The short fiction of j hardy carroll
“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…
Carrie realized as she walked in that she was forty-five minutes early, but she knew if she went back out to her car she might not go through with it, might let things continue as they had, avoid the confrontation altogether. Her mother had always said that Carrie took politeness too far. Actually, what she said was that…
“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…
Repost from 2017 for Christmas. In June of 1999 I was traveling back to Portland after visiting my father in Tucson with my three-year-old daughter in tow. We missed a connection and wound up in the Las Vegas Airport. It was my first time in that city, and in the late hour the airport was almost empty An…
We squinted in the bright sunshine. The morning had been cold enough to warrant light jackets, but even with the sea breeze it was warming up nicely. I felt Olivia’s hand, warm and small in my own. Our first Christmas without Mommy. Grandee had paid for the airline tickets to California, just the two of us.…