THE STORY SO FAR: Ryan Anderson, guided by some malicious inner voice, builds an arm-mounted flamethrower with which he incinerates all of his teammates. Returning back to his apartment, he sees a name stamped on the device. The Smoothie King is the one who has taken control of his mind! Simultaneously, Ryan is cornered by police, but escapes by jumping out of his window and using a jet of flame from his weapon to soften the twelve-story fall. He survives the landing, but his flamethrower is destroyed.
Ryan avoids arrest by running to a run-down part of town, but is beaten up by a gang of thugs, who take him back to their house for further punishment. One of the men recognizes him as a Pelicans basketball player, and they soon find out about Ryan’s murderous rampage and the consciousness behind it. They offer to help him find the Smoothie King. Heavily armed, they drive to the Smoothie King Center, which, legend tells, was built on the house, and grave, of a 19th century voodoo woman. Ryan is still tormented by the notion that his thoughts may not truly be his own, that he is being led to his own destruction.
Deep underneath the arena floor, they find the remnants of her house built into the superstructure of the arena, only to be greeted by an unknown resident of the place…
—
“You’ve made a very bad choice by coming here, boys!”
As Devonte, his gang members, and Ryan watched, a woman stepped out from around a corner. At first glimpse, they all recoiled, but only Devonte had the presence of mind to aim his gun and fire.
The woman cackled as the bullet passed through her without leaving a mark. “You think that a bullet can kill the voodoo queen? I’ve been dead for more than a century!” As the infiltrators stared, she approached them. Her eyes were empty sockets, and her skin and muscles were beset by the final horrendous stages of necrosis, but she seemed to have no trouble moving or speaking. “I know who you seek. You seek the King. But you will never reach him! Only I have knowledge of the spells needed to enter the throne room.”
She withdrew a tiny doll from a pocket of her tattered dress. It wore a Pelicans jersey. Ryan immediately knew that it had been with this doll that his mind had been overtaken. Judging by the shocked intakes of breath from Devonte’s gang, they had reached the same conclusion.
“Why? Why are you doing this to me?” Ryan wailed. “I have done you no harm.”
The Voodoo Queen glared. “As a representative of the Pelicans organization, you are as guilty as the rest. The construction of your arena disturbed the peaceful eternity of my death. My spirit cannot rest until every Pelicans player falls. And now that you have incinerated the rest of them with a weapon of the King’s making, it is only a matter of killing you, and I can return to my deserved peace.”
“Replacement players will be found!” Ryan shouted. “As long as the Pelicans exist, your mission cannot end!”
The Queen laughed. “You feeble-minded little boy! Do you think the Pelicans will really continue to play here in New Orleans after such a tragedy?” She turned and threw the doll at the wall. As soon as it made contact, Ryan felt a tremendous pain wrack his body. He fell to the floor, gasping, as the Queen retrieved her toy.
Devonte walked up to her. “As long as Ryan’s livin’, the Pelicans live too. And we intend to keep Ryan livin’ for a bit longer.” With the quickness of a cat, he slapped the doll out of the Queen’s hand. Roaring with rage, she dove to the ground to retrieve it, but it was too late; Maurice had already grabbed the doll and ran back the way they had entered.
The Queen pursued, moving with surprising quickness. Ryan, pained by Maurice’s tight grip on the doll, had only time for one thought: if the flamethrower had been cursed, maybe it could be turned against its creator. He recovered a shard of it from his pocket, the shard that bore the words “Smoothie King” in faded letters. Taking aim, he threw the shard towards the Queen.
When it made contact, all the torches in the corridor were extinguished, and all that could be heard were the curses and screams of a Voodoo Queen whose spirit exited this world not in peace, but in anguish.