So, of all that happened in my ‘dream’ last night, only the following is approved for public release:
“Do you need a flute player for your game, Young Miss?” The Lord of the Cemetery sat with his legs spread in arrogant display, one foot propped on a dry skull. Now that my eyes were adjusting to the dark, I saw purple highlights on his worn suit. His top hat defied gravity, probably with the help of the many rooster feathers stuck into the band. His face was painted to resemble a skull. His seemingly permanent leer desired everything he saw.
“No, Good Lord. I don’t.”
“You’ll get one anyway.” He tapped his cane against the gravestone lectern. A second living person joined me with blubbering and fearful cries. “This fool thought to keep me from doing what the hell I wanted to do. He came to my door, entered rudely, and tried to silence me by playing a song on his flute. ‘Soothe the restless dead.’, he said. Tell me, Young Miss, why he shouldn’t join my company?”
I regarded the trembling man. No longer the brightness of youth, but not settled into middle-age either. Trinkets meant to protect him from evil spirits and wandering dead hung from his neck, waist, and feet. While some of them were masterly crafted, I could see they had no power in them. The fool thought just having them would be enough, and that he had no need to do anything further to protect himself. “Because, Good Lord, you have no tolerance for whimpering. And that’s all he’ll do. Cry out lamentations about how evil life treated him, and how cruelly death cheated him. He won’t ever accept his error if you take him right now.”
The Lord of the Cemetery gestured, and the flute was handed to the man. “Play her game. Play well enough, I may let you live.”
The flute player looked at me. “You’re in all white… you’re one of them voodoo priestesses? What do I have to pay to get out of here?!” Everyone around us burst into laughter. The Lord of the Cemetery laughed the greatest.
“Good Lord, may I kill him, personally?”
“No, Young Miss. You have a game to play. Maybe later, I’ll let you have his life. But then he’ll haunt you around.”
As the flute player fell to his knees, blubbering ugly wailing of his circumstance, I declined. “Eww. No. I learned my lesson with [Horatio]. If his soul was stuck with me, my first stop would be to the Boneyard to burn him away.” His wailing increased. “SILENCE, YOU! Who the fuck told you to come to nan simityè? All you had to do was just remain in your world, on your side of the gate, and play your silly little song of self-aggrandizement a few times, and then walk around the rest of the year bragging about how you calmed the restless dead on the night of Samhain like a proper neo-pagan. But NO! You found a way to cross through the gate, ignore the thousand and one markers about where you was at, ignore the fucking calendar about when you was at, and then tell him what you’re going to do and how he’s going to react? Not even Orpheus was that stupid. Fuck, your arrogance is Pentheus level, and you’re this close to paying a proper price for it.” The whole time I was ranting, the Lord of the Cemetery was laughing harder and harder. “Refer to me again as a ‘voodoo priestess’, and I’ll rip your tongue out myself. For one, I’m not a mambo. Two, I’m not initiated into vodun. And three, just because I’m a black person wearing all white doesn’t mean I’m up to any shit, you fucking bigot.”
I felt my anger surging and pulled myself back to focusing on the drums and the gravestone throne before me. “GOOD LORD!” The Lord of the Cemetery stopped laughing and nodded his head to indicate I am given the floor. “I would like to begin, with your permission, Sir.”
“Begin.”
And it was done.