Sticks and stones may break my bones if these words deign to haunt me.

That twisted little rhyme has lurked in this town for as long as anyone can remember.

Most say it's just the twisted ramblings of a previous generation of small town

folk with poor memory, warping the words of Kingford or Redford. But the old timers,

those gnarled old gas and hags that sit on their porch rockers waiting for death, swear on God that those are the real words.

The original verses stolen from the law of this sleepy antique town.

The children on the battered playground equipment outside the dilapidated schoolhouse gleefully

shout the words as they run through their games, just as their parents did, just as their

grandparents did before, just as I did, barely more than a decade ago.

Averyville is an old and forgotten place, originally founded in 1826, and on the decline

ever since as the thick forests around it were drained of their bounties and the hills

mine dry of silver and oil. The ragged town is far past the point where such a place can

be called quaint. More apt descriptors such as rundown and depressing are often used.

No one not born here stays in Avrieville for long.

Travellers passing through might stop by the gas station or

convenience store, neither of which have seen any kind of upgrade since the

1950s, but they're soon speeding back towards the interstate.

I've never seen anyone stay more than one night at the decrepit old motel,

and certainly never more than one car in the guest lot at a time.

Though I was born here, delivered in the doctor's office's single medical suite, I was one

of the lucky few who escaped the apathetic hold of Averyville.

Solid schooling and interests beyond the day-to-day monotony that plagued my fellow classmates

...