All the Little Houses

Prologue

Later

The water claps along the marshy shoreline, its calming ticktock like the clicking hands of a metronome.

Under the spotlight of the full moon, though, the normally placid lake roils, its metallic surface disturbed by both the torching summer breeze and the body recently thrust there.

It’s not sinking fast enough. Not as fast as I imagined it would.

And from the car speakers twenty feet away, I can just make out the lyrics to the song the local station has been playing on repeat all summer, a song that seems perfectly summoned for this moment:

Michael Hutchence singing about every one of us having the devil inside.