The house is empty at this moment. It’s been deserted for a couple of hours, apparently inert but making tiny movements, sunlight stalking through those rooms, wind rattling the doors, expanding here, contracting there, giving off little pops and creaks and burps, like any old body. It seems alive, an illusion common to many buildings, or perhaps to how people see them, filled with mood and expression, windows like eyes. But nobody is here to witness it, nothing stirs, except for the dog in the driveway, leisurely licking his testicles.
