ILL-MET IN MOONLIGHT

 

Never meet a Voodoo Queen at Midnight

ILL-MET IN MOONLIGHT

“Life is like the oil in an old hurricane lamp. How long it lasts depends on how long you burn and how high you flame.”

- Marie Leveau

 

Next midnight found me at my usual spot: sitting as far as possible from St. Marok’s at the fanged gate.

Of course, the world I saw at that time of night in this stretch of the French Quarter was hardly uplifting. 

But I could imagine that just beyond the dilapidated buildings I could see were homes …

Homes filled with … not saints … 

but just simple people who cared for one another, who watched out for each other … 

who gave a damn if the other lived, died … or cried quietly alone in his cot curled up like some stupid baby.

Sure, it was a fairy tale … but better than the Brothers Grim fairy tale I found myself living day after day.

I watched the thick fog cream and boil like a thought struggling to form at the edge of consciousness.

What formed wasn’t a thought but a nightmare.

Marie Laveau, dressed all in black, looking ready to attend a funeral.

“Yours, boy. What kind of fool are you? Going to the Grey Man’s party to spare a Grunch?”

Obviously, news of the idiot variety traveled fast. I guessed that happened when you could read minds. I hoped she didn’t mind light reading.

I smiled sourly. “You tell me. You seem to know everything.”

“Ha! I knowed everything, I wouldn’t have been cursed by the Grey Man.”

I noted her grammar slipped when she was upset. “How did that happen?”

“Unlike you, boy, I not a blabber mouth.”

I smiled wide. “But on the bright side, you’re pretty.”

Her eyes became cruel. “But not as pretty as that spook librarian whose lips you will never kiss.”

It was obvious that she could not pass any open wound without scattering some salt into it. “Gee, tell me something I don’t know.”

“All right, since you asked so nice: 

the Grey Man done moved you up some days ahead in Time. He can do stuff like that. This be Monday … and he re-invited that even spookier nun and your precious heavenly librarian.”

Her smile widened, lost all semblance of authenticity. “Maybe he want to kill her right in front of you tomorrow night … slow. Your very own trick for Halloween.”

“Feel free to leave any time, ma’am.”

She left, but she left behind faint echoes of mocking laughter.

 “For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks… the work for which all other work is but preparation.”

- Rainer Maria Rilke

This is really a mystic, evocative tune: