Disclaimer: Not mine. Rights go to Disney-Pixar.
L'ombre de Samedi
Prologue – La Faim
"The Hunger."
Nights in the bayou were always alive with sound. Mama Odie stood at the threshold of her abode, leaning against the doorway and meticulously, but easily, piecing together an image of what her four working senses could tell her. The swampy odor of the bayou drifted up into her nose, and she listened to the mosquitoes and moths whining and thumping against a lamp hung outside her door. Something rustled in the reeds at the base of the tree, bullfrogs with belching sounds and peepers with their high pitched tones, and there was a small group of alligators lurking just beyond the light of her house again.
"Nice night, eh, Juju?" Mama Odie rasped a laugh and reached down to pet the head of her green water snake, who nuzzled her palm affectionately. "Good enough to share, and I believe we have a visitor, don't we now?"
Juju briefly curled around her ankle in response, and then slithered back inside. Taking her pet's cue, Mama Odie turned around and hobbled back in, her bare feet thumping on the wooden floor.
"Dr. Facilier!" she called, her head tilted towards the ceiling, where a sizable hole in the roof was. "Why didn't y'all come in the front door like a proper gentleman? Y'all should know you're welcome at Mama Odie's." She wheezed with laughter at her own joke. There was an unamused hiss in response, and an emaciated shadow of a man in a top hat slithered into the room through the hole. It was ragged and wraithlike and hung about the ceiling with no owner.
"Say, y'all look different," Mama Odie commented with a sly push of her tinted shades up her nose. "You really a Shadow Man these days. But come on in and tell all the details to this old blind lady--Juju!" she shouted, although Juju was coiled right by her feet and watching what was left of Dr. Facilier, head swaying warily. "Get me into my chair!"
Without waiting, Mama Odie picked Juju up and the snake went ramrod straight, becoming her walking stick and her eyes for the small obstacle course that was the floor of the boat: A large old tub, furniture here and there, and shelves shoved with strange, dusty artifacts. She came to her overstuffed chair and sank into it; Juju bent into a footrest for her.
No sooner had she sat down than Dr. Facilier grasped the shadowy back of her chair and hissed, "You know all of the details. Mama Odie, don't play me for a fool -- make me human again."
Mama Odie lazily recalled the last time someone - two people - had asked to be made human. It was no surprise that the man responsible would eventually have come to her with the same request. But she hadn't granted it back then to more deserving people, and she didn't see any reason to grant it now.
"Two young people once demanded from me the same thing, Facilier," she cackled, placing one foot over the other and leaning back into her chair comfortably, unafraid of the malevolent shadow behind her. "And do you know what I told them?"
Facilier snarled in response, his shadow mouth leering unpleasantly as he knew what the answer would be. "Then tell me, Mama Odie, why ever did y'all bother with voodoo magic in the first place if you weren't planning to ever really use it?"
"Oh, I use it, Facilier, but only in ways that'll keep me outta debt," laughed Mama Odie, riling the shadow that still lurked over her shoulder. She reached into her pocket and casually tossed an old peppermint into her mouth, whiling it away in her teeth. "So y'all tell me, how did you get away from you Friends? They give you a vacation?"
Furious at knowing he was being made fun of, Facilier abandoned the chair and snaked along the walls and to one of the rows of shelves. He began to tear through them with abandon, sending objects and their shadows to the floor: Worthless or disused talismans; stacks of old parchment with charts written on them. Bottles were opened, looked at, and then discarded with a smash onto the floor. From them spilled dust, perfumes and liquids, and powdered substances.
"I'm…j'ai faim!" Facilier's spirit howled with anger, finding nothing that he could use. "I'm hungry!"
"Oh, I suspect that English will go first, am I right, Facilier?" cackled Mama Odie, sitting up in her chair, the peppermint still knocking around inside her mouth. "Then the French, and then what'll you have left, eh? Hissing and spitting like the rest of the spirits."
Facilier abruptly turned and his dark, clawed hands shot out, trying to pull the elderly woman by her shadow from her chair. "Give me souls or make me human!" he hissed, but recoiled away when Mama Odie picked up a lamp next to her chair and brandished it at him.
"If y'all wanna stay welcome, you better stop making a fuss." Mama Odie set the lamp down and put her feet on the floor. Juju twisted around one of her ankles, leaning its head out and hissing at the disruption. Mama Odie's raspy voice had gotten its first warning edges to it, but she still grinned with all she had of her old teeth. "But you know, y'all better go get what you want before your Friends realize you gone away without permission."
The shadow glared at her with empty eyes, sensing a threat behind the words. Then it mockingly tipped its hat towards her and said, "I'll be taking my leave, then." And without another word, Dr. Facilier swept back out through the roof and into the bayou night.
Mama Odie sat there looking up at the hole in the ceiling, chewing on the mint. When she swallowed the shards, she sighed and got up from her chair, rubbing her sore tail bone. "Juju, sugar, go tell them Cajun firefly family of Ray's that they got someone they'll want to see."
Her pet obliged, slipping out the door, and Mama Odie hobbled over to her big tub to make some gumbo. Someone would need to keep watch on that Shadow Man.