Excerpt: NOT THIS YEAR

The dead kitten basket stunk. Not from these kittens, they were fresh, but the cheap plastic of the basket housed the scent of moldy, furry death built up over six years. In fact, Gino thought as he pinched the kitten’s neck to find the snap, this was the very same basket he and Dick picked up at Kmart together the night before mom caved in.
* * *
Mom was a sprawling collection of two-by-fours, gray brick cinderblock, tarpaper, and thick, clumpy mortar smegma squishing out from between everything, everywhere. It sat on the west side of a smashy hill in the center of a wavy, wheaty meadow, itself at the southern edge of a forest in nowhere, Tennessee, crawling up the root of the Smoky Mountains.

~~~~
“Give me a second. I’m just gonna make up a dummy here.”

Gino had mustard dried over his lip, in the center, nestled and crusted into the v of his upper oral labial flap. He reached into the basket and pulled out a kitten. Still warm. But too mushy to feel cute; dead kittens grossed Gino fucking out.

~~~
In the beginning, we didn’t know what to say. That didn't stop us from speaking. We shouted yelled screamed. Banged gavels. Pleaded for mercy, for sanity, for justice, for the love.

Nobody listened.

Except LaGrange.