The Dogshit Summer

By William L. Domme

The Dogshit Summer is a free short story. A woman's existence in a souring marriage and squalid conditions drives her to the brink of collapse until she runs into an old friend. This free story is a quick read.

Goodreads review:
"The first story Dogshit Summer is very atmospheric filled with a perfume of cigarettes, pinesol and dogshit mellowing on a hot, hazy, and humid summer's night. It is a story of bad choices, failures, and perceived dead ends. With your life's plan laid out what would you do if you were handed an application to get out of a purgatory that you helped create?" - T. Pearson

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: May 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9781304027221

Book preview

The Dogshit Summer

The Dogshit Summer

William L. Domme

Copyright Notice

The Dogshit Summer © 2013 by William L. Domme.  All rights reserved.  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

The Dogshit Summer appears in the Rejected Works of William L. Domme Volume I (©2013)

First Edition published 2013

Domme, William L., (1979-    )

The Dogshit Summer

ISBN 978-1-304-02722-1

More stories and information available here: atypeofwriter.com

THE DOGSHIT SUMMER

The phone is loud, the kids are screaming at each other, and the throbbing in my head must be the first step on a short trip to an aneurysm.  My eyes are trying to escape my head because they can’t convince the lids to close and the fingers trying to button the bottom button on my shirt play some weird game of tag that keeps me from getting on with the day.

The car shakes so bad when I put the brakes on at every stop that the steering wheel rocks side to side and almost rips itself out of my hands.  It’s hard to concentrate on the road with this and the kids playing as we go to Fannie’s, their sitter, before I have to work.

The streets are already hot and ugly at ten in the morning.  No clouds.  No shade.  Even the trees seem to be packing up for a different climate.  Shelby’s in the backseat trying to fog over the window with her breath and even though there’s no fog, pulls her finger across the glass, What are you drawing baby?

That dog on the side of the road.

Where?

Back there.

That dog was dead, Hank Jr. says.

No he wasn’t, Shelby slaps at him and misses, Mommy, can we get a puppy?

We’ll see.

The surface of everything looks bad, the whole town, single story buildings put up through a dozen decades, with their different styles and fashions, look like empty shells painted over, starting to blister and crack, ready to flake away and float into the wind like the soft white bulbs from the cottonwood trees that drift along; making it look like snow in the heart of the summer.  A moment of dreaming makes me think the window of my door