Grackles step like preachers where tarns of rainwater glaze green swards. Nearby a squad of battle re-enactors awaits its cue, soldiers smoking, thumb-scrolling on their phones. A young private checks his Union garb and finds he has misplaced his cartridge pouch. He retraces his steps, to search beneath tables in the tent where coffee and made-to-order omelettes were served. Returns to his trailer in the RV park. Nothing there but his t-shirts and jeans. When he lowers his head and leans back against a wall he feels something behind him. His cartridge pouch, on his belt, no doubt having slipped there when he buckled up in the information center restroom. He makes adjustments and steps out again into morning light. In the distance a bugle sounds, calling his squad into position. And half a league away, he knows he will never make it back in time for his appointed death.

—From the author’s collection of flash literature, The Light I Want to Keep (MacQ, 30 December 2024); appears here with his permission.

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

⚡ Suitcase Full of Clay: An Ekphrastic e-Collection in MacQueen’s Quinterly, aka MacQ (Issue 18, April 2023)

⚡ Roadshow, microfiction by Daryl Scroggins in MacQ (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

⚡ 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