6 The first night Isaac and Leah had sex was a blur of bodies and appendages.


2 Isaac dreamed they were on display at a traveling carnival.


3 Townsfolk purchased tonics and absolutions, pitied a gaunt woman claiming her pygmy children were the brood of the devil


himself, and marveled at Siamese twins entwined in eternal coital rapture.


4 Leah dreamed of bodily arrangements they had not yet attempted.


5 She dreamed of being tied up by, and tied to, Isaac.


6 She dreamed of a blissful state where they possessed no sexual organs; where she had only to imagine a physical act and it was realized.


7 And she dreamed that fantasies played out without regard to modesty or local sodomy laws.


8 But Leah forgot that the dreams in this city were symbiotic.


9 And, if dreamt in the center, they then radiated out into the collective.


10 Having only dreamt by the outer perimeter, their unconscious thoughts had been preserved, while the dreams of the city filtered through them like a collection of Polaroids taken by unknown photographers.


11 Most often, Isaac and Leah captured the town’s spiritless scenes from daily rituals.


12 And yet, Isaac and Leah had always dreamt of temptations of the body; of encounters with deities beyond their grasp; and of tiny churches that rested on hillsides: of places they had never seen and thought not to exist.


13 That night, as they dreamt these unthinkable dreams, the town awoke and thought themselves unclean.


14 And for the first time, those who had no souls thought of the need for redemption.