By Theodore Carter

Jed took the package from the UPS man, looked at it quizzically, and read the sloppy scrawl on the address label that spelled out his name. 

“You expecting something good?” the brown-clad delivery man asked

 “Not expecting anything,” Jed said, his eyes still focused on the box.

 The delivery man shoved the electronic signature pad under Jed’s nose.   

“Sign here, please.”

Jed pinned the package to his side with his elbow, took the electronic clipboard, and hurriedly signed his name.

“You seem pretty excited,” the UPS man said.

While handing back the clipboard, Jed looked at the delivery man’s face for the first time and saw a big toothy grin underneath his brown mustache.  It occurred to Jed that the UPS man was teasing him. Jed wondered why he so often found himself the subject of ridicule.

Jed shrugged his shoulders.  “I guess so,” he said.   The UPS man didn’t speak, but looked down at his clipboard, gave a nod of approval, then turned and walked toward the elevator.

Not many people had his new address.  Jed thought it likely his mother had found some of his childhood relics while cleaning out the attic.  He felt the weight of the box to see if it could be a stack of his old rodeo magazines, or perhaps his bottle cap collection, but the shape and weight didn’t seem right for either.

Jed considered it a small triumph when a situation dictated that he reach into his pocket and pull out his Swiss Army knife.  Even now, alone in his small apartment, he felt a bit impressive as he rolled up the sleeves of his flannel shirt and used his handy knife to cut through the packing tape.

The box was chock full of newspaper, more specifically, the sports section of the New Orleans Times Picayune.  He didn’t know anyone in New Orleans.  Underneath the crumpled newspaper lay a hideous humanoid figure that appeared constructed out of refuse.  The figure’s head was a crude clay molding of a skull, complete with strands of dried-out hair. The mouth of the doll was filled with a big straight line of teeth aligned in a lipless grin.  Broken sticks, old chicken wire, and long strands of bristly hair made up the twisted construction of its limbs.  It wore bright orange pants, and a rather elegantly sewn black felt jacket complete with colored plastic gemstones, white trim, and buttons. Jed knew the bizarre gift had to have come from Roy, his freshman roommate. There was a card, or more accurately, a torn slip of a diner menu with writing over top the list of a la carte breakfast items. Roy had written:

Jed,
A genuine voodoo doll from NoLa.  Creepy huh?  Off to Houston next.  Maybe I’ll finally see a rodeo.   

Scooter   

Scooter was a name bestowed upon Roy in college sometime after his freshman year.  Jed didn’t know the significance or origin of the nickname, even though Roy seemed to think he did.  Being hopelessly friendly and loyal, Roy didn’t seem to remember that he and Jed hadn’t talked much after their freshman year.  Their pairing had been an awkward match; it could only be explained by the humor the student housing office must have seen in coupling Jed, a cattle ranch kid from Gilroy, California, with Roy Gill, a suburbanite from the Santa Monica area.

Roy had taken a job with a management consulting firm after graduation, which meant that he traveled to a new city every few weeks.  While Jed didn’t even know Roy’s phone number or mailing address, Roy would periodically send Jed postcards from various U.S. cities with a couple sentences about his whereabouts.  A postcard had arrived a few months earlier from Miami Beach picturing a metallic badge reading “Official Thong Inspector.”  A postcard from Seattle had pictured the fish market.  Now, here was the voodoo doll from New Orleans. 

Whenever he received these mementos, Jed thought of new reasons why his position at the Wild Horse and Burro Division of the Bureau of Land Management, Bakersfield Field Office, was more important than management consulting.  While sitting in his cubical calculating the amount of public land needed for a population of wild ponies, Jed considered himself a white-collar cowboy.  He didn’t understand management consulting but got the sense it meant putting on a nice suit and weaseling companies out of excess revenue.  He imagined Roy would be very good at a job like that. 

Jed turned the doll over in his hands looking for some clue as to its utility.  There was no hook on the back to suggest it should be hung on the wall, no card attached describing historical significance, and no instructions for ceremonial use.  But, because it was a gift, Jed couldn’t bring himself to throw it away, despite its hideousness.

His sparsely furnished studio apartment left only a few options for display.  Aside from his futon bed, the center of his decorating scheme, Jed’s only other furniture was a bureau and a small table on which he’d placed an old TV.  He put the doll on his dresser, propping it against the wall in a standing position next to his wallet, keys, and boombox.

The doll’s orange pants and gemstone jacket buttons looked especially garish in Jed’s colorless apartment.   It was the only ornamental item in the room aside from the BLM lands map tacked over the bed.  Despite its twelve-inch stature, the colorful figurine was now the focal point of his apartment.  Its expression suggested a gregarious personality and mischievousness in stark contrast to its bland surroundings.   

Jed felt a bit embarrassed as he undressed in front of the doll while preparing for bed.  There was something unnerving about its representation of animate life.  He took one last look into the sunken eyes and wide grin carved into the misshapen clay head before turning off his bedside lamp.  Why had Scooter thought he’d be interested in keeping such a grotesque piece of folk art?

As the morning sunlight filtered through the Venetian blinds, Jed woke to find his voodoo doll pacing on top of his dresser, one hand (or stump) held close to its head as if holding a phone, the other gesticulating in grandiose motions.  Jed knew from his own experience, and from stories told by others, that upon waking, it is not uncommon to confuse a dream with reality.  This knowledge was not at all comforting as he watched the doll’s gestures become more emphatic. It was obviously irate over something, and Jed flinched as the twelve-inch figure suddenly slammed the invisible phone into its nonexistent receiver.

Afraid to move, Jed sat in bed and watched the doll walk over and sit on his cowhide wallet, reach into its coat pocket, tilt its head to the side, put both arm ends up toward its mouth, and tilt its head back in a mock exhalation.  The figure stared off into the corner of the room opposite Jed and took periodic puffs off an imaginary cigarette. 

Jed wiped the morning grogginess from his eyes but still saw the doll moving its left arm up to its mouth.  He tried to figure out what had happened to create such delusions.  Had he put spoiled milk in last night’s mac n’ cheese? Had some hallucinogen been mixed into his toothpaste?  Had Scooter’s package contained mind-altering pixie dust he’d inhaled while rummaging through the crumpled newspaper?

As the doll stubbed out the cigarette, Jed became hopeful that some sort of mechanical device lay inside its twig construction.  He grabbed the doll off the shelf, and its body turned rigid in his hand.  He pulled the doll close to his eyes for a more thorough examination, but found nothing that would suggest the joints or motors necessary for movement.  Jed even sheepishly lifted up the doll’s jacket and pulled down its pants in hopes of finding answers.  Discovering nothing new, Jed put the doll back on his dresser.  Now finished with its cigarette, the doll began miming a new action.  It removed its jacket and pants to reveal its svelt twig body.  Next it tilted its head back, ran blunt arm ends through stringy dried hair, and then rubbed its armpits.  And because there was nothing else he could do, Jed decided that he too would step into the shower and get ready for work. He hoped to regain whatever mental capacity he’d lost during the night by going through his predictable morning routine.  He put on his khakis, brushed back his crewcut, and headed into the office.   Aside from the moving doll, everything was exactly the way it had been the day before.  Physically, he felt fine.

Dressed and ready for work, Jed took a few minutes to watch the doll before leaving his apartment.  It was completely still again, standing on his bureau next to his boombox.  As he sat on his bed staring at the doll, he felt as ridiculous as he had when he’d thought the doll was moving.  “Is that it, doll?” he said.  “No more moving around?”

Motionless, the doll stared back at him with vacant eyes and its toothy grin.  Unwilling to give credence to what he’d seen earlier, Jed left his apartment, got in his pickup, and drove to the office.  

Each day, as Jed sat down in front of his government-issued computer, he reminded himself that federal taxpayers paid his salary.  It was only fair that he conduct his analysis of wild horse and burro grazing lands with maximum efficiency.  This meant that the Internet was strictly a workplace tool available to aid in his implementation of the Wild Horse Act of 1959.  Numerous department memos had said as much.  Still, after seeing his voodoo doll hold a phone conversation, smoke a cigarette, and take a shower,  Jed couldn’t resist spending the entire day using the Internet to learn everything he could about New Orleans voodoo.  Though during the course of the day he tried to convince himself he hadn’t seen anything, he rationalized his research as cautionary background information, just in case.        

He’d exhausted the most credible sites by mid morning - web pages of voodoo shop owners, Vodun priests, and historical accounts.  Even the pages written by the most devout believers said nothing about voodoo dolls coming to life.  Desperate for some viable explanation for he may have seen that morning, Jed ventured onto fringe web sites that seemed less about voodoo than about anything and everything bizarre and grotesque including one site where fifteen-year-olds had posted pictures of road kill.  He pulled his rolling chair as close to his computer as his fiberboard desk would allow and leaned in toward the screen in an unsuccessful attempt to hide his web wanderings from coworkers. 

Jed was startled by the sound of Randy’s voice from over his shoulder; “Woah, Cowboy, what you looking at there?” Randy had given Jed the “Cowboy” moniker Jed’s second week on the job after he’d worn a larger than average belt buckle to secure his jeans on casual Friday.  Jed swiveled around in his chair and saw Randy leaning against the file cabinet, his trademark American flag coffee cup in tow.  While Randy’s voice always made Jed wish he were somewhere else, this day his coworker's presence was especially troubling. Randy had already noticed Jed’s non-work related use of the Internet, and he envisioned his name in the 2004 Inspector General’s report on government waste, fraud, and abuse.

 Randy placed his coffee mug on the cabinet, put his left hand on Jed’s desk, and leaned in for a look at the screen.  Jed could smell his coffee-stained breath.  Randy wrinkled his sun-stiffened brow as he read the page entitled, “SATAN AT WORK,” and looked at pictures of unidentified mammals flattened on various suburban streets.  As if it were a gesture he’d rehearsed, Randy straightened his lanky, tall frame, put his hands on his hips, shook his head, and said, “Well, Cowboy, I always knew that a quiet guy like you had to have something going on outside the office.  Didn’t know this was it.” 

“I clicked the wrong link, that’s all.” 

Jed had gone with Randy for beers after work once.  The outing had ended with Jed sneaking out early while Randy stayed behind to drink his fifth Bud Light and sing along to the jukebox

 “Whatever floats your boat, Cowboy,” Randy said.

“Randy, I’m serious.  I just miss-clicked.  I swear,” Jed said, his right hand squeezing the symmetry out of an oversized paper clip.

“Hey, I’m not the boss man, Cowboy.  But if I was, I might switch you to decaf.”

Randy was always talking about switching people over to decaf.  He gave Jed a military salute and walked out of his cube.  Watching Randy leave, Jed thought how all this could have been avoided if Scooter had just kept the ugly doll for himself.  

The vividness of what he’d witnessed that morning was beginning to fade into a surreal memory as Jed drove home in his Ford pickup. He told himself that whatever had happened, or whatever he thought had happened, would never happen again.   There would never be a reason to contact any of the eight carefully researched voodoo experts that he’d written down on the yellow legal pad laying on the passenger seat.  Still, as he turned the key and opened his apartment door, he prayed silently that he’d see the voodoo doll lying motionless on his dresser.  He also harbored a fear that he’d find the ugly doll had gone berserk in his absence and had ransacked the place, that it had carved pentagrams into the walls and learned to speak in tongues.

He swung the door open.  Standing on top of his dresser, the doll moved its arms as if stacking things on high shelves.  Its mundane actions were somehow far more frightening than the aggressive behaviors he’d feared.  The easy movements suggested longevity and permanence.  A short burst of illogical animation would surely end quickly, but the figurine could go on living like this for days, maybe even months or years.  The familiarity of its movements made them eerie. 

Jed snatched the doll and felt it grow rigid in his hand.  He thought about throwing it, maybe breaking it against the wall, but was conscious that such a violent reaction would only confirm a slipping mental state. He placed the doll back on the dresser, where it continued to organize its invisible items placing some things down low and others so high that it had to extend to its full height.  When it finished, the doll breathed in deeply, its chest slowly inflating and deflating in what would audibly have sounded like a deep exhalation or sigh.   It removed its felt jacket, walked over to the boombox, and hung the garment on the volume knob. 

Jed gently placed his wallet and keys in their usual place on the dresser top and took a seat at the foot of his bed.  The doll sat down on Jed’s wallet.  It extended its right arm for a moment and then leaned back as if supported by a large cushion.  It appeared to be watching something, maybe an invisible TV.

The doll’s relaxed state put Jed at ease to some degree.  As the clay head peered off into space, Jed took the opportunity to set up his laptop on his bed and compose an email to his eight well-researched voodoo experts.  The body of the email was the same for each recipient:

I’m writing you because I know you to be an expert on voodoo mythology and the Vodun religion.  I’d like to know if you’ve ever heard stories of the voodoo dolls moving on their own.  Are there any rituals aimed at making dolls come to life? I would greatly appreciate any answer you can give me.

Sincerely,

Jed Kendall

 

Jed chose these words carefully, not wishing to let anyone think that he actually believed his voodoo doll could move, yet still hoping to invite a retelling of any folklore or anecdote that could shed light on what was happening in his apartment.    

This proactive approach left Jed with a sense of accomplishment.  He looked at his dresser where the voodoo doll was engaged in some complicated abdominal exercise.  The doll lay on its back with its legs bent at a forty-five-degree angle.  It reached left arm to right leg and right arm to left leg in a quick tempo, and Jed wondered why his lunacy was so unlike more romantic fictional accounts, which always included more impressive delusions.  Why did his slip into madness involve a mini figurine intent on keeping a shapely figure?

Following the plan of action he’d set out for himself at work, Jed next dug out his old dorm directory and dialed the number for Roy’s family in Santa Monica.  Mr. Gill didn’t seem to remember Jed, or even pretend to.  Still, Mr. Gill gave Jed Roy’s cell phone number.  Jed tried to rehearse lines in his head before he called, “Roy, so what’s the story with this voodoo doll?” or, “Roy, so how was New Orleans?”  But thinking about the conversation only made Jed more anxious.  He wasn’t good on the phone.  It was usually best just to dial without thinking too much.  

“Hello?”

“Hello, Roy.  It’s Jed.  Jed Kendall.”   Jed could hear background murmur of a multitude of voices.  It sounded like Roy was at a bar or a party.

“No fucking shit! Jed Kendall.  How are you?”

Roy’s enthusiasm left Jed unsure whether or not he was being made fun of again.  Self-conscious now, Jed became more direct. 

“Roy, what is that thing you sent to me? Where did you get it?”

“You like that, huh? Scooter’s got all sorts of tricks up his sleeve.”

Maybe Roy was just drunk.  Freshmen year Roy had been drunk quite a few times.  “But I mean where did you get it, Roy?”

“This friend of mine has a buddy in New Orleans, and this guy’s cousin is a full on voodoo priest or some shit.  But how are you, man?  How’s life?”

“Look, I need to know where you got the doll.”

“Jesus, Jed.  A little tightly wound, aren’t you?”

Roy paused.  Jed realized now he’d made it clear he hadn’t called just to chat.

Roy started up again in a softer tone.  “Yeah, well, this voodoo priest told me you can forget all of those phony shops in the French quarter and that I should go to the park bench by the river where you can get the authentic stuff from a Creole bum who sells these dolls like a New York street vendor sells Rolex’s.  This is the real deal, Jed.  No fucking around.”

“So do they put spells on it or something?”

“The hell if I know.  I just picked the creepiest looking one; that’s all.  Jed, man, how you doing? It sounds like you could stand to loosen up a bit.  I’m coming to San Francisco in a couple months.  You should drive up.”

Jed looked over at his dresser.  The figure was now standing upright with hands on hips and twisting its torso.  It was working its obliques.

“I don’t know.  I’m pretty busy down here with work.”  Jed tried to picture himself flying to New Orleans and walking the banks of the Mississippi looking for a bum hawking voodoo dolls.  It didn’t seem productive.

“Yeah, I understand.”

Jed realized he wasn’t getting anywhere.  “Look, Roy, I’ve got to get going.”

“That all you called about, Jed? About the doll?”

This was his last chance to come clean to Roy about what had happened, if anything had in fact happened at all.

“I just wanted to know where you got it.”

“Yeah, I thought you’d like that.  Hey, thanks for calling though, Jed.  I’ll send you a postcard when I get to San Francisco.”

“Okay.  Thanks, Roy.”

There was nothing left for Jed to do but sit in his apartment the rest of the night and wait for the doll to stop moving.  He certainly couldn’t turn his back on the thing, and while he thought about leaving the apartment, he couldn’t stand the thought of missing the exact moment when the doll stopped moving, and he would be able to say to himself, “See, Jed, nothing to worry about.  It’s all over.”

“Hey, ugly doll,” Jed said.  “Can you hear me?”  The doll didn’t show any sign of hearing Jed.  It continued its exercise routine.  It rolled its torso in wide circles.  Jed knew that specific exercise to be good for lower-back pain.  “Do you think you’re going to stop this soon?  Can you give ‘ole Jed his sane mind back?”  The doll didn’t react.

If there were anyone he trusted in Bakersfield, he would have had him come over immediately to see if he could see the doll’s movements too.  In Bakersfield though he had only colleagues.  There was Charlotte, the girl he saw sometimes at the stable.  He considered her a friend, or as Charlotte termed it “just friends,” but he couldn’t simply call her up and invite her to the apartment.  He had friends and family in Gilroy, but he wasn’t willing to explain this over the phone.  Having an on-the-scene witness was the only way to avoid being perceived as insane.  The only thing to do was to watch and wait.  He ordered a pizza.

By the time the doorbell rang, the voodoo doll had been jumping and gyrating to inaudible music for nearly twenty minutes.  Jed opened his apartment door as wide as he could, all but inviting the pizza man to come inside in hopes that the skinny teenager might see the dancing voodoo doll and say, “Hey, what the fuck is that?”  Such a statement would have confirmed Jed’s sanity.  But the kid simply kept his bloodshot eyes on Jed, and said, “That will be seventeen dollars and seventy-six cents, sir.” 

Jed took the pizza out of the teenager’s arms, walked slowly across the room, and placed the pizza on top of the television.  “Let me get my wallet here,” Jed said.  He walked over to his dresser and very conspicuously picked up his wallet.  Jed lingered next to the voodoo doll that was now performing a carefully choreographed dance routine Jed was certain had been lifted from MTV.  The pizza man didn’t notice the doll.  Jed watched the teenager run his hand through his hair and gaze at the inside of the apartment as if it were thick with smoke.  Meanwhile, the voodoo doll began a highly suggestive series of pelvic thrusts.  Only after Jed had offered up a twenty did the kid’s eyes appear to refocus. “Oh, thank you, sir,” he said. 

The pizza man turned slowly and left.  Jed sat inside his apartment analyzing the interaction.  Had the teenager been oblivious, high, or did the dancing figure simply not exist?  Jed had missed his opportunity for a second opinion.  He ran to the door, opened it, and looked into the hallway.  The pizza man stood in front of the elevator, his skinny shoulders hunched forward.

“Hey,” Jed yelled.  “Can you come in here a minute?  I’ve really got to show you something.”

The teenager turned toward Jed, his mouth hanging open.  Finally, he said, “Sorry, man, I don’t go that way.”  The elevator bell chimed and the pizza man stepped in with one long stride.

Jed sat on the bed and ate his pizza.  The doll had finished dancing and now seemed to be cooking, one arm held an invisible fry pan steady and the other hovered above and circled in a stirring motion.  If there’d been smells or sounds to accompany the doll’s actions, Jed thought he could figure out what it was cooking.  Instead, he had to guess, and for some reason he decided that the left hand looked to be flipping a spatula in such a way as to suggest the doll was preparing an omelet.  As he finished the last slice of pizza, his laptop chimed to notify him he’d received an email message.

Ordinarily, Jed would have washed the pizza grease off his hands thoroughly before touching his government-subsidized computer.  Now, he simply wiped up quickly with a dry paper towel to read the reply from one of his voodoo experts.  It was from the Tulane professor.

Mr. Kendall,

There is a legend of voodoo dolls so confused by muddled spells that they take on the traits of the very person they were designed to mimic.  As the story goes, it is the person who influences the doll in such a case rather than the doll who influences a person’s behavior. When this happens, the voodoo doll is sometimes called a who doin’ doll. Unlike a voodoo doll, a who doin’ doll has no potential for spells. It is simply the odd waste product of sloppy voodoo.  I hope this helps.

Dr. Shelton

While the professor’s response was as close to a clear explanation as Jed had dared hope for, the prospect of buying into an ancient voodoo legend, of giving weight to magical spells, terrified Jed more than accepting what he’d seen as a grand illusion.  The idea that some bum in New Orleans had somehow hexed his Bakersfield existence was unacceptable.  What was perhaps most frightening was that this small figure was a window into someone else’s life.  Sweating now, Jed wiped his hands with a fresh square of paper towel.  He typed a response in hopes of reaching the professor before he left his computer:

Who makes the doll do this?  Who will the doll mimic? When will it stop moving?

- Jed

Jed sent it off and waited eagerly for a response.  The second hand ticks of his Wal-Mart clock seemed to echo in his apartment during his long three-minute wait.  The professor wrote:

It’s just mythology, but I suppose the doll could be mimicking anyone at all, just as a voodoo doll can represent anyone. 

How did you get my email address?

If Jed could have dragged the professor through his computer and into his apartment, Dr. Shelton would have seen the voodoo doll eating its dinner, slicing through its tasty dish, and occasionally dabbing its widespread grin in a way to suggest that it used a cloth napkin far more sophisticated than Jed’s length of paper towel.

“Are you mocking a real person then, doll?”  The doll ignored him again, and this time Jed wondered if it was because whoever had crafted the doll had forgotten to give it ears.

The professor’s note was no comfort at all.  Instead, it only brought into Jed’s mind a whole realm of possibilities he’d never considered.  He was now forced to speculate. Who was at home right now, eating dinner and lifting his fork to his mouth in time with the hideous doll?  How many more nights would Jed come home and spend time analyzing the doll’s routine in search of clues as to its true identity?  The clerk at the drugstore would have to be scrutinized for having mannerisms similar to the doll, as would the gas station attendant, the waitress at the Midnight Diner, and everyone else.  The nine hours he’d spent fretting over his doll’s sudden animation would be nothing compared to the ongoing torture of knowing he was watching someone real through the actions of this doll.

Jed watched the doll scrubbing dishes.  He realized there would never be an easy way to unravel the mystery of his who doin’ doll.  Deducing any explanation for who had hexed the doll, why, and who it represented would take years of research and treks through, Louisiana, Haiti, and Africa studying Vodun.  Or, he could drive himself crazy searching each continent for the object of his doll’s mimicry.  The remainder of his life would turn into a hopeless search across the globe.

The figurine stopped its dish washing and became inanimate again when Jed wrapped his fist around its delicate twig leg.  Jed closed it inside of an old shoe box and placed the box deep inside his bedroom closet.  His apartment now looked like it had before.  Safe. Simple. Regular.  But were things back to normal? Jed couldn’t help but wonder if the shoe box in the closet shook with life.  He’d removed the problem, but hadn’t solved it.  Jed watched his closet door half expecting to see it swing open slightly with an eerie creak and for the little clay head to peak out from behind the door.  After just a few minutes, Jed fished the box out his closet and opened it up.  There was his doll down on hands and knees, one hand moving in a circular motion as if cleaning a spill.  

He could have thrown it into the dumpster in the alley and sent it away with the morning trash truck, but, like the shoe box, that would not have satisfied him.  Those solutions provided no finality. Jed knew he’d forever imagine the doll miming out floor mopping while standing on top of the municipal landfill, or slicing bread amidst acres of hefty bags.  Jed needed to see the doll stop.  He placed the doll back on his bureau.

Jed woke the next morning to the jarring buzz of his alarm clock, sat up in his futon bed, and looked toward his doll.  It was already awake and moving, running its left hand along its wiry hair in long strokes.  Jed realized he’d never really looked closely at the doll’s actions before but had simply been fixated on the implausible fact that it had moved at all.  Now he could see the doll was brushing its long hair.  The figurine then leaned forward and circled its double row of straight white teeth with the end of its arm.  Though Jed was unfamiliar with the female morning bathroom routine, and his doll did not have lips, he could see the doll was applying lipstick.  It was clearly a woman.  Jed suddenly felt a bit guilty, and excited, about catching a glimpse into the doll's most intimate behavior.  He thought about looking away as the doll continued to examine her face in an invisible mirror, then remembered that her hollow black eyes had never seemed to recognize his existence before. Still leaning forward a bit, the doll fluffed her wispy hairs with her stump hands and turned her head slightly, perhaps to inspect blemishes on her nose or check.  Jed thought of the doll for the first time as a person with a human face.

Every weekday morning, Jed woke at six A.M., ate dry toast, coffee, and orange juice by six fifteen, then into the shower, all in time for an eight A.M. arrival at his government cube. However, on this day he'd spent a good fifteen minutes sitting up in bed watching the doll get ready for the day.  Jed then skipped breakfast, and once he got into the shower, he stayed in too long.  While the warm water washed over him, Jed began piecing together a complete personality from the doll's cumulative actions. She liked to dance, exercise, clean, cook, smoke an occasional cigarette, and lived alone.  In the morning, she spent a good deal of time in front of the mirror and her careful inspection of her face made Jed believe it was possible she was a bit self-conscious about her appearance.  Jed had heard it said beauty lies within, but in his doll’s case, he believed beauty lay in some young woman’s apartment miles away from Bakersfield.   

Freshman year Roy had dated Karen for nearly six months.  She had spent a good deal of time in their room, but Jed rarely talked to her when she was there. Karen had always filled the room with the smell of her perfume and shampoos and often wore tight-fitting sweaters that looked soft to the touch.  Each time Jed had seen her, her long blond hair had looked as though just brushed to a golden sheen.  Jed had rarely looked her in the eye because he'd been certain if he had, both she and Roy would have instantaneously known that he wanted to touch her smooth hair and rest his cheek against her soft sweater.   

Jed had probably spent more time around Karen than he had with any other girl his own age.  For that reason, while Jed worked in his government cube that day, he couldn't help but compare his hideous voodoo doll to Roy's ex-girlfriend.  Jed imagined there were certain similarities between what he had seen his doll doing and things that Karen might have done had Jed had a similar glimpse into her everyday life.  And while Jed did not condone smoking, or understand what joy could be gleaned from choreographed dance, he began to think that his doll could be mimicking someone whom he might well like to know. Jed decided it might be tolerable, perhaps even enlightening, to have her around his apartment for a while.  And, since she was going to be with him all of the time, it was only fitting that he give her a name.

Sitting in the safety of his cubicle, Jed turned to a new page of his yellow legal notebook pad, took about a ballpoint pen, and made a list.  Karen?  That one was already taken.  Kelly, Kristen, Kristy?  Jed moved toward a more systematic approach. Ann, Anna, Annabelle, Anita, Barbara, Betsy - before too long he had filled up several pages.  He lifted the pad off his desk and held it at eye level to read it over.

"Is that the Cowboy's black book?"

Jed swiveled in his chair to face the direction of the voice.  Randy loomed over him, hands on slim hips, coffee breath wafting down toward Jed's nose.

"Oh, hey, Randy.  These are just - "

"They're just the names of your Saturday night honeys? Is that it, Cowboy?"

Randy smiled and Jed could see the gum line between his wide spaced teeth was discolored slightly, brown.

"I may get a pet," Jed said.

"I bet you will, Cowboy.  A nice sweet kitty, or a wild beast? Raarrrr!"  Randy made claws with his fingertips and gave a soundless chuckle.  His chest and shoulders bobbed up and down, and he wrinkled his upper lip.  Before Jed could figure out why his lie had failed, Randy had saluted and left the cube. 

Jed looked at his paper and circled the name Olympia.  It was the only name on the list whose beauty, Jed felt, could override the ugliness of the stick-constructed doll.  Olympia sounded important, symbolic of something perhaps, and Jed thought this unimaginable happenstance was probably symbolic of something larger for either him or Olympia.  Something grandiose was happening, and Olympia seemed the name for it. 

Growing up, Jed's family had owned a golden retriever named Mac, and each day Jed rode home on the school bus, he'd picture what it would be like to be reunited with his dog.  While sitting in his vinyl seat, Jed could imagine opening the front door and seeing Mac running toward him with his tongue out and his tail wagging.  Now, driving his truck back from the Wild Horse and Burro Division, Jed found himself imagining walking through the front door of his apartment to see Olympia atop his bureau dresser.  She might be on the phone, or completing household chores, but she would doubtlessly be there to greet him when he got home.

As Jed opened the door, Olympia sat on the top of his dresser peering into her lap.  She moved a limb end across her lap, which made Jed realize she was reading a book or magazine.  Jed placed his wallet next to her knowing that sometimes Olympia liked to sit on it.  Her upright position on top of the wallet looked much more comfortable than her current posture.  Jed sat on his bed and watched her read.  He tried to imagine her bristly hair as a thick, long, straight blonde mane.  Though her mouth still appeared an unnatural skull-like line of teeth, Jed knew she had lips that had been carefully covered with a glossy sheen that morning. 

Jed looked at his watch and realized it was six thirty.  Even inside his apartment, he could feel the heat of the late September desert sun giving way to cool dusk.  He'd been watching Olympia read for nearly a half-hour.  He got up to boil water for a pasta dinner, but stopped on the way to the stove and contemplated Olympia's seat atop the dresser again.  Jed was uncertain of her relationship toward the objects in his room.  She seemed able to utilize his wallet as a lounge chair and the boom box as a coat hook, yet also held a relationship with objects existing elsewhere.  She held invisible objects, cooked on a stove Jed couldn't see, and peered into her own T.V.  She clearly had some concept of the space in Jed's apartment.  She never fell off the dresser for instance, yet she didn't climb down to explore either.  It occurred to Jed that Olympia might be more comfortable if he were to provide her with a few small items of furniture.

Jed pulled an empty Cheerios box out of the trash, took out his army knife out of his pocket, and fetched some masking tape.  He built a cardboard chair for her and placed it on the dresser.  Jed pressed down on the seat to test its durability.  Next, using the same yellow box, Jed made a table.  He cut rectangles out of an old fleece and lay them on top of one another making a bed.  He sat on his bed again admiring the new habitat he'd created.  Olympia still sat on the dresser top reading.  Jed thought about bringing over a small dish of water to serve as a bathtub, but thought it might be inappropriate to encourage Olympia to bathe in front of him.  He would no longer feel comfortable watching her remove her gemstone jacket and tattered pants.  Stacking various collected bottle caps, Jed fashioned a perimeter around Olympia’s living space.  He liked to think of it as her white picket fence, though he did admit to himself that it looked more like a corral.

When Olympia walked over to her Cheerio chair an hour later and sat down, Jed felt like a barrier between them had fallen.  Their two separate existences had overlapped.  Sitting on his bed, a plate of half-eaten pasta in his lap, Jed asked,  “Do you like it, Olympia?”  He was instantaneously embarrassed by his irrational exuberance, the too-large grin on his face, then relaxed a bit when he remembered the doll didn't have any ears and that its eyes were cavernous black holes with no capacity for sight.  “Do you like it? I made it myself,” he said to her.  “Hand-crafted from a single piece of lumber.”  She tossed her hair with her limb end, then reached out as if pointing a remote control.  She nestled her clay head into the chair’s headrest.  Jed got up from the bed, extended his pointed finger, and gently stroked Olympia’s bumpy, twig constructed knee.  She did not turn rigid as she had before, but stayed reclined comfortably in her chair.  Jed wondered if the real Olympia, the human version, might be feeling his light touch at that moment.  He continue to run his finger tip along her leg fearing at any moment the spell would be broken and the doll would return to it’s stiff, unbendable state.  “Olympia, do you think you might speak to me someday? You do have a mouth,” Jed said.   The doll stared off toward the unseen television screen with its vacant eyes.

Olympia slept on her fleece-lined bed when Jed woke the next morning.  She lay on her side, legs curled up, knees pulled up to her stomach, and her chest moved slowly in and out with the slow breathing of deep sleep.  “Good morning my pet,” Jed said.  It was his first attempt at creating a term of endearment for his female companion, but even to his own ear it fell flat.  It sounded overly Victorian and Jed thought that next he would try a nickname closer to his ranch-hand roots like little doggie or fine filly.  Jed placed his hand close to Olympia’s face to see if he could feel her breathing, but although her body moved during her inhales and exhales, she wasn’t taking in or expelling air.  Jed told himself that in a few days that could change too, just as her relationship with his furnishings and his touch had changed.

Though Jed had created a furnished environment for Olympia, it occurred to him that it was silly to confine her to his dresser top.  There was no reason why she shouldn’t accompany him to work.  Of course he wouldn’t leave her out on his desktop for Randy and others to see.  He could easily create a comfortable space for her inside of one of his file cabinet drawers.  The tall drawer walls would create an atmosphere similar to a New York City loft-style apartment, complete with exposed beams.  Jed packed Olympia and her furniture into a shoe box.

Jed left the file drawer under his desk open a crack just in case Olympia preferred to have a bit of light.  The opening also allowed Jed to look in and see Olympia sitting upright in her Cheerio box throne, arms raised out in front of her body as if she were working at a desk as well.  Like Jed, Olympia apparently held an office job.  Occasionally she moved from her seat and walked around a bit.  Jed guessed she was probably strolling to the printer, or perhaps over to the water cooler. Watching Olympia during the day cut into Jed’s work productivity, but he could think of no clear policy against what he was doing.  The handbook said no pets at work, no children, but Olympia didn't fall into either category.  At the end of his workday, and, by the looks of her tired posture, near the end of Olympia's, Jed packed his doll into his shoe box and headed home.  He put the box on his the passenger seat.  "Long day at the office, ay little filly?"  It sounded right to Jed as he said it.  The headed home down the wide, hot streets of downtown Bakersfield.

Packing Olympia up before leaving for work in the morning became part of Jed's everyday routine.  He built five extra minutes into his morning for the task and now woke up at five fifty five a.m.  On the weekend too he put Olympia the front seat of the pickup when driving to the grocery store or to the stable.  He got to know her routines, her body language, her hobbies and habits.  She was a lot like him; a homebody for the most part, a hard worker, a reader, and a movie buff, though on the weekends she often drank too much and it would impair her walking.  She smoked the occasional cigarette too and gabbed on the phone a lot.  Jed knew she was beautiful. She took great pains in her appearance both before bed and in the mornings.  She ate reasonable portions, worked out quite a bit, and liked to dance. She chose her clothes carefully, sometimes dressing more than once in the morning to get her outfit right (although to Jed she always appeared to be putting on the same gemstone jacket and torn pants.)  And because he knew she was beautiful, Jed was not surprised when her habits began to change, when it became clear she’d found a boyfriend. 

Jed first started to recognize certain meals as dinner dates based on Olympia's posture, careful use of invisible utensils, and head movements that implied mid-meal conversations.  Walks to her front doorstep, which to Jed looked like laps around his dresser top, ended at first with hugs, then, more recently kissing.  Jed noticed that she talked differently on the phone sometimes too, standing up during some calls rather than slumped in her usual relaxed seated position.  When this happened, Jed presumed Olympia had her boyfriend on the line.  Jed knew Olympia was lonely, like him.  He was glad she'd found a companion and even thought briefly that perhaps this meant he would find a love too.  He said as much to Olympia one night while falling off to sleep.  “Maybe I’ll find someone too, Olympia.  Then we’ll both have someone else, someone we can actually talk with.”  With the lights off, Jed could still Olympia’s small body in silhouette outlined by the light of the street lamps shining through coming his window.  She lay curled up and asleep, breathing heavily.

A few days later, Jed woke during the middle of the night to the sound of Olympia flopping down on the dresser.  He turned on his light and saw her chair had been overturned.  Olympia lay flat on her back.  At first Jed thought an invisible assailant was attacking her.  He got up wanting to grab hold of her and return her to her rigid, frozen state.  Then Jed noticed her arms were outstretched, bent just slightly, gently, and her neck stretched up, her head was tilted to one side.  Olympia was in an embrace.  Her legs opened up too and then curled around an invisible body.  She looked clumsy.  Jed hoped that she was at least drunk, but it was Wednesday and Olympia never drank during the week.  A moment later, Olympia sat upright, grabbed her waistband, and shimmied out of her ratty orange pants.  She removed her jacket.  With her string bound twig and wire limbs exposed, Olympia lay flat on her back.  Her hips gyrated slowly, her head tilted back.  Her clay scalp scraped against the dresser top with the rhythmic movements of her body.  Though disgusted, Jed could not look away.  Olympia's movements became more and more vivacious until it was over and she lay still.  Not moving from her spot on top of the bare dresser, she curled up and slept.  Jed stayed awake longer explaining away her actions inside his head.  He felt like he'd seen his childhood sweetheart defiled.  It didn't seem like her to act so rashly, but she was lonely, impressionable, without a lot of friends.  Jed might have done the same thing on a Wednesday night given the chance.

The first act had been jarring for Jed, yet forgivable.  After the second, third, fourth occurrences it grew tiresome.  Afterward, Olympia’s lifestyle became repugnant in Jed’s opinion.   He often closed Olympia into her shoe box to keep from witnessing her numerous sex acts.  Her positioning became more creative too, and it seemed to Jed that her jacket and pants spent as much time on the bottom of the shoe box and on top of his dresser as they did on her thin body.  It wasn't just before and after the workday either.  One day during his lunch hour Jed peered into his file drawer and saw Olympia naked, bent over her Cheerio chair in a near impossible position.  Not only did Jed find this sickening, but he also wondered if perhaps this pose might overextend the integrity of her twig construction.  A leg might simply splinter and snap off.  It looked unhealthy, yet it didn't ease up. 

Perhaps Olympia was not like Jed at all, but perhaps more like Roy.  Jed had unwillingly heard tales of Roy's sexual exploits and had always wondered about the type of young women who had been involved in the grotesque tales.  Perhaps it had been a woman like a Olympia, a sex fiend MTV watching smoker who bar hopped on weekends until she couldn't walk straight.  She didn't even appear to take the same care in her appearance in the morning anymore.  Workdays ended before five o'clock sometimes now.  Her dance routines had become a bit too seductive, almost embarrassing and lewd.  The doll went through her exercise routine far less frequently.  Coupling that with more meals out, Jed was sure she was gaining weight.

Jed was as unproductive without Olympia under his desk as he had been with her there.  He couldn't help but wonder what she was doing at every moment.  He wondered whether she was meeting her boyfriend for a noontime quicky, or chatting with him secretly over her workplace phone while twirling the phone cord around her free hand.  Jed could foresee no easy solution to his relationship with Olympia.  He couldn't very well get rid of her simply for her crude behavior.  She wasn't aware he could peer into her bedroom.  

Because Jed worked eight to five Monday through Friday, he had never once considered that a voodoo priestesses might have a more nebulous workweek.  To Jed, an "expert" was someone who checked her email daily if not hourly.  In Jed's mind, experts gave answers quickly and got their facts right.  He had all but forgotten about the experts other than Dr. Shelton whom he'd emailed weeks earlier until he recognized an address in, widowparis@stlouis1.net, as a voodoo priestess.  She'd had her own website.  Jed had counted this against her during his initial research.  He thought it unlikely that she was authentic, but at the time he'd been desperate for any information.  The email read:

Monsieur Jed,

Only a doll the serpent spirit himself inside can move like that.  A doll like that is too strong, a dangerous type of witching has been done.  You got to stop that doll.  Cover the doll with mud from the Mississippi. That'll keep the spirit from seeing the human world and he'll leave the doll.  I can send you mud.  $50 a jar. Cash. 

- ÅÅÅ       

It sounded like moneymaking scheme from a web-based voodoo guru, but there was no doubt that Olympia's allure was powerful and Jed considered it possible he'd been bewitched by her in some way.  He certainly wasn't himself. 

The end of daylight saving time had stolen an hour away from the night and Jed drove home around five fifteen p.m. under a black sky.  In Bakersfield, this meant the nighttime.  The desert chill set in earlier too, and Jed wore his sheepskin jacket over his dress shirt as he walked from the office to his truck. Jed stopped at an ATM on his drive home and withdrew fifty dollars cash.  He hadn't decided the priestess was right, but hers was a proposition worth considering.

Jed stood outside his apartment door, his key still in the lock, and already he could hear the rhythmic bumping of Olympia's body against his dresser top.  Jed walked in the door and saw her naked, quivering legs high in the air, back arched high so that only her shoulders and ass touched the dresser top.  He grabbed a T-shirt from under his dresser drawer and threw it over her.  He could tell from the relief imprint of her body that she'd resorted to her lifeless rigid state.  Her legs had relaxed and lay flat.  Jed picked her up inside the T-shirt, like he would while handling a dead rodent, and placed her into her shoe box.  But Olympia was insatiable that day, and Jed heard the same noises again just an hour later.  It happened for a third time that night.

The Olympia Jed had constructed in his mind, the beautiful, lonely young woman in need of furniture and friendship had vanished.  Jed wondered now if in fact Olympia was with just one man or whether her sexual appetite could only be quenched by several different partners.  Really, nothing about her appealed to Jed any longer. He felt as though he were stuck in a movie theater watching an abhorrent, unsympathetic character on screen for weeks at a time.   

He reached into his pocket and fingered his Swiss Army knife.  The blade was likely too short, but a strong kitchen knife could easily sever Olympia's clay head from her limber body.  Her stick limbs could be chopped into an unrecognizable mish-mash.  A grocery bag could serve as a suitable graveyard.  Dr. Shelton had assured him that, “A who doin’ doll has no potential for spells.”  Destroying the doll would be harmless to the actual Olympia.  She could go on scrumping day in and day out, and in and out.  The more he thought about it, the more it seemed the only rational thing to do.  Forget the Mississippi mud, forget tracking the doll's object of mimicry, Jed wanted a return to normalcy, a clean break. 

Jaw clenched, Jed did his best to put on a nonchalant air as he walked into the kitchen nook. As he reached into the kitchen drawer and withdrew his sharpest carving knife, he feared the doll might suddenly develop the cognitive capacity necessary to foresee her demise.  Jed walked back to his dresser with the knife hidden behind his back like a horror movie stalker.  He reached out and grabbed the doll in her curled up sleep.  She grew rigid and Jed used his left hand to press Olympia's ugly face down on the wood surface of the dresser.  With his right hand, he carefully lifted the knife an inch above her twig neck and chopped her clay head off her folk art body with one violent blow.  Olympia's lumpy skull scooted loudly across the bureau. 

Next, Jed went to work on the limbs, slicing right through her bright orange pants.  He cut across her thin waistline, through the arms, and just in case the doll possessed some sort of voodoo spirit, he cut into the spot where her heart would be, comforted to see only more twigs and wire inside. 

Soon there was nothing left on the dresser resembling a human form, only bits of twig and cloth.  Olympia was gone.  Jed breathed heavily and stared down at the mess on top of his knife-nicked dresser.  The apartment sounded still and lifeless and Jed felt a calm creeping back inside him.  All that was left was a mess easily cleaned with a broom and dustpan.  As Jed swept up the pieces and secured them safely in a plastic grocery bag, he thought of the wonderful predictability of arriving at work tomorrow with no dancing doll left behind in his apartment.

Roy called late in the afternoon that Saturday.

"Yo, Jed.  I'm in San Fran."

"Yeah, you at a conference?" Jed hadn't spoken to anyone outside of work since chopping up Olympia and was thankful for the call.

"Yep.  How you doing, Jed? How's work? How are the wild ponies doing?"

"Okay, Okay.  Keeping me busy, you know."

"How about the little fillies? Heh?"

Jed felt obliged to chuckle, but the questioned pained him a bit.  "Their population numbers are down a bit this year, Roy."

"I hear you, man.  I hear you.  Listen, come meet me.  I'm downtown in the Grand Hyatt.  The company set me up pretty nice here."

Jed looked toward his bureau.  The spot where the doll had once lived was marred by the tell-tale knife knicks from his struggle with Olympia.  The evidence of his violence made Jed want to leave the room, maybe even leave Bakersfield.  It had all been so gruesome and ridiculous.

"Yeah, Roy, I'll come up."

"Yeah, we'll see the city a bit.  Gotta help me go through this per diem."

Jed got off the phone and packed an overnight bag.  He did his best to dress for a night out in the city, which meant he wore office attire: a blue dress shirt, black pants and leather shoes.  He looked in the mirror, ran his hand over the stiff spikes of his flattop and wondered if he should grow his hair out.  In his sock drawer Jed kept a bottle of Stetson cologne, a gift from his dad Jed had used sparingly since the age of sixteen.  He dabbed a bit behind his ear.  Reaching the door, he turned and looked back at his apartment, a quick check to make sure everything was in order before he left for the day.  On the dresser, almost hidden by his stereo, he saw one of Olympia's purple gemstone buttons sparkling in the light of his Wal-mart lamp.  He closed the door, got into his pickup, and headed north.