by Lori Perkins
He was yelling at me, as usual.
It is frustrating to me now, in hindsight, that the one time when I could endure his censure with true uncaring stoicism was the one time when I was too emotionally dead to enjoy it. As it was, since he gave me no commands, I simply let the words wash over me—meaningless ravings.
Eventually he realized this and stopped, puffing thoughtfully on his cigar. “So.
You say you do not want to be a houngan. You are no priest, you say. You want to be a modern man. Go to university. Work in the city. No time for the temple, no time for the loa, no time for your mait-tete! Well.” He puffed some more and gave me a nasty smile.
“Now you have time, no?
“I send you dreams. You ignore them. I send you warnings. You ignore them. I send portents to your family and friends, and you ignore them. You get sick, you lose your job, but do you come to the houngan for guidance? No! You move to the city! ” He stomped one foot. “Stubborn!” Then his anger faded, replaced with satisfaction. “Not so stubborn now. Didn’t think you needed your mait-tete’s protection. So. I take my protection back, and what happens to you? Zombie. Not so much fun, make the temple look like a paradise, no?”
He laughed and took another puff, then crossed his arms and considered me. “But I still want you for my horse . And him, Jean-Yves,” and here he jerked his head back, somehow indicating the door of the shed even though we were not at the plantation at the moment, “he does not feed me, he does not call the society, he does not do honor to me, the master of magicians! He is soft and comfortable, and forgets his duty. So. I take my protection from him, too.”
Simbi Makaya looked past me and pursed his lips. “And also, maybe, Erzulie Dantor has an interest in a certain pretty girl, wants her husband to tell his servant Jean-Yves to let the girl go. But the bokor, he does not listen.” The loa glanced at me, smiling.
“Not wise to ignore one’s wife, especially when she is Erzulie Dantor. So very fond of knives, she is. So. Jean-Yves, not on my happy list. Even more so than you.”
Even a zombie could see where this was going.
He pointed the cigar at me. “I will give you one more chance. I will break the spell that holds your ti bon ange from you. After that, well, I will give you no more chances.”
He reached for me. Since I had no will to fight him, my body gave just one brief convulsion before the loa was in control. Everything went dark.
I came to myself in an unfamiliar kitchen, a salt shaker in my hand and grains dissolving on my tongue. Chaos! I had not been able to feel for so long, and now it was all thrust upon me at once. I doubled over, catching myself against a table as my knees went weak, caught up in the loa’s retreat and the return of my soul. It was worse than being thrown into cold water, but that was the best analogy I could make. Light and dark flashed through my vision. The breath was driven out of me, my mind overwhelmed by the intense sensations, my muscles spasming.
There was a moment where I thought it would be too much to endure, and I would die in truth. But through the ache of hungers left unsated and limbs that have toiled with too little rest, the presence of my Marie-Celeste burned.
The very thought of her warmed my heart, drove back the riot of feelings until they settled, uneasy and fitful, into their proper places.
She was near.
This knowledge of her did not surprise me in the least. I had always been able to tell which loa rode whom, and what neighbor was knocking on the front door. It was part of what made me so very attractive to the master of magicians.
I climbed to my feet on colt’s legs and followed my inner compass, my hand still closed tight around the salt shaker.
Listening carefully, hiding as best I could, I made my way through the quiet house. I would have passed by what looked like a closet door if I had not been guided to it. There was a lock on the door, and before I tried it I tapped three times against the lock plate and whispered the charm my grandfather had taught me. The door opened soundlessly when I turned the knob.
The dim light from the hall let me see that this was indeed used for storage, but of the bokor’s ritual tools. There was the crutch of Legba and bottles of rum and whiskey, candles and skulls and cloths of all colors, top hats and glasses with only one lens, a shelf holding nothing but small ceramic bottles.
Lighting a red candle, I softly shut the door behind me.
Of course, it was her ti bon ange that drew me, not her body. Setting aside the one bottle that resonated with her energy, I picked up each of the others in turn. Carefully, for I had never much liked to make use of my gift, I sent a thought to each soul as I held it: Fly home to your body. There is work yet to do. Then I sprinkled the bottle with salt, muffled it in cloth, and smashed it against the edge of the shelf.
One bottle was empty. I smashed it anyway.
When all the bottles were destroyed but one, I blew out the candle.
Show me to where your body is, I whispered to Marie-Celeste’s ti bon ange, and opened the bottle.
Her soul spilled forth, invisible as the air, silent to my ears but loud in my heart. I followed its song through the house to a back bedroom. There were voices on the other side of the door, so I called the disembodied soul back to the bottle and hid in some long curtains nearby.
After a few long minutes the door opened. The bokor Jean-Yves came out, followed by a maid, her arms piled high with towels and cloths.
” Houngan Stefan will be here tomorrow,” Jean-Yves said as they walked down the hall, “and I expect you will have Marie-Celeste properly dressed and presentable by the time he arrives. It wouldn’t do for him to decide to refuse her.”
The maid murmured something deferential as they rounded the corner, voices fading into nothing.
My hands clenched tight around the bottle and the salt shaker. Jean-Yves planned to give Marie-Celeste away, or possibly trade her, probably hoping that Erzulie Dantor’s wrath would follow the zombie’s owner instead of her maker. Glaring after him, I crept back to the door.
It was silent inside, so with a brief prayer I eased the door open. The room was dark, but there was enough light coming through the windows that I could make out her shape on the bed. Marie-Celeste lay naked on top of the sheets, her black hair like a wet halo around her head. Her eyes were open but empty. I felt a faint glimmer of the pull that had drawn us together, but what lay on the bed was simply a shell. I held the real Marie-Celeste in my hand.
“Open your mouth,” I whispered aloud, and the zombie did. I closed my eyes briefly, reaching out to her ti bon ange. Fly home to your body. Then I wrapped the bottle in the sheet. With one hand I smashed it against the bed frame, and with the other I sprinkled salt into her mouth.
With a shrill cry of triumph, her soul slammed into her body.
Marie-Celeste gasped, her back arching, her eyes wide. Convulsions wracked her lithe frame, her hands scrabbling at the bedclothes, head twisting from side to side as her soul sought to reestablish itself. Her expression changed, moving from shock to distress, then agony. Then rage.
I didn’t know what Jean-Yves had done to her, but I could feel it, a festering hatred growing like an abscess in her psyche, threatening to sever the fragile connection that remained between her body and her ti bon ange. If her soul fled her now, her body would follow its last impulse—destroy Jean-Yves—and she would die.
Though my gift let me feel her mind, her pain and confusion were too great for me to get through. Desperate, not knowing what else to do, I leaned down and kissed her.
In that first long moment, there was no response. My heart cried out in denial, and I kissed her harder.
Then, like butter going soft in the afternoon sun, her lips molded to mine.
Her harsh breaths eased, and the hatred drained out of her.
I pulled away, averting my eyes, because I was suddenly very much aware that she was a zombie no longer, but a person, a woman, naked and vulnerable and trapped beneath me. “I’m sorry, I—”
She grabbed me by both ears and hauled me back down to her. With growing delight she studied my face, a tender, wondering smile dancing on her lips. “Joseph,” she murmured, calling me by the only name she knew, and kissed me before I could correct her.
I think she meant it to be a gentle kiss, but it didn’t stay that way. God alone knew how long we’d been together in that horrific state, so close but never touching, and even though we’d been unaware at the time, now it was all coming down on us. The zombie’s contentment gave way to human passion, infectious and hot like a fever, delirium making us forget where we were, the danger we were in. There was nothing else for me but her soft brown skin and her delicate hands fumbling at my clothes, and the hot, wet pressure as I sheathed myself inside her.
If I had never believed in magic before, that moment would’ve convinced me.
And too, on the edge of my awareness, Simbi Makaya and Erzulie Dantor twined together, coupling with a frenzied joy that matched our own.
I pushed that knowledge aside and focused on Marie-Celeste, savoring her breathless, pleading moans, suckling at her pert breasts, my hips rocking, rocking, until she cried out, shuddering around me. The pleasure of it broke me and I came, groaning into her shoulder, our arms wrapped tight around each other.
She gave a pleased little laugh and kissed my cheek. “Ah, Joseph,” she said again, her eyes shining.
Maybe I would keep the name. Anything, as long as she kept looking at me like that.
I shook myself. “We have to go,” I whispered, looking around for my clothes.
Her gaze took in the room with one swift glance, and she nodded, reaching down to the floor and tossing me my pants. I found my shirt and handed it to her. Watching her dress didn’t make it any easier to get my pants on. She was so adorable, rolling back the long sleeves, her slim legs poking out from under the hem.
Footsteps pounded down the hall outside. No time to do anything but step between Marie-Celeste and the door before it burst open, slamming into the wall and almost swinging shut again.
Jean-Yves batted it aside, his lips drawn back in an angry snarl. Ceramic shards fell from his fingers.
I suppose I had left a bit of a mess back there.
The
bokor’s gaze flicked over me, the rumpled bed, and fixed on Marie-Celeste with the burning hatred of wounded pride. “You’d deny me, the greatest sorcerer on this whole stinking island, but fall right into bed with a man that I bought for half a cask of cheap rum?”
The heat of her anger warmed my back. “I’d sooner bed a leper than you!” she snapped, trying to dodge around me, her fingers hooked into claws. I spread my arms wide, determined to keep between them.
Jean-Yves spared me a derisive glance. “I’ll deal with you later,” he growled, and threw something at me.
My hand tingled, as if I’d been scuffing through dry leaves and had reached for something metal. Almost without meaning to, I raised my hand and caught what he had thrown.
Nothing happened, save that the presence of my mait-tete surrounded me.
“You’re not the greatest sorcerer on this island,” I said as the bokor gaped at me.
“Simbi Makaya is.”
I could feel the others approaching, running up the hill. With a grim smile I made a fist around the little fetish I had caught, stepped forward, and punched Jean-Yves as hard as I could.
His
cheek
crunched under the blow. He reeled, stumbling to the side.
Away from the door.
I’d learned so few charms before my grandfather had died, before I’d turned my back on the loa and the faith that had raised me. But this one I knew. Before Jean-Yves could recover, I slammed the door shut, touched the lock plate.
Click.
The other man righted himself, one hand pressed to his face. “You’d have done better to put yourself on the other side of that door. I’m going to make you wish—”
I threw the fetish at his feet, grabbed Marie-Celeste, and hauled her back toward the far window.
Jean-Yves laughed at the nest of snakes that seemed to appear at his feet. “I don’t need the loa to dispel my own magic,” he sneered, waving his hands at the hissing serpents and causing them to vanish in puffs of colored smoke.
Behind
the
bokor, there was movement at the window that faced down the hill.
I took an instinctive step back, pushing Marie-Celeste toward the window behind us. “You don’t want to see this,” I whispered.
She refused to budge. “Oh, yes, I do.”
The
window
shattered.
We all crouched instinctively as the glass went flying, and the first zombie was halfway over the sill before Jean-Yves turned and saw his danger. With a horrified cry he sprang for the door, rattling the handle uselessly and trying to undo the locking spell.
More of the zombies were pouring through the window, tearing at the frame, silent except for a low rumbling growl that made my skin crawl. The bokor dodged past the reaching hands of the first zombie and hurled himself at me.
I braced myself, ready to defend the only other exit, hardly aware of Marie-Celeste’s shudders until she abruptly darted past me, leaning down to scoop up a shard of glass. With a harsh cry of ” ke ke ke! ” she drove the shard into the bokor’s belly.
Jean-Yves staggered, and Erzulie Dantor left Marie-Celeste just as suddenly as she had seized her. Marie-Celeste convulsed, stumbling into me as I rushed to pull her back. Jean-Yves stared at us, eyes wide with shock and disbelief, until the mob of dead men grabbed him. Panic blazed across his face and then, as hands and teeth began to tear into flesh, the shrieking began.
I stood there with Marie-Celeste wrapped in my arms, until she finally turned and buried her face against my chest. The zombies ignored us completely as we opened the window and slipped out into the night.
The screams continued for quite some time. We made a wide circle of the house, and by the time we found the road, the noise had ceased.
We started down the road, more concerned about getting away from there than deciding on a destination. I’d worry about that once I found out where we were. I had my arm around Marie-Celeste’s shoulders, and she snuggled close.
“As soon as we find a place to stop, we need to have a long talk,” she said, already sounding tired. “I don’t even know anything about you.”
“I’m training to be a houngan,” I offered.
She gave me an approving glance, and I smiled.
Anything, so long as she kept looking at me like that.
Inhuman Resources
by Jeanine McAdam
“You really have got to stop looking for adventure and find a job,” my mother told me in a not-very-nice tone of voice. My mother never gave me attitude. I wasn’t sure what was up with her.
“I don’t want any old job,” I groaned. I could feel my fingers tightening around the milk carton I was holding. “And I can’t work a desk job,” I explained while pouring the milk onto my Frosted Flakes. “I’ll lose my mind.”
“Claire, you are twenty-one years old,” she said as she added sugar to her second cup of coffee. “I won’t support you any longer. I’ve given you plenty of time to find yourself. College wasn’t your thing and I understand, but if you want to live here you’re going to have to start paying rent.”
I sighed big time. As my shoulders went up and down, I could feel a muscle twitch in my neck. I decided to fight back.
“I can’t believe my own mother is kicking me out,” I countered. Maybe a good healthy guilt trip would get her to back down.
“Don’t you even try that on me—” she warned.
“I’m going to apply again to the police force,” I interrupted.
“They’re not going to take you,” she said bluntly. “You can’t say things like you enjoy reenacting Star Wars if you want to be considered.” She looked me up and down.
“You
should have told them you watch Law and Order.”
I rolled my eyes. She could be annoying. Maybe she had a point. I shouldn’t have said anything about playing Princess Leia but I thought it’d make me interesting.
After all, their advertisement at the bus stop said they were looking for diversity.
“What do you have in mind?” I asked her grudgingly. My mother always had a plan.
She smiled. I hated when she smiled like that. All the creases in her face folded up to her eyes and her chin wobbled. “There’s a new insurance agency a few miles off Route Seven.” She pointed at me. “My friend Irene tells me they need a receptionist.”
Office work. It was always nine to five, health insurance, retirement, and a life of stability. That was my mother’s mantra. Be more like your sister, she’s got a nice job at the bank. Susan was also deadly boring with her loan officer job, white picket fence, and two well-behaved children.
My mother continued speaking, not even noticing my face contorting into a painful expression. “I think this is right for you,” she said with a definitive nod of her head. Then she stood, coffee cup in hand. “I’ve been tolerant through the mountain ranger, ski patrol, lifeguard, and police officer phases.” In the doorway she added, “My patience has run out, Claire Defoe. I know you want to live boldly but you’ve got to pay the bills.”
“I’m here to inquire about the job,” I said to the pale woman sitting behind the reception desk the next day. When she didn’t return my half smile, I decided it was the florescent lights sucking the life out of her. I vowed that if I got the job, as soon as I started resembling her, I’d quit.
Without looking up from the computer screen she moaned, “Ake a sea.” She sounded like she had about a dozen marbles in her mouth and that neck brace she wore held her chin firmly in place. After she shifted her eyes towards one of two tweed chairs, I got her meaning. I sat.
About ten minutes later a hunched-over man with skin even paler than the receptionist came out of the back office. He nodded. I nodded back as I watched him ease himself into the chair next to me. It seemed he had low back pain.
