Writing Battle: Flash Fiction

BAD JUJU

         It was a New Moon.

         We had spent the morning wading into the river, catching catfish with our bare hands. We spent the afternoon grinding their bones into a paste that Manon kept moistening with spit.

         To keep the marrow wet, she said.

         The communal kitchen stank of fish guts, discarded catfish heads laying in a pile on the counter. The other travelers gave us dirty looks, but Manon didn't care.

         Manon never cared.

         She tossed the heads out the kitchen door at dusk, a pair of golden eyes appearing at the base of the hedge, a black cat barely visible in the shadows. He was waiting for his eyeballs and entrails.

         I called him Juju.

         Manon called him Chasè Initil. Useless Hunter.

         He purred, winding around my ankles once, before diving into the pile of guts.

         Sometimes Manon threatened to skin him. Said he had good bones and would make a good hex. But she never did anything more than toss him fleshy skulls and a bucket of organ mash.

         I think she liked him.

         Manon shook me awake that night, finger pressed to her lips, eyes flashing.

         You’re not supposed to fall asleep.

         I always did.

         We dodged the backpacks and suitcases of our bunkmates, trying not to stub our toes in the dark. We slipped outside, listed along the riverbank, the soft grass tickling the soles of our hardened feet.

         No moon. No stars. Nothing but Manon in her glowing, white nightgown to lead the way. She always seemed to know where she was going.

         She squatted down at a curve in the river, eyes closed as she muttered to herself under her breath. The words were as familiar to me as a lullaby, though she’d never told me what they meant.

         When you’re older. That’s all she’d ever say.

         She scraped the spit-soaked marrow from a cheesecloth into a small hole she’d scratched into the earth, mixing them—soil and bone—together like cake batter.

         When she was done, she swirled her first and middle fingers in the wet paste, tipped her face to the sky, and dragged her fingers down her forehead, over her eyes, down her cheeks in two vertical lines.

         It looked like war paint.

         She beckoned me over, movements unnaturally quick, swirling her fingers in the mix again and then doing the same to me. When she finished, her pupils were wide and almost as black as the paint.

         Sè mwen, she said lovingly.

         She called it a Dirt Bath. Said it kept us safe.

         She never did tell me from what.

         We slipped back into the lodging house and climbed into our bunks, Juju slinking from the shadows and curling up on my chest, the low rumble of his purr drowning out the soft snores of the others.

         Manon would find us a new place to stay in the morning.

         Juju would find us by nightfall.