The Voodoo that You Do

"Danny boy," Pauli laughed. "She's got you cold. She put the whole thing on her iPod and is showin' everyone. When I first saw...I couldn't believe it was you. I thought it was just some girl she was kissin' on - and feelin' up. And watchin' I could see her getting frustrated. Just like she described. Sure enough, she wanted a boy, but had a girl.

And the girl she had. That girl with a dimple on her chin just like you and her hair was the same color...that girl she was making out with...that girl was you.

Dan could feel the tears fill his eyes and he blinked them back lest they fall. God, this was the worst. The worst ever. What was he going to do? Everyone was going to think he was some sort of fag.

"That's when I tole' 'em what happened," Pauli said. "I tole' 'em you got hexed for messin' wit' Marie. That you'd been voodoo'd up proper.

And Megan...she agreed. She said you was once a boy...but that you must of got hexed just like I said.

"You got to go to her Dan. You got to go to Marie and get her to take that hex off you. You give her anything she asks or it's only going to get worse. I've never had it happen to me Dannie boy, but my family has. We know how it is.

Go to her. Give her what she wants. Do it before it is too late."

So Pauli didn't think Dan was a fag. He thought that...that a voodoo spell had made him into a girl last night. And Megan had agreed with him. Everyone believed it was true.

It was ridiculous on the surface of it. But...what would he rather? Everyone to think he was a fag ...or the victim of a voodoo spell.

"I'll do it Pauli," Dan said, deciding to go along with it. "I'll talk to her first thing."

"Your parts?" Pauli asked. "Are you a man now?"

"Yes," Dan replied quickly. "All my parts are intact."

"What was it like last night?" Pauli asked. "Were you ... were all your parts... girl parts?"

"I don't know," Dan said not knowing how to reply. "I didn't check."

"On the video....it looked like Megan checked...Dan I think....I think you was all girl last night."

"I don't know Pauli," Dan said, his cheeks hot with shame. "But I'm going to go to Marie ... and get her to undo this spell. I never realized.. that voodoo was so...powerful."

"You better hurry beau," Pauli warned. "Cuz you ain't seen nothin' yet."

Who would have thought it? Dan pondered. Just yesterday he was on top of the world. And while voodoo didn't turn him into a girl....was it coincidence that his like had turned to shit 24 hours after pissing off the daughter of a voodoo queen?

Whatever the case, he had to go to her now. To keep up the illusion that he'd been put under a hex...or spell or whatever the hell it was. Besides, he'd been a jackass and owed the girl. Yes, he owed an apology at the very least. He thought back to what he'd done just a few days before.

**********
And was just a few days before when Dan had felt so sure of himself. And he had good reason to feel good. He was going to the prom ... with Megan Beaumont. He wanted to brag, but to be honest, Megan wasn't the prettiest apple in the barrel. However, the Megan was blond, and had nice tits and a plump little bottom.

The only problem was that Megan wasn't quite hot enough to brag about dating, so Dan did the next best thing. He rubbed it in to the one person who certainly wasn't going to the prom.

"Hey Marie," Dan laughed. "Got a date for the prom?"

Marie glared at him and shook her head. She arched an angry eyebrow in his direction.

"What's the matter," Dan giggled. "You get turned down by all the girls?"

Oh that was a good one. He really zinged that in. But why wasn't anyone else laughing. It was funny. Besides, even though Marie sounded like she had lived there all her life, she was an outsider. People walked around her like she had the plague. Sure, she smelled like weird scented oils...like some of those hippie chicks back home...but there didn't seem to be a good explanation of everyone's attitude toward the girl.

"Get it...girls...because she dresses like...a boy..." He could hear his voice echo it was so quiet. Worse, it seemed like he had been shunned. No one would meet his eye.

No one told him. Not till later.

When Marie wasn't around.

"You one crazy beau," Pauli said in a hushed voice. "You better go find Marie and tell her you are sorry. Give her some money too. Just don' give her nothin' of yourn. Otherwise..."

"What are you talking about?" Dan asked. "You act like you are scared of her or something."

"Do you know who that is?" Pauli asked incredulously. "That be Marie Lebeaux. The Marie Lebeaux. They make songs about her great great grandmother."

"And what does her great great grandmother have to do with anything?"

"You the smartest stupid person I ever met," Pauli said. "Her great grandmother was a voodoo queen. Her grandmother was a voodoo queen. Her mother. She a queen too. Marie...she ain't no queen yet...but beau I tell you true...you don't fuck with her; else she put a curse on you."

"A curse," Dan chuckled. "Like with voodoo dolls? Oh I'm so scared. Oh no, don't stick a pin in my voodoo doll...or I'll die. I'll die...."

Dan wasn't just content with making fun of voodoo, he pantomimed getting stuck with a needle to his heart and going down to his knees.

"I said enough beau," Pauli said. "You laugh all you want. But you stay away from me tomorrow. From now on...until you get straight with Marie...I don't know you."

"Pauli.." Dan said, coming to his feet. "Come on. I was just joking. There's no such thing as voodoo. Seriously. No such thing."

Dan wouldn't have laughed quite so hard if he had seen the inside of the Lebeaux household. There were skulls, runes, old rum bottles, and several dead chickens hanging from the ceiling. No voodoo was taking lightly here. It was serious business. It had been for generations. Ever since the original Marie Lebeaux had killed off the other voodoo queens and named herself to the throne.

And that same night the young Marie had told her mom about what happened at school.

"Mamma, there's this boy at school," the young Marie said to woman that was busy plucking the feather from a chicken. This wasn't voodoo rights, it was only dinner.

"And you like dis boy?" the older Lebeaux replied. "You want me to spell him for you? You want me to make him swoon?"

Young Marie's eyes blazed in fury. "No mamma. Dis boy make a fool of me. He want to know if I ask a girl to the prom. Make like I'm not a woman momma."

"I put the evil eye on this boy," the older Lebeaux said. "People got to know they don't trifle with a Lebeaux. Who is he?"

"Just a boy," Marie said. "He not from these parts. But no evil eye momma. He was mean, but he don't deserve to wind up like that."

"We got to teach lesson," the older Lebeaux said. "We got to. Otherwise people don't believe....and if people don't believe..."

She didn't need to tell her daughter. If people didn't believe, the she would be the last...the last voodoo queen.

"Oh no mamma," young Marie said. "We teach a lesson. But we teach the right lesson. I know you don' like me going to school mamma, but I learn about all sorts of things in my classes. Let me tell you about something called irony...then you can tell me if you have magic enough for it. Okay mamma?"

As the younger Marie told the older Marie what she wanted, the old voodoo queen began to smile and the smile grew more and more the more she pondered the implications.

"Oh I got magic enough for that honey," the voodoo queen said. "As a matter of fact, I think it's time you started doing some magic of your own."

"Me momma?"

"Yes, you chile',"the voodoo Queen said. "It's high time. Do you know the two kinds of magic girl?"

"White and black?"

"No chile'" Marie's momma said in a hushed tone. "There's real magic and then there's the other kind."

"What's the other kind?" the young girl asked. "You mean it's fake?"

"Oh no, we don't call it that," the older woman said. "Let's call it fickle magic. Let's say someone comes and pays me to put the eye on someone. Sure I can put the eye on them. But most times I wait and see if the fickle magic will do anything. Sometimes I may even help the fickle magic along by whispering something into someone else's ear. Like I hear this person goes out of town on the weekend. Would be a shame if something was stolen from them. That sort of thing."

"But that's just chance and dumb luck."

"Hush chile', that's fickle magic." the voodoo queen said with a gleam in her eye. "And it's the magic you will use 9 times out of 10."

"What about the other kind," the young girl asked. "What about real magic."

"Everyone always wants to know about the real kind," the older woman chided. "Din' I jus' say that you use the other more? That makes it jus' as important. Maybe more important. Oh I see in your eye girl, you think all my magic may be the fickle kind. Let me show you it ain't. Let me get some magic for you now that I'm done w' dis' rue."

The voodoo queen went back to her room and pushed in a knot in the floor then opened a loose board. Inside was a velvet bag. The old woman carefully untied the sash around the top and began to take the object out.

The young Marie Leveaux could feel the power from the object even from where she was. It was dark wood, and the room was poorly lit, but there seemed to be a darkness that surrounded the object. A sphere where shadow won over light.

"You feel the magic chile'" the older woman asked.

"Yes momma...but..." she could feel the power but there was something else about the object that was even more noticeable. It was what it was. It was made of mahogany and covered in runes, but there was something inescapable. It was phallic in shape.

No, not merely phallic. It was lurid and vulgar. The young girl wasn't experienced in such matters, but this didn't look to be merely some sort of old fashioned dildo from long days passed. The bulbous head looked like two plums that had been fused together. Then there was the shaft. Its girth was wider than her mother's hand; even though her mother had large hands. Its knots and twists seemed to be naturally made, but nature must have been feeling particularly perverse when it was forming this bizarre looking thing. There was also a series of smaller knots on the underside that ... Marie couldn't help but imagine a woman on her hands and knees, sweaty, being taken from the rear, grunting and groaning as each knot tugged at the woman's clit before rudely being pushed into her sex.

"It's like a gun," the older woman said. "This is the business end. You don't want ever...EVER...be at this end. This other...that is meant for you."

Somehow Marie hadn't even noticed the slim smooth shaft at the other end of the phallus.

"If this end is in you and you use the other on a voodoo witch," Marie Leveaux said. "Then you steal all her power."

"Yes chile'" the voodoo queen said. "That's how your great great grandmother became a voodoo queen. She stole this from a voodoo witch...then she used it on her. Then she kilt her just to be sure."

"But there ain't any voodoo witch's no more. But this thing still has uses. It can spell a girl. Can make her fall in love. It can do things to a man as well. your great grandmother found out by accident. She use it on the white man who thought he owned her. She didn't get his magic, but she got his strength. She tole' her daughter there was more. It took his manhood too. It make him small down there...while this thing grew bigger. It took several times, and each time he pleaded and begged more and more. After the second time he signed papers to free her. But she came back later and took him again and again. Till he grow tits and pussy. Till no one can tell he was ever a man. Ha! He won' no trouble to anyone after that."

"But I don't see how I can use this on Dan," Marie said. "I can't do like she did and just take him by force."

"Yes, it tricky using magic," the voodoo queen said. "Sometimes you must to sneaky things. Sometimes you must do hard things. Mean things. But it's past time for you to learn these things. So here's you will do this thing. You will make this boy grow tits and you will make sure that everyone at school knows. You will teach these youngins to fear the magic of Leveaux.

Or I will teach him myself. I will put on the evil eye and let the chips fall where they want."

The young girl was having second thoughts about mentioning Dan's comments. The boy really wasn't entirely to blame as he wasn't from there. But it was too late now.

Marie came up with a plan that night. A strange plan. A kinky plan. She masturbated three times and though she felt guilty about it each time after, the feelings in her body made her do it yet again.

With a contented sight she reckoned, this might not be so bad a plan after all.

The next day she talked to Megan. And wrote a note to Peter. It was all down hill from there.
*********

Now everyone was laughing at Dan's expense. Well, not so much laughing as smiling and pointing. He had to do something about it. He had to talk to Marie... to see if she'd help him put his reputation intact.

Dan felt a bit of fear this time as he approached the dark-skinned girl. But only a bit. There was no such thing as voodoo. It was a case of picking a bad apple to take to the prom. As a matter of fact, these rednecks fear of voodoo was turning out to be a blessing.

"Hi Marie," Dan said. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

"Sure." Marie said in a friendly tone.

"Look about what I said last week," Dan began. "I'm really really sorry about that. I had no right."

"Okay," Marie said. "I forgive you."

That was easy. Maybe too easy.

"I was ahh...wondering if...see people think you put a hex on me."

"I didn't." Marie said dismissively.

"I know," Dan said. Oh this was going to be so simple. "But people ... well..they think you did. And well...could you pretend to ...well pretend like you did...and make a show of undoing it?"

"I wish I could..." Marie said. "Like I said. I didn't hex you. My momma did. An I ain't no voodoo queen Dan. My momma don't even let me mess with anything 'cept mixin' plants and such."

"Your momma....she hexed me?" Dan felt stunned. So it was true.

"Yes," Marie said. "You can't mess with me. No one is allowed to mess with a Marie Leveaux. I mean...even though I ain't a voodoo queen now, I will be the next queen, once momma retires. So there's...rules 'bout such things."

"But you don't really believe..."

"I seen too much to not believe."

And the girl's eyes showed she wasn't playing. She really did believe.

"But what happened to me was ...just a mean girl and dumb luck."

"And what will it be the next time something bad happens?" Marie said. "Just worse luck. Dan...that's the way this stuff happens."

"Well could you pretend to the spell?" Dan begged. "I'm really in a bad spot here."

"I can't do it," Marie said. "Even if I wanted to. There's rules about these things. You go see another voodoo witch and tell her who laid that curse on you. See what happens. You be lucky to get out with your skin."

"But"

"Look, you tell 'em I undid it," Marie said. "And I won't tell 'em no different. Will that work?"

"I guess," Dan said. He thought it over for the rest of the day. It would do after all. he could make a big show of it and Marie would not say otherwise. Dan could embellish it a bit. Tell about going out to the woods at night. Yes, it'd be a good tale. He'd tell 'em all the very next day.

That afternoon after school, Dan felt better than he had all day. He went to start his car, but it wouldn't turn over. Damn. And there was an old beater next to his. It belonged to none other than Marie Leveaux. Luckily she happened to be going to her car.

"Marie..." Dan's voice felt small. "My ..car won't start. Could you..."

"Sure Dan," Marie said after giving a huff of annoyance. "Get in..I guess."

On the way Marie gave voice to Dan's suspicions.

"So you still think its just more dumb luck?" Marie asked. "Dumb luck what happened with that girl of yours. Dumb luck your car won't start. Dumb luck I was parked right next to you?"

But it wasn't dumb luck. It was a sock stuffed into Dan's exhaust pipe.

"Maybe..." Dan was beginning to have doubts. At first he'd wondered if he'd been set up. But the girl sounded so casual about it. Hell, she'd even given voice to his own suspicions. The odds of such things were pretty slim.

Dan remembered the story of Pascal's wager. To believe in God or not. To believe, it cost nothing, but you got heaven in return. To disbelieve, it cost nothing and gave you eternal damnation.

At this point it seemed to make good sense to believe in a little voodoo.

"But I could be wrong," Dan said. "I wonder...well..could you get your mother to undo the hex?"

"Sure I could and she'd tell me no." Marie said. "You'd have to go to her and make a deal. And Dan, be real careful about making deals with my mom. I'm serious. This ain't no joke to her."

Dan didn't relish the thought of having to bargain with some voodoo woman. Who knew what her terms might be.

"...but there's one thing..." Marie said. "..never mind. Forget I said it."

"What?"

"No..." Marie said. "It's a bad idea."

"Tell me," Dan begged. "Please."

"You'll think it's stupid," Marie said. "And it probably is."

"What is it?"

"Well...you could come over to my house," Marie said. "And we could search around. See you can't just put a voodoo spell on somebody. It don't work like that. You got to have a way to tie the spell to 'em. Some hair. Something that belongs to them. Something personal. If we can find that...and burn it. It will break the hex - and my momma never has to know."

A bad idea? Dan was stunned. It was a fine idea. An absolutely great idea.

"Let's do it!" Dan said.

"Dan..." Marie shook her head. "You see? It sounds like a fine idea to you. What if this is the hex at work? See this is what happens? Your car breaks down and who happens by at that exact moment. Then we talk about your problem, and I say it's a crazy idea and it is. But you think it's a great one. That's just the way a hex works."

"But it would break the hex!" It was simple logic. This girl seemed smart at times, but she missed the basics.

"Will it?" Marie said. "Are is the hex working on you right now?"

"No," Dan said. "I would know if it was."

"Would you Dan?" Marie said. "Because my momma don't allow boys to visit me. So you got an idea of how you could come to my house and hang out with me so my momma doesn't suspect? Like I said, this be the hex at work."

"...yes..." Dan admitted slowly. He could see where this was going. He could see how the girl would think it was the hex at work. And maybe it was. He still had the clothes Megan had dressed him up in. Hidden in the bottom of his closet, because he hadn't found a way to sneak them out to throw in the trash yet. "Maybe you could look for it without me?"

"How do I know what is yours and what is somebody else's?" Marie said. "It's just a baseball card to me or a concert ticket. Only you can recognize what is yours."

"I..." Dan was conflicted. but he was beginning to believe. There seemed only one solution. If this was hex work- Dan saw no way except to give in till he could get it reversed. "I can dress up like a girl again. I could pretend to be a friend from school."

Marie looked at Dan inquisitively, tucking a thumb under his chin and tilting his head from side to side, appraising him in a manner he was unaccustomed to. "I would imagine you could fool my mom, if you keep quiet. I still say it's hex work. But if you want to do it, I'll help you if I can."

"Okay...I'll do it." Dan replied in a hushed voice. One more time. One final time.