The mother dresses her boy with abrupt movements, muttering “I might have had something if not for you.” She pulls a small hand through the cuff of a bulky sleeve. The other arm hangs limp, awaiting insertion.

The boy follows neighborhood children to a frozen pond and falls through.

The mother shrieks into hats at the front door and has to be supported.

The father returns just then from a loss management conference in Nebraska. He has heard nothing and arrives smiling.

The parents weep.

The neighbors become increasingly vocal in their judgments.

The husband blames the wife.

The wife goes to the frozen pond but can’t do it. Instead, she packs silently and moves alone to Oklahoma.

Four years later she dresses her little girl. “All of this trouble for you,” she mutters.

Daryl Scroggins

has taught creative writing and literature at The University of Texas at Dallas, The University of North Texas, and the Writer’s Garret, in Dallas. He now lives in Marfa, Texas. He is the author of This Is Not the Way We Came In, a collection of flash fiction and a flash novel (Ravenna Press), Winter Investments: Stories (Trilobite Press), and Prairie Shapes: A Flash Novel (winner of the 2004 Robert J. DeMott Prose Contest). His poems, short stories, and creative nonfictions have appeared in magazines and anthologies across the country, including Blink Ink, Cutbank, Eastern Iowa Review, New Flash Fiction Review, Star 82 Review, and Third Wednesday, among others.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Writer Boy, micro-fiction by Daryl Scroggins in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 4, July 2020); nominated by MacQ for Best Microfiction 2021

⚡ Face of the Deep, ekphrastic prose poem in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 3, May 2020)

⚡ Field Trips, flash fiction in KYSO Flash (Issue 12, Summer 2019)

⚡ New to School, micro-fiction in Eclectica (Jan/Feb 2018)

⚡ Two Fictions: “Almost Baptized” and “Against the Current” in New Flash Fiction Review (Issue 10, January 2018)

⚡ Eight Stories: A Mini-Chapbook at Web del Sol