OPEN HOUSE FICTIONS - #1

The listing was north and west of the city, a flat stretch of tarmac between Camden East and Newburgh. A river tracked the road, felt almost English with its inscrutable iron runs and shallow rapid bursts, its swooning, lightning-hit willow. The seller worked the deepest pools for faint-silver trout and three-pound pike. You needed a long rod, he said, something to get you out over the water. He wandered the soft bank with his nose-up liver Pointer and a head full of country music, shot himself a few hours before the first open house. There was a condo waiting in the city’s east end; time had come to do away with stairs. It looked over the Cataraqui, and that was something, he supposed, though not enough. He fell forward, cinematic and slo-mo, would have drowned if the bullet hadn’t taken him instantly, his blood a sunset smoke pulled into eddies a mile east.