FICTION
 

• Red Clay Fault Line by Savannah Bobo
 
Jessie-belle Atterson (she had cropped the “-belle” from her name after she’d started earning her own income) sat inside a bitter fog of cigarette smoke, waiting for the tobacco to burn down to the butt before she made a decision. 

• Blue Mourning by Angela Carlton
 
When the people in the other cars see her, their mouths will hang open and they will point and pass judgement and glare. They will not stop to help the child in the car, but they will sit for a good while like they are waiting on the popcorn. 
• The Dispatch by Benjamin Reed
 
Well into a Texas summer, the sun scorched so deep into the concrete it burned his feet, straight through the thin soles of his shoes as he trod the three miles home to his tiny, one-room apartment. He kept his eyes on the urban horizon. The heat vapor seething off the asphalt washed everything further than a city block into veil of boiling air.
• Angels & Saints by Laura Stamps
 
Mid-January, and drizzle paints the day the color of dust, while crows fuss in the street, yapping at the cold like drenched little dogs, as if their prickled tune could smudge the sky from gray to blue. 

• An Empty House by Charles Steptoe
 
I wonder what happens inside an empty house 

When the love is drained. 

The jokes and laughter are restrained.

As the kittens, when no one answered the door

We just went astray.

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