Money Can’t buy you love, but it can buy you magic.
Jacey Lambeau was desperately, achingly in love with Billy Bowdon, quarterback, and captain of the high scoring Santa Marguerita Manta Rays, of Santa Marguerita Catholic High School for “wealthy and unbearably over-privileged children” according to her father, John Lambeau, real estate Titan of Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. His tongue-in-cheek view of the school’s student body included his own daughter, whom he loved ardently, and proved it… usually in cash.
Jacey, along with her baby sister, Joley, were both their daddy’s girls, and used to getting or buying whatever they wanted, and right now, while Joley was still satisfied with baby dolls, what Joley wanted was Billy. Unfortunately for Jacey, Billy was the one thing that daddy couldn’t buy for her, although if she’d thought to ask, he might have tried.
For Jacey, each new day began and ended with thoughts of her Billy. His manly arms, his passionate kisses and promises of a life together that included undying love and, of course, marriage. Leaving out most of the mushy parts, she regaled her baby sister with stories of finding her own prince charming. Jacie’s school books, covered with hearts and flowers, depicted a teenager racing hopelessly towards infatuation beyond all redemption.
One autumn morning the shrill assault from the school’s fire alarm system altered Jacey’s course of direction...forever. Her original destination had been the school nurse’s office where, in the face of a biology test, she’d planned to complain of the stomach flu, the symptoms of which she wasn’t entirely making up, but at the sound of the alarm, she’d turned abruptly into the shaded area beneath the school’s bleachers, heading for the gym field. There, she’d come upon her very own Billy, locked in an embrace with Belinda Williams, her very best, and most trusted friend.
To make matters worse, upon confronting them, that rat-bastard Billy had broken up with her on the spot and hardly a backward glance. "You're just getting too serious," he'd told her, slinging his arm around Belinda’s shoulders as he guided her away.
Too serious? He was the one who'd first sworn his love for her, saying she was his one and only. The only girl for him. He was the one who'd persuaded her with the notion that since they planned to get married anyway, it really wouldn’t be so bad if she were “all his”.
~Ultimately, she’d given herself to him completely, her heart, her soul, and then her body, and now she was ruined. Ruined for life. Her trip to the nurses office had turned out to be more than just pre-test butterflies and as soon as her belly began to swell, that backstabbing bitch Belinda would be the first to guess the truth. After that, the whole school would know just how ruined she really was… unless, of course, she could
somehow undermine her treacherous friend Belinda, and win Billy back. Only her diary would later detail the desperation and hatred beginning to coagulate into her twisted and terrible scheme to turn the tide.
Now, any southern belle worth her drawl has heard tales of the dark magic that prowls the regions near the Mason/Dixon line, where pirogues whisper a sad farewell as they vanish beneath Spanish moss, and rich magnolia blossoms lose their purity…where black mambas slither up the arms of Voodoo Queens to drink the blood of headless chickens…where tales of women gone mad and men possessed, trickle down decades of superstition made legendary by their repetition…and as is common among teenagers, one always knows somebody who knows somebody….
And so it was that Jacey found herself on a moonless night, stumbling half-blindly down a darkling path headed deep into the Louisiana Bayou. Shadow dancers formed marionettes on Cypress canopies before skittering across dark water. They, and they only, bore transient witness to the girl as she approached a huddled figure stirring a flickering campfire with the charred leg bone of a weasel.
“Hoodia? Is that you, Hoodia? Your nephew, Beajuere sent me…” Jacey shivered in the campfire’s heat as she tiptoed into its light.
“Shiiiish! You wakin’ da’ frogs. ‘Dey be all up and froggin’. Be silent!”
Jacey’s voice croaked to a halt. “I need your help,” she began to whisper, “I brought money.”
“Wha’ you want for it?”
“Magic… to make my boyfriend come back to me.”
“Ehhhhhh,” said Hoodia, a half-considered question tugging her lips.
“Well, der’s one way, and ders’a ‘nother way. One way…not fo’ sure, other way…fo’ sure.”
“Other way then!” snapped Jacey, intention flirting with dark angels in her eyes. “How does it work?”
“It takes da’shine offen’ him.”
“The shine?”
“You pay now.”
“How much?”
“Whachu got? Give Hoodie all- or bad ju ju. Or Hoodie takes trade. If trade be good.”
Jacey thrust a handful of bills forward. “That’s all I have.”
“Soouweee!” Hoodie whistled, “Where’d you get all ‘dis money? Who yo' daddy be girl?” Suddenly, from out of the darkness came Hoodia's hand, thrusting a wriggling mouse so close to Jacey's face, it’s whisker brushed her trembling cheek. Hoodia grinned as she dangled it by its tail. “You pass my test. Prove you worthy of Hoodie’s mojo,” She crooned, holding forth a long, wicked hatpin.
Jacey’s eyes grew wide, then snapped tight shut as she reached an instant decision. In her mind, she watched again as Billy put tossed his arm around Belinda. Now thinking only of her one true love, she reached out, pinching the mouse’s whip-like tail between her fingers. Bending forward, she shuddered as she spiked downward, skewering the squealing mouse, and pinning it to the earth. She closed her mind to its hideous mewling as it wrestled and clawed its way through the veil separating this world from the next. The VooDoo Queen canted and swayed above her, a satisfied grin reaching all the way up to the blackened pupils of her soul-less eyes. The pale moon bore witness to the bargain.
Jacey soon found herself scrambling back down the path as if awakening from a trance. One hand clenched in a tight fist, the other, guarding a pocket containing a leather pouch whose contents, Hoodia had labeled “her gris-gris”. Back in the safety of her room, she poured over it’s contents; the bloody hatpin, a wishbone from a tom turkey soaked in the herb, Devil’s Shoestring, and the tiny, no longer beating heart of a mouse, still warm, wrapped in a linen handkerchief. She tucked the sinister items away in her jewel-box, going over Hoodie’s instructions in her head.
Getting Billy’s red flannel shirt had been easy, getting his hair, not so. Finally, Jacey feigned peace with Belinda, bargaining to forget her friend’s treasonous act, if only she would get her a lock of Billy’s hair to remember him by. Belinda, grown lonely for her best friend, took the bait, cajoling Billy into clipping a thin strand of hair, ostensibly for her own locket. She then passed the lock of hair to Jacey, who swore they’d once again be friends forever.
That same night, beneath the autumn moon, Jacey fashioned a crude doll made of bayou mud and fresh straw. This she secured in red flannel before inserting the dead mouse heart into it’s torso. Using the turkey bone for legs, she took careful stock of her handy-work. She then drove the bloody hatpin through the heart, then snapped the left leg bone in half before burying the doll under the edge of the tool shed.
The next day, Belinda tearfully re-told the story of Billy’s sudden collapse in the football stadium the night before. As he fell, his left leg had caught awkwardly between planks in the bleachers, which snapped his femur jaggedly in two. Soon the school percolated with the news that Coach Thomas was seen wiping away tears as Billy handed in his uniform, his football days over. It wasn’t long before Billy’s star began to fade and Belinda began to find being the girlfriend of a fallen hero not as exciting as a current one. “He just doesn’t shine like he did before,” she told Jacey before cheating on him with his best friend, the wide end receiver. Jacey was there to pick up the pieces of Belinda’s betrayal of a recently defeated Billy.
At the next waning of the moon, Jacey made her way once again down the dark path to Hoodia‘s camp, dragging a curious Belinda along by the hand.
“I need a love potion that will make sure Billy loves me forever,” Jacey ordered, remembering the fickle nature of the two people on earth she’d believed would never betray her. Belinda’s questioning eyes sought out Jacey’s, but Jacey was staring into the fire.
“Did you destroy the doll like I tol’ you?” Hoodia asked her.
“Yes,” Jacey lied, musing that it might be a valuable thing to hang on to. She’d paid a lot of money…
“It bodes bad to two-time the voodoo!”
“I remember.” said Jacey.
“Then you pay now. Or trade.” Hoodia spat at the fire, shooting tiny hissing ghosts upwards from the surface of the hot rocks. Jacey shoved Belinda towards her.
“TRADE!” Jacey shouted, her hatred escaping her lips in a cruel snarl.
“DONE!” Hoodia cried, grabbing a screaming Belinda by the neck while fishing out a leather pouch. “Two teaspoons! Chocolate cloaks the burn. Take care you don’ give too much! Too much can kill ‘im”. With that, the old woman and her currency vanished into the mist.
***
Jacey told Billy about the baby soon after he’d eaten the Chocolate Meringue Cherry Pie. Cherry pie was his favorite, and Jacey’s Chocolate Meringue seemed to be about the best he‘d ever tasted. Since that time, he’d been staggered by the many qualities he had originally missed in this stunning girl, and was now honestly thrilled that she was soon to be the mother of his child. Why he hadn’t seen the many qualities she possessed before, he didn’t know, but the one thing he did know, was that he had fallen completely under her spell. Chocolate Meringue Cherry Pie soon became a symbol for their love.
Now John Lambeau, Jacey’s daddy, couldn’t help but notice his daughters thickening waistline. He’d a mind to get out his shotgun, but opted for a more satisfactory solution all around. Not wanting to upset his baby girl in her delicate condition, and noting the obvious adoration now in attendance in the young man's eyes, he sprang for an early spring wedding and moved the two lovebirds into a guest house he had built just for them. Here, he and the wife could keep an eye their eldest daughter as her new, devoted husband worked his way up the ladder in the position he’d offered him in the family business. Baby sister, Jolie, was ecstatic over the fact that soon she’d have a “real baby doll” to play with.
At first Jacey was ecstatic over Billy’s fawning veneration, but at half a year in, the rapt masculine attention she once craved from him began to stifle. Where once, she’d ached to fill his every moment and longed for his caress, now, his attentions seemed overwhelming. She couldn’t breathe, She felt smothered, and somewhere, deep down, she still couldn’t seem to reconcile that this boy, who professed his all-consuming love for her, had actually cheated on her with her best friend. Soon, every day he told her he loved her, became another day that fueled her repulsion of him, even more so, when he occasionally wondered out loud, (like the rest of the town), what had happened to their mutual friend, Belinda, who’s disappearance had sparked a manhunt the likes of which the town had never seen.
Once the baby was born, Jacely became so consumed with love for this new, entirely innocent, unspoiled version of Billy, that she realized she had no need of him at all, and began to wish fervently that he would just somehow disappear.
His touch had begun to nauseate.. the jealous adulation he’d lavished on her from the start of their renewed relationship now suffocated her. Instead of aching as she had in the past just to be with him, she now ached for him to just be gone. The thought swirled around and around in her mind. She now wished to spend the rest of her life, only with the TRUE love of her life, Billy Junior. They could be so happy…. If only…
Jacey sat up in bed cradling the new love of her life in her arms. “Joley,” she remarked lazily to the little sister, who sat on the bed next to her caressing the new babies cheek, “There‘s a little leather pouch in my jewel box, would you get it?”
Joley jumped up to fetch it. “What’s in it, Jacey?”
“Vitamins,” her big sister answered. “Joley, I’m so tired. If I give you one of the baby’s blankets for your dolls, will you go outside and play for awhile?”
“Can I have the yellow one?” Joley begged, jumping up in excitement. She loved having ‘real baby clothes’ for her dolls and couldn’t wait to take one outside and wrap it up like the real baby. “Look Jacey! There’s some fluffs of the baby's hair on it!”
“That‘s angel hair, and it‘s good luck,” smiled Jacey, never taking her eyes off her sleeping boy. Joley ran for the door with the blanket, almost knocking a chocolate meringue cherry pie off the dresser as she passed. She froze for an instant, thinking she was in trouble bumping Jacey‘s special present to her husband. “Don’t worry, Joley, you didn’t hurt it,” Jacey said, shooing the little girl out the back door.
It wasn’t long before the front door burst open. “I’m on my way to smother the two loves of my life with kisses!” Billy called, heading towards Jacey and the new baby.
“I couldn’t wait to get home to you!” he told Jacey. “I’ve been thinking about you since I left this morning and I figured a way to be closer to you every minute of the day! I talked Dad into letting me work from home from now on. I’m going to set up an office in extra room.”
“Have piece of pie, Billy,” Jacey offered, nonchalantly sprinkling a generous dusting of fine powder from her leather pouch over the slice she held in her hand.
“What’s the powder?” he asked.
“Aphrodisiac,” she vamped, playing the coquette.
With a low wolf-whistle, Billy held out his hands to the slice she offered. “Ummm… kinda’ spicy. I like ‘em spicy! My food, and my women!” he joked, playfully.
“Have another piece if you like,” Jacey said with a wink. It was just minutes before he slumped to the floor on the far side of the bed.
Jacey hummed softly to herself as she dumped the remainder of the pie down the garbage disposal… “Can she bake a cherry pie? Billy boy, Billy boy...” then picking up Billy Jr. she carried him to the rocking chair. “It’s just you and me now, handsome boy,” she cooed, “You are the perfect boy…. You’d never leave me, or cheat on me, would you, you perfect little man?….Can she bake a berry pie, charming Billy?...” as she hummed, the tune zagged a little off-key… as her eyes fixed on the baby…
Joley burst suddenly into the room. “Jacey!” she cried, holding up something wrapped in the baby’s yellow blanket. “Look at this creepy old dolly-thing I found, out by the tool shed!” Jacey looked at it blankly, then her eyes widened as she watched an errant fluff of her baby’s hair waft upward from the encircling blanket and then back down again, immersing itself in the muddy lock of Billy’s hair protruding from the head of her resurrected earthen figure. Her jaw dropped, as her arms involuntarily clenching her precious child to her. With the increasing pressure the baby awoke and began to wail.
“It’s got chicken bone legs!” Joley laughed. “Make a wish, Jacey! I wish for a real baby doll!”
Jacey lunged for the yellow blanket, her anguished scream had just barely left her lips when from between Joley’s childish fingers, the snap of a dry bone reverberated.
~Followed by an unnatural silence, the crack of the baby hitting the floor echoed the sonance.
by taree Belardes @ Oct. 23,2011
This story is based loosely upon the latest challenge for the NYCMidnight Flash fiction contest.The prompts were:
Genre; Horror
Location; A private school
Objects to be included; A mouse, a fire alarm, a baseball bat, strawberries, and a poisonous snake.
This would not be considered Flash fiction, but rather the short story genre as it's longer in length.
Thanks for reading!
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