MicroHorror

Dédé and I had been locked in this cycle of retribution for years. It started as mere rivalry but Dédé saw it as something more, it seems.

“You know this boy is no good, my nurse told me. I know the family. They are no good. You stay away from this boy, Maurice, you hear?”

I heard all right but there was only one school in our village and only three classrooms in our school and we just happened to be the same age. He got me into plenty of trouble. My father taught me to turn the other cheek.

My father was a minister. He didn’t believe in all that mumbo-jumbo and he made sure I didn’t either.

“They can’t hurt a true child of the Lord,” he’d say.

Dédé took what he wanted. It was the way he was taught to behave. You see something, you want it, you take it. If you can’t get it by normal means, threats and bullying, you go to the gris-gris and make a spell. When Dédé wanted my pet puppy he just took it. When he wanted my bike he had the witch doctor sacrifice the puppy. I saw its little body drained of blood, discarded in the alley at the back of the hut as I rode past. The horror of it stopped me in my tracks. I forgot about my bike and ran home to father though I knew father would preach forgiveness. He’d get me another puppy, a newer bike. It didn’t seem like a solution to me. Dédé had his wish.

All my youth I cowered to Dédé and he called me crétin–never by my name. But when he tried to take Leilah he was unprepared for my reaction. I loved Leilah, body and soul, and could never bear to think of him with her. So I went to his house with a machete and I waited in the dark lane.

And later I found myself in the gris-gris market. Parts for sale. Tongue dried, bones desiccated, heart sliced. I kept the penis in a jar by my bed. The Voodoo doctor says it will improve my performance but Leilah is all I need and everything to me and as a true child of the Lord, I don’t believe in all that mumbo-jumbo.