Dope Man Cometh by Dane Hildebrandt
The Pound by Seth McBride
Shelby Cray awoke to her Boxer licking her face; slobber-filled kisses that left malodorous track marks. Her head throbbed against the rock pillow beneath her forehead. The dog chain tugged at the rusty rebar diagonally implanted in the mud pit behind her shack. Shoving her dog, Cinnamon, by the face, she yelled“ Get off!”
She stood, wiping the crusted mud from her jeans. Cinnamon was nearly strangling herself against the chain. She had never restrained her dog, but why had she now? She couldn’ t recall. Searching through her memories, she felt like a pillbug exposed from beneath its rock, suffocating and running in every direction at once in search of security.“ I’ m sorry, girl,” she said, extending her lower jaw in a poor attempt to mimic her beloved pet. Cinnamon was easily excitable and had been known to run parallel to running leaves while barking— as if the flying debris were going to play. Shelby removed the thick red collar about Cinnamon’ s neck. And before she had the opportunity to run her wrinkled hand through Cinnamon’ s short brindle fur, two white paws lunged into her stomach. Shelby smacked her nose and aimed a finger at the timid pup that had turned her head away.“ No jumping!” Ignoring the confused, bitter woman, Cinnamon took off through a patch of woody shrubs that divided her three-room shack from the neighbor’ s expansive property: the O’ Leary’ s. Shelby was secretly jealous of their property: a three-story house; gardens and flowerbeds decorated with
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