The Bayou

by Arden Powell

"So, he collects people like us. I see the way he looks at you," she added. "You're right to be scared of him.”

“Oh, he’s killed folks, for sure. He’s even killed some for me, specifically. I bet he’d kill for you, too. If you asked him.”

She smiled, razor-sharp and deadly. She was the sort of woman who had gunpowder running in her veins. There was no room for love in a woman like that.

"I ain't dying for any man, not even Johnny. When I go, it'll be by my choice, and I'll do it standing and facing it head on."

The devil was alive and well in Chanlarivyè, just as he was all through the South. Folks didn’t need so many churches unless they had something that needed praying away.

He looked less like the devil then, his eyes wide and earnest, but Milton wrote that Lucifer knew how to cry.

The last thing he saw before he shut his eyes was Johnny's slow, curved smile, and then they met in a press of lips and tongues and teeth.

"God," Eugene breathed. "Say my name, not his."

“They say the devil comes dressed as everything you’ve ever dreamed of. I never really imagined what it meant until I met you." “Should I be flattered?” “I don’t think it’s a compliment.” “I’m not the devil. Of course, that’s what he would say, isn’t it?”

Hell has no claim on me, but if it did, it wouldn’t be on account of who I take to bed.

The devil is just the word you give to humanity’s darker impulses.

I predate the devil, Eugene.