(Older Work/ Not Clean but 3rd draft material)
STRANGER MAGIC
PRELUDE
If you were a more daring tourist you might venture out on foot from the never ending party of Bourbon Street, and in a couple of blocks you would feel the poverty and taste a bite of fear. Men and women who come from a different world than you would stand and look at you from black faces and white eyes. The sound of Jazz would still be in the air but it would not be the tight rehearsed sound of the French Quarter you just left. This sound grinds like sweet gritty pearls on you’re ears.
Two blocks deeper and you might wonder if you are still in America. It has all the same traits as any ghetto in America but there is more than just oppression, fear and poverty, there is also a whiff of magic. Signs for magic and voodoo shops can still be seen but not in tourist trap alleys off of Bourbon Street, these places are in small houses with weed strewn postage stamp yards. You would notice the roof patches and boarded windows on the houses stubborn enough to resist Katrina’s rage and the rubble of the houses that did not have the heart or foundation to withstand the surge.
Another block and you are without a doubt lost. Those white eyes have turned from curious glances to hunting stares. If you stopped to get your bearings and understand that danger is not only perceived but a real threat you would seek a refuge, and you would find it in the badly hand painted sign that read Miss Sissie’s Magic and More.
Is this what brought you here? The trepidation is audible in you’re tentative knock on the peeling white door. The voice that answers solidifies that you left the normal world in a foot tall hurricane glass on Bourbon Street.
“Come in Mr Jarmin”, a sultry creole voice almost sings. And you do.