The Businessman and the Witchdoctor

When he was twenty-two, Arthur Bowman had gone to see a stage hypnotist on a work trip to Las Vegas. It had all been good fun. Two women – plants, he had no doubt – had been called on stage, where an entertainer whose name Arthur no longer remembered proceeded to work his so-called magic. With bushy eyebrows twitching, pale eyes piercing, diamond ("diamond") pendant swinging, the two women had fallen under his trance. They had raised their arms without realizing it; they had made animals noises, right down to the clucking chicken; and of course, they had stripped down to their underwear.

None of it had been very believable, but even as a bit of performance art, Arthur had been entertained enough not to demand a refund. It was for quite some time his first and only introduction to hypnosis. Now, twenty years later, on the recommendation of a branch manager hoping to impress the boss, he was attending his second.

The Witch Doctor Dega Ualu.

Technically, claimed the ingénue introducing the talent, this was not hypnosis. What they were about to see was something far more ancient and powerful than any mere Svengali mesmerist. What they were about to behold was true magic.

The lovely young woman bowed – deeply, making sure none could miss a glance at her bounteous cleavage – and stepped aside as the self-described witch doctor took the stage. Arthur hadn't known what to expect, but it hadn't been this. Bald and clean-shaven, it was hard to pin down his age, though he would have guessed between 30 and 50. Too leisurely to be young, but too erect to be old.

Beyond his composure, Dega Ualu was surprisingly ordinary. He was dark-skinned but ethnically hard to pinpoint. If he was calling himself a witch doctor, Arthur supposed he must be Creole, but that could just be an assumption he was meant to make. Dressed in dark jeans and a lighter denim shirt, a worn-looking pair of loafers and a bolo tie, he looked more like he'd wandered in off the street than come to perform. The audience applauded politely, but plainly wasn't that impressed. Clearly they had more fervor for the attractive ingénue than the night's unremarkable main act.

"Dance for the people, girl," he said in a deep voice thick with a cajun accent. Dega Ualu didn't even look at her, but the spotlight that suddenly pointed at her made the audience do so. There was a pole there, one that hadn't been apparent before it was lit up. By the time Arthur looked over the buxom blonde was already spinning on it, her knee hooked to keep her aloft. As she leaned backwards, breasts sinking down to her chin and very nearly bursting free from her skimpy garments altogether, she was still spinning.

Arthur was no stranger to pole dancing; too many clients were the sort who preferred meetings in a gentleman's club to those in the boardroom. This girl was pretty good, he decided. Maybe a bit too energetic – the way she was whipping her body around, she was going to burn out in minutes. Still, she had the basics down cold: beauty, grace, and the willingness to be watched doing it. Her emoting could use some work; whenever she slowed enough that he could see her face clearly, there was nothing erotic about it. No feeling at all.

The spotlight dimmed on her as another brightened back on Dega Ualu. "You. Woman. Come here." Arthur frowned at the lack of stagecraft, the absence of theatricality. The man said the minimum number of words to convey his meaning, and pointed. The audience in the dimly lit club strained their eyes to follow his finger, but even as a silhouette, it was clear who he meant. The woman looked around as if unsure, but quickly stood up and approached the stage.

His first instinct was that it was another plant. Probably just some prettier-than-average brunette with believably commonplace underwear to reveal that he'd paid a hundred bucks to come up and go through the motions. Once the stage lights illuminated her, Arthur saw she was just that – prettier-than-average and brunette, though he couldn't attest to her underwear – only he quickly realized she was no plant. He recognized her.

"Tell them your name, woman," Dega Ualu instructed.

Arthur expected her to provide an alias, but she leaned toward the microphone and confirmed her identity clearly. "Mary Ellen Paige." She glanced awkwardly at the half-naked girl (who had evidently removed her skirt in the brief time Arthur had looked away), high-kicking and gyrating her hips to a song only she could hear.

Mary Ellen Paige was a lawyer at the city prosecutor's office. Arthur only recognized her because she worked specifically with the financial crimes office, and once in a while someone crossed him or one of his subordinates got caught taking a shortcut. And because she was a prettier-than-average brunette. She'd gotten her hair cut shorter since he'd last seen her, one of those lopsided pixie cuts, but he'd have been sure who it was even if she hadn't confirmed it.

Arthur watched in rapt fascination as Dega Ualu went through his variation of the same routine he'd seen before. There was no clucking like a chicken, but when the witch doctor told her to "take in the spirit of the rat", Mary Ellen started twitching her nose, cleaning her whiskers, and scurrying about the room. Instead of the usual take-control-of-her-limb routine, he told her that her arm belonged to the waitress now, and Mary Ellen spent several minutes going around the room filling drink orders and carrying trays, all the while frowning and muttering to herself as if unable to resist her arm's impulses.

All the while, the blonde girl on the pole danced unrelentingly.

Most interestingly of all, Arthur watched as Mary Ellen turned beet red while "offering the people her body," as Dega Ualu put it. She had come in a woman's business suit, but one after another she shed the jacket, blouse, skirt, stockings, and even the pedestrian bra he'd suspected she was wearing. She had an utterly blank look on her face, but Arthur knew women. The color in her cheeks either meant arousal, humiliation, or (in rare cases) both. He didn't know the woman well enough to guess which.

"Keep those on," Dega Ualu instructed as she began to lower her panties. Some men in the audience voiced their disappointment; Mary Ellen Paige was that sort of girl whose body, once revealed, more than excused any minor defects of the face. They might have groaned anyway. Some men didn't care.

"Would anyone like to fuck me?" she said suddenly. She wasn't standing near the microphone, but she raised her voice to a near-shout without quite forsaking her plaintive tone. She asked like it was a call for help. "I'll do it. Or could I go down on you? You can use me however you want. Anything."

The audience was shell-shocked. Considering this was billed as an adult hynotism show, most had probably expected to see someone stripped, at least partially. Nobody had imagined they'd see a woman debase herself as such. This was taking the routine to a new level.

Naturally, it only took a moment before some of the men in the audience recovered and began responding to her offer. As Arthur watched in fascination, Dega Ualu took control of the situation, bidding Mary Ellen to count the money in her purse – sixty-three dollars – then give it to him. The witch doctor clenched his hand around the bills, gesturing at it with the other hand in mystical-looking ways. Arthur thought he could see a shimmer in the air around it, and for the first time he was unsure if this was more than a mere trick.

"This money is imbued with your freedom," Dega Ualu told her. "And I keep that freedom for you. Until someone makes me a better offer."

Four men rushed the stage at once, shoving each other roughly enough that Arthur didn't think they were part of the show either. Only when they got there did they realize they needed to reach for their wallets. One of them backed away, howling that he'd been an idiot not to have more cash on hand. Another raised up a handful of bills to the witch doctor, only to have it slapped away by a third, who firmly placed his own money in the dark hands of the night's entertainment.

"You go with this man now. He buys your freedom – you negotiate it with him now."

Mary Ellen's feet began moving toward him while her face still seemed to be processing the shock of it. The audience was riveted by the sight of this woman following a stranger to his seat, where, after he patted his thighs, she seated herself on his lap and proceeded to allow him to paw at her in ways that were wildly inappropriate in public, even had this been an actual strip club.

"Stop dancing girl. We go now."

Arthur had forgotten the girl was there. He hadn't even noticed she'd gotten naked. Before he could do more than appreciate the exquisite shape of her ass, Dega Ualu and his assistant had vanished backstage.

"All right, let's give it up for the Witch Doctor Dega Ualu, ladies and gentleman!" said a man, probably the club manager, who rushed on stage a moment later. The bewildered crowd faintly applauded, many still too transfixed by Mary Ellen grinding her ass into the crotch of the man who'd "bought" her. "Next up, we have something we think you'll really like..."

And that was that. An employee quickly asked Mary Ellen to get dressed; Arthur couldn't hear the exchange, but it culminated in the gentleman getting huffy and storming out with his acquisition.

Arthur took a few deep breaths to stop his head from spinning, wondering if anyone else had just seen what he had seen. From the way the audience quickly turned their attention to the next act, some cheesy sleight of hand artist, he didn't think so.

Just like he had assumed all those years ago, they all thought they'd seen a pair of paid actresses (or rather, an actress and a dancer) perform a strange routine. Nobody else knew that Mary Ellen Paige was the woman's real name, and that she was a well-educated and presumably well-off woman who had no earthly business participating in such a tawdry spectacle. She didn't seem to have come with anyone, so there were no friends, no boyfriend or husband to raise a ruckus. Arthur himself was only just now appreciating that the routine had probably gone on for close to thirty minutes, and the woman had danced entire time like a constant whirlwind of activity. The amount of energy that would take, the strength and stamina... it was like she'd been sprinting, while lifting dumbbells, for half an hour. She must have been slowing when Dega Ualu and Mary Ellen were commanding attention... mustn't she? The only way he could imagine someone keeping up that level of activity that was with a gun to their head.

What had he just seen?

It was two weeks later that Arthur stepped out of his car in the shabby trailer park where Dega Ualu purported to live. It hadn't been easy conducting a surreptitious background check; the man didn't get much press other than some mediocre yelp reviews, and nothing so much as suggesting he had genuine command of the supernatural aside from his own advertising. Arthur's PI, the usual guy he employed for clandestine work for his company, could only confirm that the witch doctor either wasn't working under his real name or was an undocumented immigrant. Even so, he couldn't find any trace of him before the past six months, and that only when he emerged as a performer.

So Arthur made a few phone calls, and here he was.

The door to the dusty brown trailer opened as he approached; inside, he recognized the dancing girl from the stage. She didn't have all the makeup on, and instead of her gawdy trappings she was wearing a simple but flattering house dress. Up close, he could see this woman was a true beauty. Many ingenues looked good dolled up in makeup and from a respectable distance, but this woman was a real head turner, top to well-padded bottom.

"Come in, Mr. Bowman. Dega Ualu waits." Her voice was as emotionally flat as her face. She had a future in poker if she ever tired of servicing shamans.

Arthur wasn't in the habit of addressing the help, and this girl was clearly as subordinate as it got. So without responding, he entered the trailer, though calling it a trailer was aggrandizing it. It was in truth little bigger than a camper. Bathroom aside, it was all connected, and it was clear they hadn't bothered tidying up for him. Empty alcohol bottles were scattered liberally, and the scent of cigar smoke filled his lungs immediately. The full-size bed near the back of it was in total disarray; either Dega Ualu was a fitful sleeper, or his ingenue was as energetic in bed as she was on stage.

The witch doctor himself was seated on one side of a minute kitchen table, hands folded calmly on its surface, his gaze directed across from him as if Arthur were already seated there. Accordingly, he hurried more than was his intent to be so. Even face to face, he still couldn't tell the man's age, though looking into the depths of those pale blue eyes, Arthur wondered if he'd shorted the man.

"Mr. Ualu, thank you for meeting with me, and for welcoming me in your home," Arthur began, setting down his briefcase beside him.

"Dega Ualu," the man said. It had the distinct sound of a rebuke.

"Dega Ualu, of course, my apologies." An awkward silence ensued as Arthur waited for the man to speak, and Arthur soon caved. "You strike me as a man who prefers to get right to the point. Am I correct in that assessment?"

Arthur waited; his only reply was a barely perceptible nod.

"Good. Then perhaps I should start by explaining my interest in you, and why–"

"I know why you come, Arthur Bowman," the man interrupted in his heavy accent. If anything, it was thicker now than it had been in his show.

"But I haven't said..."

"You want what all men want from Dega Ualu."

Arthur's eyes narrowed. He never approved of referring to oneself in the third person, but if the man wanted to play the guru, so be it. "All right, I'll play along. So before we go any further, I'll be needing some proof that you really are what you say."

The witch doctor was silent a long moment. "Your eyes see more than many, Arthur Bowman. You see enough to know there's something to prove. But to prove that my juju can put the urge to do the unnatural in a heart, you must be willing to see the unnatural."

Arthur flashed a wry grin. "Shock me."

Dega Ualu nodded slowly. "Take the gun out of the drawer and shoot at Arthur Bowman's heart." He didn't look up, but the blonde clearly knew she was being addressed.

"What?!" Arthur barely had time to stand and turn before the woman pulled the trigger. Her aim was true, but in such close quarters, that wasn't hard.

Arthur lay on his back, looking between the two in horror. "What the fuck did you just do, you crazy bitch?!"

"What I was told to do," she said in her eerie monotone.

With effort, he tore open his shirt, some of the buttons tearing free and bouncing across the dingy floor. No matter, the bullet had already ruined his shirt, along with the kevlar vest beneath it. There it was, the flattened metal embedded in the complex fibers. He plucked it off and tossed it across the floor, then with some pain, got back to his feet. He remembered his corporate security chief warning that the kevlar might stop a bullet, but don't expect it not to hurt like hell. The man had not been wrong.

"Is this how you conduct business, buddy? Huh? Shoot your clients? No wonder you live in this fucking dump!" He spat on the floor.

"You come to me wearing armor. I think it is you who expects to conduct business like this, Arthur Bowman. I see this, but she did not. She thought she would kill you, and did it because the voice of the witch doctor says the words. Do you need more proof?"

He looked over to where the woman was still holding the gun at her side. "Not if you're going to have your bitch shoot me again," he grumbled, hesitantly retaking his seat.

"As you will it. Shoot yourself in the head."

His adrenaline already pumping, Arthur managed to dive at her and knock the gun out of her hand only a second or so after she pulled the trigger. As the gun tumbled to the floor, he turned to look between the girl – still alive and well after the pistol failed to discharge a bullet – and the witch doctor. Then after a moment, the girl began opening drawers, rifling through their contents intently.

"What the fuck is she doing now?" he demanded.

"I'm looking for a bullet so I can shoot myself in the head, Mr. Bowman," she said evenly.

"You've got to be fucking with me," Arthur said, directing this to Dega Ualu.

"That is not my way. I load one bullet for you, but the girl, she is still of use to me, so only one it is. Stop." The girl stopped on her way out the trailer door; Arthur could only surmise she'd failed to find her bullet and was headed out to purchase one. At his command, she froze in place near the door. The gun was still in her hand.

"The two of you are awfully literal, and as a man of business, I appreciate that," Arthur said, once more re-taking his seat. The witch doctor didn't seem to have moved an inch since ordering the shootings. "But this could still be a ruse."

"You are a powerful man in your world, Arthur Bowman. Let us say we agree this was persuasive, and you are confident you can strike at me if you are deceived."

Arthur considered that, and quickly decided that yes, if this was all b.s., then there was no supernatural hokum to fear, and he could easily find people who would leave the fool's carcass in a dumpster. And if it wasn't...

"So let's call me convinced, for now. What's next? What can you do, what do you charge?"

"You want power over a woman."

Arthur nodded. "Yeah. Like you said – what every man wants."

"Then you will leave here without your briefcase, Arthur Bowman."

He arched an eyebrow. "You're not much of a negotiator, are you. I'm prepared to pay $10,000."

"A man who comes to a meeting in armor is a man who plans ahead. You did not bring money you were not prepared to spend. So the money you bring is what you are spending."

Arthur glowered, but soon let it go. The briefcase had many times his initial offer, but so what? His company would earn that back before the end of the month. That he trusted Dega Ualu would deliver – assuming he reallycould deliver – was rooted not entirely in the case of Mary Ellen Paige. According to his PI, she had resigned from her job without notice, sublet her apartment and sold her car. This was not a man guided by humanitarian impulses. He nudged the briefcase across the floor until it was on Dega Ualu's side of the table.

"Fine. Deal. Now what? I mean, you need one of her hairs, or some kind of voodoo doll or something? I don't know how this all works."

"Say her name."

Arthur had thought long about this. Even if none of this panned out, just entertaining the notion had been an enjoyable fantasy. There was no question that if he was to transform someone into a sex slave, it had to be none other than that cunt next door, Jada Ballard.

From the day she'd moved in, he'd disliked her, and over time that dislike hardened into a genuine contempt. Like anyone who could afford to buy a home in his gated community, Jada Ballard was a gifted professional. In her case, she was a former reality TV star from some insipid dreck calledSoCal Coast. Arthur had never seen an episode of course, but the way it pervaded culture, he knew far too much about it. Rich, beautiful, useless young people born to money they could never hope to earn on their own engaging in malicious drama. After her years there, Jada had taken her stardom and launched it into a career as a cosmetic and hair model, and started a business selling her own line of beauty products. She didn't really manage any of it, naturally, but they let her think she did, and so the people who did the real work got to keep their jobs.