VOODOO

Genre: Horror

VOODOO

By Randy Romero

Billy Kincaid was huffing and puffing the entire hike. He stopped periodically to rest against a tree while he hacked up a lung. Smokers cough. That’s what his doctor called it. The same doctor who’d been urging him to quit for months. But Billy was stubborn and refused to give up the habit.

Kristen Kincaid was ahead of him every step of their hike. Billy’s body wasn’t cut out for this. Worse than the struggle to breathe was the throbbing, aching sensation in both of his knees. He was practically falling apart.

“Come on smoky,” Kristen said. “Try and keep up.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” he groaned.

They came to an incline in the trail which led to the top of a tall hill.

“Let’s take a break,” he said, breathing laboriously.

He found a log at the bottom of a hill and sat to catch his breath. Kristen rested her backpack against the log, opened it up, and dug out her Nikon digital camera.

“I’m going to run up the hill and get a few photos.”

“Have fun with that,” he said and waved her away.

He stretched his sore legs, accidentally kicking Kristen’s backpack. The bag tipped over, its contents spilling out.

Among the items in her backpack, Billy spotted a strange looking doll. He reached over and picked it up. It eerily resembled him. The likeness was uncanny. Two pins had been jammed into its knees. And two identical pins had been hammered into the torso, right about where his lungs would be.

He examined it and accidentally put too much pressure on the back with his thumbs, causing him to wince as a bolt of pain shot down his spine. He dropped it into the dirt, and another shock wave of pain surged through his body.

The pain was so intense, he failed to notice Kristen’s return.  She picked up the doll and dusted it off. “Neat, huh? This was worth every penny.” She drove two fingers into the abdomen, splintering his ribs. He fell to the ground, thrashing in pain.

“I know you’ve been sleeping with your secretary. Did you think I wouldn’t find out? A wife always knows. As soon as I found out, I started thinking of all these different revenge fantasies. I thought about getting a gun and shooting you in your sleep. I thought about smothering you with a pillow or poisoning you. But in the end I settled for old fashioned voodoo.”

He tried to pick himself up and lunge at her, but she bent one of the legs and he felt his own leg snap. He crashed to the dirt, his screams echoing through the vast trails. She took the other leg and snapped it, and Billy felt his bones shatter.

She ended his suffering by ramming a final pin into the doll, right about where Billy’s heart would be. He died instantly. Kristen tucked the doll in her backpack and started walking the same way they had come. She would dispose of the doll eventually, right after she reported her husband as missing…