My mother, removed from country life to the big city when she married while still in her teens, seldom broke ranks with my father. But one December day she drove his red convertible MG as fast as she could. Many years later I would connect this with stories she told of bill collectors calling constantly. My sister was in the front seat, while I rode on the luggage ledge behind the two front seats, lying on scratchy black fabric. We were going fast to cut pine boughs at the city park, where that was not allowed. She had a hand saw and the two of us, and looking straight ahead she did not seem inclined to explain anything.

We arrived and she stopped by way of a slide. As my sister and I watched, she held the saw up like a sword and marched in under trees.

All the way back I rode partly under branches she would use to make a large wreath. That scent. And there, in flakes of light filtering down to me, I could see the gummy teeth of the saw, which I touched with a finger to see if I would still live after each moment.

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

⚡ Spring, microfiction by Daryl Scroggins in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 12, March 2022)

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

⚡ Face of the Deep, ekphrastic prose poem in MacQ (Issue 3, May 2020)

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

⚡ New to School, microfiction 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