In dripping oak woods, the squirrels were taking the day off, so Doug and I shot our .22s now and then at cans and bottles. On our way back around to our bicycles we came to the burnt schoolhouse. Back when it caught fire somebody brave had hauled a bunch of stuff out quick, but with no building left it had all just stayed out in the school yard. Rain-fat books on a table. Chairs with seats full of leaves. And on a smaller table there was a blue globe of the world.

“Watch me take out Paris France,” Doug said.

He got close to it and I took my turn. “Germany,” I said.

“Which one is it?”

“It’s that kind of purple one,” I said, and I hit it, a black hole appearing where maybe Berlin had been. But I started to feel kind of bad about it. “No telling what we blew out on the other side,” I said, “we could have sent all of East Texas out into space.”

“No, it’s just China. Haven’t you heard about digging a hole so deep you come out there?”

“That’s bullshit,” I said, “China can’t be the whole other side of the world.”

“Damn, Bobby, what makes you so good in geography all of a sudden?”

“Who needs geography, it’s just common sense.”

“Well, it’s not what I believe,” Doug said, and he gave me a look like I had turned atheist.

We inspected the back of the globe, and maybe it was the angle or something but both shots had only taken out a dime of ocean. It was a relief, to me at least.

We found our bikes in the ditch where we had hidden them. The rain started up again and pretty soon we had to walk and push them because mud caked up on the tires and clogged the fenders. Then we couldn’t roll them at all and had to leave them in the weeds beside the road.

Later, when we went back for them they were gone. Doug wouldn’t look at me for a while after that. I think we both felt like the loss was somehow connected to the thing with the globe.

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

⚡ Roadshow, microfiction by Daryl Scroggins in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 15, September 2022); one of three pieces by Scroggins selected as Finalists in “The Question of Questions” Ekphrastic Writing Challenge

⚡ Spring, microfiction by Scroggins in MacQ (Issue 12, March 2022)

⚡ Writer Boy, microfiction in MacQ (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 by Scroggins 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 by Daryl Scroggins at Web del Sol