Like many other creative fiction writers, I have a virtual cigar-box full of beginnings that have no endings. A good collaborative fiction writer tries on many different types of character and ventures into a variety of scenarios and histories during his journeys. Although my experiments have not always worked, I would like to think I have at least voyaged, and my virtual cigar-box contains a collection of old posts from my early days at Panhistoria when I was trying on various characters and novels as if they were hats.

Some of these posts are the only ones I wrote for that particular character. Sometimes I found the hat I tried on just didn't suit me, or it was too constrictive or cut from the wrong cloth. Several of the posts are for novels long since lost to posterity. None of these characters exist in my current fictional dabblings, although some of the names live on in different roles.

But I cling to these outdated and defunct introductions, not simply to revisit them and (hopefully!) consider how I might have improved since, but also because although they are no longer tied to their original novels/storylines, maybe they will one day fly again as something else altogether or provide inspiration for future stories.

This one is relatively 'recent' - from 2004. It was the beginning of a story in the pirate-themed collaborative fiction group at Panhistoria called Ile de Torture, and although neither the character nor the story came to anything, I was fond of him - Christophe Malheur, mixed-blood plantation foreman and local voodoo priest. Somedays, I feel he may still have a story to tell....

Answering Marie's summons

On this wildest of nights, the boy sent to fetch Christophe Malheur found him sitting on the storm-torn wooden verandah of his house with the wind whipping his long black hair about his face and lightening reflecting a yellowish hue in his ebony eyes. Thunder rolled back from the hulking black mass of Mont Pelée and lightening twisted in brilliant flashes through the torrential rain, but Christophe’s quiet observation of the storm’s wrath was more of appreciation than concern. They said he had been born at the height of just such a storm, his mother’s agonized cries muffled by the roll of Shango’s vengeful drums while the mambo-midwife called on the loas to give life and protection, and something of the storm had always remained in him.

He didn’t seen either surprised or much concerned to see the boy appearing on his doorstep in such weather, but simply got to his feet, took hold of the boy’s thin arm and hauled him inside the house out of the tearing wind and rain before remarking softly, “Not a good evening for a stroll, mon p’tit, so what’s wrong?”

“Madame Leveau sent me,” stammered the child, breathless with the force of the storm and the exertion of running. “They found a man washed up by the storm at Anse Ceron and took him to Colline Plaisante.” He danced from foot to foot nervously under the steady regard of Christophe’s ebony gaze, wide-eyed with awe of this man the gens de couleur called Nwa Kònèy, the black crow.

Most people on first meeting the facteur of Marie Leveau’s plantation tended to assume from his looks that Christophe Malheur was white—maybe even one of those pure-blood but dirt-poor haute Français one could find around the island. But he never troubled to conceal the quarter of his blood that was Dahomean or his servitude to the loas, and this had brought him a certain respect amongst the people of color, both slave and free, around Anse Ceron.

Christophe nodded his understand of the situation, calmly pushing long wind-tangled hair off his sharp-featured face. “I’ll go straight away. Has the doctor been sent for?” he asked the boy. “Good. Now you stay inside, mon p’tit, you may shelter here til the storm’s passed. But mind you don’t touch anything.”

“Non, m’sieur, I won’t!” The boy glanced nervously round the room, which was dimly lit by a single candelabra standing on what appeared to be a small shrine against the wall: Nwa Kònèy’s djab-spirit was said to be possessive and fierce if you were not safely protected with its garde.

“Mesi,” Christophe smiled at him and touched his head gently, then like a storm-crow was gone into the raging night.


If you wish to explore the stories told in Ile de Torture further, you can use the guest login option at Panhistoria to read there.