Heart of the Bayou Beasts

Bri

My fingers brushed the smooth stone of the mausoleum. The tips traced the words of the machine-hewn inscription.

Sabastian Piere La' Blanc,

Dutiful Husband,

Leader, and Humanitarian.

The symbol of the coven etched beneath it. A coven raised within New Orleans meshing the world of cajun hereditary witches with the deep roots of voodoo practitioners. My fingers traced the dates from his birth to the day life ended in 1994, ten achingly long years ago. He deserved to have a craftsman etching his stone crypt, not some effortless, heartless machine, chiseling out empty words void of empathy. The pads of my fingers caressed each chip in the stone,I felt he deserved. There was nothing in the inscription, to note the little girl he left behind after his death. The only soul who still visited his grave every weekend, placing flowers in the vases at the door. The only one who still mourned his insurmountable loss. There is nothing here besides the lilies I attentively place and the tears that have been shed into the soil, washed away by rain and hurricanes alike. He had been everything to the little girl he saved out of the trash in the ninth ward. A tiny infant whose power and magic he said called him to stride through the filth of New Orleans' poorest district, following his divine gift through the drab streets and alleys in his tailored suit. Collecting the wailing child, he brought the innocent babe home to his barren wife to raise as their own.

The once vivid memories faded. Afternoons singing Cajun French ballads as we picnicked, on crab boil in the sticky heat of the Louisiana summer sun. Wandering the lush garden district while he gave me history lessons on the occult and non-occult happenings of our culture-rich home's past. Sitting with him in his study as he toiled away at his old tomes, looking for new ways to combine the strengths of multiple types of magic as I did my homework, or him helping me meditate to control the myriad of gifts developing in my young mind. I wondered what he would make of my many new, yet untested developments. I sighed before I spoke to him,

"Papa, there.will be a point where I will have to stop coming for a while. I can't stay to live out the Viper's will." That's what he called her as I sat by his bedside mopping the sweat from his brow. Her possession of him was now broken, yet another gris-gris, a foul curse, to steal his life now replaced it.

"Brianna," he said, his breath faltering, "Beware the Vipère (Viper) you are caught in her nest, this is my fault ma petite (my little one)." I had tried to hush him to save his strength but he wasn't having it. "Bide your time enfant de mon coeur (child of my heart), you must endure for a time before you flee. But when the time comes, fuis n'attends pas (flee don't wait), ma fille tu seras notre revanche (my daughter you will be our revenge). trouves la bête qu'est ton coeur (find the beast who is your heart)." Soon the jumbled English and French of his old-school Arcadian upbringing in Cajun country became intelligible, I only made out the French word for safe and bayou as he mumbled about beasts in the swamp, protect my Bri, but there was nothing I could make sense of. His eyes shut before he passed and I wept clinging to his hand. It had probably been hours before she found me there. A 10-year-old girl clutching the cold hand of the only person to ever show her true kindness. She grabbed me by the hair, dragged me out into the hall, and slammed the door shut. I could hear her screaming and cursing my father's corpse, blaming me for ruining everything. I tried to get into the door but I had little fight left after hours of tears. I heard smashing and destruction as, in a tantrum, she laid waste to the room. She would strike down anything in her way.

The mother who never wanted me. A woman jealous of a child's love, a mistress to darkness, who I once let hurt me with her words and actions. No more. I had been rebelling for a long time in tiny measures Lorraine or her minions couldn't hold against me. How would it look if they pulled me from school? Or forced me to quit a job where everyone in the coven and neighboring ones, humans and witches alike, had come to know me. My loophole was their images and I teetered dangerously on that ledge. I had a whole other life outside of their house of grotesque expectations. I pushed the envelope with what I wore and what I chose to study, and I slipped past their wide arching network of cameras or tracking devices to plot and plan my way out of this mess. Once I was out, I had a short window once I was 21 to accept my inheritance. It was something my mother didn't even know about. Something my father told me about when he had started to notice my mother's lashing out becoming more venomous, brash, and unhidden. It had been one thing for her to not want to rear me, a completely different one to outright punish my existence.

Once, he had walked around the corner and caught her slapping me so hard across the face my nose bled. I hadn't done anything, my mere existence goaded her, spurring her rage. She had attacked me over the tan shoes that I had paired with a yellow dress, called the combination a tasteless abomination, and whined about how I was trying to ruin her image at her party later that evening. I had thought she would be pleased I had worn the horror of yellow tulle she had picked out but it seemed I would never be good enough for her. I had once so desperately wanted her to love me, that beautiful woman with perfect blond hair, the lean length of her, the grace with which she moved. She was smart and calculating. I later realized the brightness in her blue eyes I had once seen as restrained warmth, was a cold kind of cunning ready to snatch your soul, your essence, your magic, and hand it over to the highest bidders of power. After seeing how I was treated behind his back, her hold on him began to dwindle. They fought and with his love for me he held on for a few months before his health declined, some putrid magic of hers no doubt. A gris-gris of sorts I would never understand, at least not without the right teacher.

My magic was natural and instinctive, reacting to my environment. My father had poured over books, looking for answers to my unusual abilities to no avail. He said it was old, ancient, and strong. I was unable to stretch my wings in that department with too many hungry eyes looking to cage and devour me. I had to find 'the beast that was my heart,' that was safety, whatever The Beast was. Was it something within myself or was it someone or something else, I didn't know? My father's random bouts of divinity were always vague riddles. So I would go to the bayou. snakes and alligators were less offensive than what I faced here each day.

'Tick, Tick, Tick,' my internal clock was nearing the time of my alarm, the end had come to my duration of inaction and submission to what I was subjected to. I didn't know what lay beyond my escape, that is if I made it out. 'Shut up Bri, you are making it out,' I chided myself. 'You have a job to do.' I will then return with vengeance for my father's death and for the monstrosity my 'mother' intended for me to be involved in.