The Witchdoctor's Son

Chapter 1

The Witchdoctor's Son
Chapter 1- Coercion

I had a way with men.

No really. I'm not kidding. If I wanted them, I could have them. It always worked. Always. It made it a very interesting 21 years of life. Being able to have any man I want.

Gay or straight.

Girls never seemed to get it. I'd had some girls call me straight up ugly. But men. They seemed to love me. Perhaps it was my androgynous look. I'd been asked several times in my life if I was a really pretty guy or a handsome girl. I hadn't tried to be. I wasn't one of those guys who walked around wearing make-up or anything like that. I look in the mirror. My face was just the kind of face that men preferred. Now I wasn't going to say I could get all men to just risk it all throw away their lives and run away from me. But let's just say on a good day I could get any man to have sex with me. And on a bad day, I could at least convince any man that I wanted to kiss me.

It was the way my skin glowed dark chocolate hues and my lips curved like waves. My hair was long silky, black, and wavy, causing most men I walk by to stop and look again. Even when they were with their boyfriends or husbands...or wives. It was a strange thing. Men barely resisted. Gay or straight. I didn't believe in those things. A man only thought he was straight until he saw me. How many times had it happened? Hundreds of times probably? I think. What happens is a straight man sees me and he stops. And he turns.

I'd become something of a local trickster around town and when the villagers picked up on it they started calling me The Witch Doctor. And started talking about these five families that lived on the island long ago before they were able to drive them out.

One day I broke down to my mother, "Why am I like this?"

My mother was pretty. It was her part of her profession to be pretty. But she'd never gotten the kind of compliments that I got from men. Or the stares. Or the constant attention from men. No one on the island did.

She shrugged, "You just have a way with men..."

"They say I'm a witchdoctor..." I ask, "What is that?"

My mother pauses. Her face goes kind of stiff. Her mouth tightens and she's looking like she's having trouble letting go of the words in her mouth.

"So back in the day," my mother told me, "Before you were born. There was a coven of witches made up of five families that lived on this island. The Atwoods, The Boss, The Wrights, The Ferris, and the Bah. These were powerful. And...deadly..."

"That's what these people are mad at? Some urban myth..."

"No REALLY! But that was a long time ago. Not anymore. But they were powerful. Oh, man. Very powerful. And they wreaked havoc in the lives of man. One day they just up and disappeared. Rumor has it that we drove them away to the City of Monsters."

These people believed in the Five Families. It was something I'd heard about from grade school to high school. The legends of the five families. It was probably the biggest urban legend in the area. Every Halloween they gather around in the village's center and perform a ritual that symbolized the day they drove the witches out of the village. I used to be able to attend, back before I slept with a little too many men.

I mean what else was I supposed to do? Moreen Island was beyond boring. And let's just say once it became clear that I was so dangerous with men, I'd been labeled as a threat to society. No, seriously. I had to go to court and it was a huge thing on the island.

I still remember the speech.

"It's become clear that we have a witch living amongst us," they state, "Perhaps a new family has formed. It is our sole responsibility to contain this threat so that the world may not know the buried past of Moreen Island and the devils that we once inhabited with."