Beginnings, Middles, and Ends
Every day in the whole of human history can be seen, in retrospect, as the beginning of Something, the occurrence of some event that will result in the avalanche of events that form the complete story in the as-yet-unimagined future.
Some chapters unfold gently, like a mother’s kiss on a sleeping child’s forehead. Others descend mercilessly, like the slash of a vengeful deity’s sword.
On the day this story had its inception, none of the human inhabitants of Looser Island was aware of the threads of fate converging on this tiny island in the Salish Sea, the sequence of events that would start with the discovery of a man hiding in a dumpster, would lead almost but not quite inexorably to another man’s death, and would ultimately touch each and every one of the islanders irrevocably.
None of the islanders realized their reality, so predictable in its casual chaos, was about to be thrown off kilter forever.
It’s possible the dogs knew.
