under no circumstances was I to interfere. Never a large man, he became smaller. Fragile. And in the end, broken. When I first saw him, some of his former power still clung to him. He made demands, threats. Commanded a certain respect, even there. Of course, all property had…