Ronald Wallace

Stories

Writers Try Short Shorts!

Part III

(To return to the beginning of the article on short short stories, please select Part I. To return to the previous page, please choose Part II.)

Selected Bibliography

• Fles, Barthold, ed. The Best Short Short Stories from Collier's. Cleveland and New York: The World Publishing Company, 1948.
• Forché, Carolyn. The Country Between Us. New York: Harper & Row, 1981.
• Hinshaw, Brian. "The Custodian," Sundog (Fall, 1996).
• Howe, Irving, and Ilana Wiener Howe, eds. Short Shorts: An Anthology of the Shortest Stories. New York: Bantam Books, 1982.
• Reid, Mildred I., and Delmar E. Bordeaux. Writers Try Short Shorts! (All Known Types With Examples). Rockford, Illinois: The Trust Building, 1947.
• Shapard, Robert, and James Thomas, eds. Sudden Fiction: American Short-Short Stories. Salt Lake City: Gibbs M. Smith, Inc., 1986.
• Shapard, Robert, and James Thomas, eds. Sudden Fiction (Continued). New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1996.
• Shapard, Robert, and James Thomas, eds. Sudden Fiction International. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1989.
• Stern, Jerome, ed. Microfiction. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1996.
• Thomas, James, and Denise Thomas and Tom Hazuka, eds. Flash Fiction. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1992.
• Wallace, Ron. Quick Bright Things. Minneapolis: Mid-List Press, 2000.
• Wilson, Robley Jr., ed. Four-Minute Fictions. Flagstaff, Arizona: Wordbeat Press, 1987.

Worry

by Ron Wallace

She worried about people; he worried about things. And between them, that about covered it.

"What would you think of our daughter sleeping around?" she said.
"The porch steps are rotting," he replied. "Someone's going to fall through."

They were lying in bed together, talking. They had been lying in bed together talking these twenty-five years: first, about whether to have children--she wanted to (although there was Down's Syndrome, leukemia, microcephaly, mumps); he didn't (the siding was warped; the roof was going fast)--and then, after their daughter was born, a healthy seven pounds eleven ounces ("She's not eating enough;" "The furnace is failing"), about family matters, mostly ("Her friends are hoodlums, her room is a disaster;" "The brakes are squealing, the water heater's rusting out.")

"I've been reading her diary. She does drugs. She sleeps around."
"I just don't think I can fix them myself. Where will we find a carpenter?"

And so it went. Their daughter married her high school sweetheart, had a family, and started a health food store in a distant town. Although she recalled her childhood as fondly as anyone--how good her parents had been and how they worried for her, how old and infirm they must be growing, their house going to ruin--she rarely called or visited. She had worries of her own.

--from Quick Bright Things (Mid-List Press, 2000)

Originally published: "Writers Try Short Shorts!" The Writer's Chronicle 33.6 (2001): 40-46.

To return to the beginning of the article on short short stories, please select Part I. To return to the previous page, choose Part II. For information on ordering Wallace's Quick Bright Things, please select Publisher Information.