Driving slowly through a rough area of Washington DC, Kelly Oubre peered through the windshield at the passing street signs, struggling to discern them in the weak glow of the street lights. The place was supposed to be right past Jefferson Street, but it seemed like he should have gotten to it by now. Not for the first time, he rued the fact that he had allowed his phone’s battery to run out, thus depriving him of its useful GPS capability.
Another minute passed where all Kelly could see out his car windows was an endless lineup of rowhouses. Then, he saw a sign that indicated he had reached Jefferson Street, and, soon after that, he saw the glowing neon sign that read, “Madame Delacroix’s House of Mysteries”. Below the main sign was a plain placard which listed her services: seances, palm reading, fortune telling, crystal ball gazing, and tarot cards. Happy to have found the spot, but annoyed at the long, slow journey, he quickly parked his car and walked in the front door exactly five minutes before the shop was due to close.
An ethereal voice emerged from behind the counter. The voice’s owner was partially obscured by the smoke of many burning censers of incense, but Kelly could see that it was a black woman dressed in many layers of colorful cloth. “Welcome, young sir, to Madame Delacroix’s Hou-”
“Yeah, shut up,” Kelly interrupted as he approached the counter. “I got this voodoo doll I made of Klay Thompson and I want you to put a voodoo curse on it.” He slapped the hand-knitted doll, which had limbs of differing lengths and a too-small head, in front of Madame Delacroix and waited for her answer.
Delacroix tried, but failed, to maintain her lilting, mysterious voice when she replied. “If you’ll note my sign, I do not offer voodoo services, but I can tell you what the future holds for you in your conflict with this Klay Thompson of whom you speak, if you would like me to gaze into my crystal ball.”
Kelly rolled his eyes. “You mean I drove all the way out here to the ghetto to find a real voodoo lady and then it turns out you don’t even do voodoo? Yelp has failed me again. First the Karate and now this. I should have realized something was up when you didn’t even have a bunch of shrunken heads hanging in your window.”
Now Delacroix was annoyed and didn’t even bother putting on a ghostly voice. “Nowhere in my advertisements do I mention a willingness to practice the dark art of voodoo.”
Kelly snatched his Klay Thompson doll back off the counter and jammed it roughly back into his pocket, as if treating it with contempt would somehow transfer pain to the real Klay, wherever Klay was at that moment. “Crystal balls are total crap. Nobody can see the future. They might as well call you Madame Delacrock of Shi-”
Now it was the woman’s turn to interrupt. “You’ll have to leave now, sir. My shop closes at nine.”
“It’s a good thing my phone died or I’d be writing your one-star Yelp review right now,” Kelly continued. “‘Does not provide quoted services…woman working the counter very rude to customers…refuses to acknowledge that fortune-telling is just guesswork…likely a front for drug trafficking…store smells like a rhinoceros took a dump in a pile of rancid eggs…’, you’d never get a customer again after I was done tearing you a new one.”
Madame Delacroix began to issue more commands for him to leave, but he was already walking out the door. “Don’t worry though,” he said as he walked back onto the street. “Klay Thompson will face my vengeance one day. It might be through the use of this voodoo doll, it might not, but rest assured, he will face it.” He returned to his car and sat there in anger for a while before withdrawing the doll from his pocket again. “I hate you Klay,” he whispered.