The October Challenge for WEP
(Write Edit Publish)
Flash Fiction
is Deja Vu or Voodoo.
{997 words}
The blood moon leered down on Alice and me through thick,
silent mists snaking above us.
The mists were the only things silent across the
grassy courtyard.
Drums beat wild rhythms as rocking black men chanted, their
wide eyes glazed over.
In the shadows of the huge bonfire, black dancers
wheeled about, long machetes flashing in their fists.
I was so scared it
felt like my skin was about to leap off me and do the Mambo with my skeleton.
I
knew where we were from pictures in that book on voodoo in early New Orleans:
Congo Square, across Rampart Street from the French Quarter.
Place Congo was its name this far back in the past.
I reached out and
took Alice’s ice-cold right hand. My heart calmed.
With her at my side, I could
take on monsters.
With the musk of
sweat, alcohol, and hate heavy in the humid night air, Alice whispered in that
odd British accent of hers,
“Victor, we are in serious jeopardy here.”
When a flesh-eating
ghoul says she’s afraid,
even a mongrel like me knows life has just hit a new
high in low-down.
The drums suddenly stopped. Every wild eye turned to us.
I winked at her. “You
think?”
A tall woman, her black face glowing like an instrument of
dark grace, spoke softly,
yet it carried out across the dancers and slithering
snakes on the grass.
But none of them equaled the boa across her shoulders.
“You two do not
belong here.”
Alice murmured, “Look
at Marie Laveau, Victor. She is such a striking woman.”
I grinned drily, “Even without the snake.”
A small, crooked old
man limped to us. “She be right.”
He turned to Alice, his voice gaining an edge. “’Specially
you, nzumbe.”
I stiffened. “That’s
Myth Nzumbe to you, Fright Face.”
Alice lips got tight. “Is everything a jest to you, Victor?”
I squeezed her icy hand.
“Never you, Alice. But you can’t let monsters see you sweat.”
Alice raised a prim eyebrow. “I never sweat.”
The old man limped closer. “You be half-dead, now, Miss
Nzumbe. Soon you be all dead.”
“Don’t count on it,
Legba.”
He stepped back an inch. “You know me?”
“I know of you.”
“Then, you knows how powerful I be. I be the origin of
life!”
I snorted. “Get real. That would be Elohim. And I’m pretty
sure you’re not Him.”
“So sure are you?”
I nodded to the squirming reptiles. “Pretty sure. He’s not
real fond of snakes. He took their legs away, remember?”
He cackled, “But Erzulie be fond of dem, and she be right
behind you, boy. Erzulie, loa of Love and Death.”
I turned to face the
tall black woman with strange scars on her face and smiled,
“That’s a new look
for you, Mother.”
“No, child. ‘Dis face be veeery old. And you be in bad
trouble.”
I winked at her and
copied her accent, “Dat be an veeery old story, Mudder.”
Alice sank my floating rib with a sharp elbow.
“We are
very grateful that you plucked us from harm’s way earlier.”
Mother’s new face
could have hung on an African hut door for all its spookiness.
“Not
earlier, child. Many, many years later from now. And you be still
in harm’s way. A choice is yers now, girl.”
Alice was so scared she almost vibrated. “What choice
would that be, Er-Erzulie?”
Mother’s eyes became the slate gray of winter storms.
“Da only choice, child. Yerself or others. Darkness or Light.
Revenge or Love.”
I made a face.
“That seems a lot more than one choice, Mother.”
She jabbed a long, scraggly forefinger at me. “You
remember: nothing caged can love its jailer.”
{Courtesy Leonora Roy}
I turned to Alice. But she was all eyes for something
behind me.
I went death cold. Three white females. One
young. The second?
She was Madame
LaLaurie, all a’flutter with insane eyes and a long scalpel.
The third? The third was… Maija.
{Courtesy Leonora Roy}
And the young white girl?
She was what Alice would have looked like human.
Legba looked sadly at Alice. “De third be your mother
yet to be. Even now she be a foul, twisted thing.
Look. Maija
be givin’ her to Laveau to learn how to make you what you is.”
The mists swallowed him. “Ya could kill ‘er now.
Save yerself 175 years of de living death.”
Alice stiffened. “I–I could, could I not?”
I reached out.
“But there would never be an US.”
Her face screwed up. “Is all you care about is
yourself, Victor?
Do you know the 175 years of living hell I endured
because of that perversion of a mother?”
She flowed up to
me. “Do you?”
For the first time since I’d known her, her face was
ugly.
Home. I’d lost it. I smiled so bitter it tasted
of salt.
Alice flowed after her mother being led beyond the bonfire
by Marie Laveau, beyond my dreams and broken hopes.
Legba appeared beside
me. “I knows yer power. You could stop her.”
“When you love
someone, sir, you want what is best for them. This will kill me.
But it will free Alice from a living hell.”
I turned to him, no
longer able to see clear through the hot tears. “How could I say I love
her if I caged her to do it?”
He reached out, grabbing
my shoulder. “Da Miracle of Life… He be remembering yer name.”
A voice I never expected to hear again murmured to my
left.
“His name is Victor Standish. And he will never be alone as
long as I live.”
I whirled
around. Alice. She took my hand, kissing me lightly.
She sobbed, “I heard you. I thought to myself, ‘Are
you going to let your mother hurt you again by taking someone who loves you so
from your side?’”
Alice squeezed my hand. “I remembered what your Mother
said, Victor. And I chose… you.”
I forced a wink. “Well, who wouldn’t?”
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