Breakfast had turned cold. The eggs hadn’t even been touched. The house was empty. It was getting dark and no one had thought to leave a light on. The TV glowed with static. Kathy liked to watch the morning talk shows. Broken dishes littered the floor. The back door was open. Something had made big gashes in the grass. It smelled like dirt after a rain. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. To one side the sun sunk into the trees, while on the other a carving moon hung low to the mountains. Tonight not even the birds moved.
The little lemon house sat on the corner of chestnut and pine. It was built in the 1950 with designs copied from a rival architect firm. The houses in the Peterson Grove subdivision all had one of six layouts, three if you consider that some were just reversed. The trees had been planted at the same time as the houses and had dealt with time much more gracefully. A baby blue number across the street was a mirror twin except for the recently dented garage door. Up above the sky stained purple and the street lights shuddered to life.
A low wind ruffled the curtains in all the open windows. A few leaves gamboled down the street. The ground creaked under it’s own weight - it began with a rumbling.
