Chapter 3: The Loop Edmund Cannot Exit

The kettle has been boiling for eleven minutes.

Edmund knows this because he has been watching it, the way a man watches a thing he cannot quite bring himself to move toward, and it has been screaming in that thin particular register since — since before, since the same before it is always, the kettle on the gas ring and the windows going dark outside and the hour when she was supposed to —

He turns away from the kitchen.