a stream bends around our town and keeps all the bad things out.

i have never gone to the other side of the water. my youngest brother thomas once went there weeks before his fifth birthday and came back with a month-long limp and a long cut in his face. but anyone without the innocence of a child and the gifts of a seventh son would not be dealt with so lightly.

the deal, the waters tell us, was done over a table in the attic. a figure who shifted from bearded man to film noir dame to shadowy monster sat with the earliest men and women of the town.

a bargain was struck. it does not touch us, and our souls will stay forever gray. whatever we do, we will never cross through the pearl-cut gates of heaven or be tossed into the flames of hell.

for it knows it cannot win, no matter how much it struggles to keep up. it knows that no matter what temptations or attempts of corruption it throws at humanity, good will always prevail

and so it may never be able to take the residents of my tiny community, but we become far more useful than we would be as targets of its defilement—we become tools of its stalemate. it will never win, but if the other side is unable to claim our souls as well, defeat can at least be delayed.

in this town we call home, our sins are our very existences for aiding it in its losing crusade.