The short fiction of j hardy carroll
The dreams. Always, the dreams. Dreams never remembered save for impressions of hurry, of movement, a sense of familiar place, all gone in the instant of waking. Dreaming became waking life. Beginning in the night as soon as she closed her eyes, seeping like ink spilled on a blotter into the morning, into the day. Things worth remembering– a…
Two lasts of wheat 448ƒ Four lasts of rye 558ƒ Four fat oxen 480ƒ Eight fat swine 240ƒ “The price of a single bulb was more than a skilled cooper would make in year,” her father said as he passed her the net and trowel. Twelve fat sheep 120ƒ Two hogsheads of wine 70ƒ Four tuns of beer…
“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…
Dad told me when he was my age the frogs was so thick that you could fill up three buckets in an hour. These days you’re lucky to gig two frogs a week. Dad says it’s the pesticides, but I wonder if they just didn’t get greedy back in the old days. Every story I hear…
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…
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…