Would an author dare to take a voodoo potion to overcome writer's block?
Dayan (1995), Nwokocha (2023), Fernández Olmos and Paravisini-Gebert (2017) had noted that Creole spiritual traditions had exerted a 'profound and pervasive creative influence' on Latin music, art, and language.
By Miguel A. Reyes-Mariano
Previously:
Determined to overcome his writer's block, Leu Seyer sought the Haitian Whispers' Potion and paid the price—his "permission to be rewritten." Once he drank it, the whispers finally found him. As his writing progressed, the whispers shifted from blessings to demands, claiming the real writer's credit.
CHAPTER THREE: PAYDAY FINALLY ARRIVED
On his way through the Haitian jungle to meet the Voodoo matriarch, he thought he was lost when suddenly an old woman appeared, stooped before him, draped in cloth, with herbs spilling perfume from her satchel.
"Ou pedi, Blanc," she said…
"Ou pedi, Blanc," she said…
"Am I lost?" Leu questioned himself.
"Madame Mambo?" Leu asked.
She only turned and beckoned.
The hut was marked with white chalk. Smoke curled from the firepit, and herbs hung like coded shadows. Inside: jars, bones, glowing bottles. The air pressed heavily.
"You seek the Whispers' Potion," she softly insinuated.
"Yes." His voice cracked.
"It is knowledge—a door. Doors require payment," she said. "Take this as an omen," she added, "not a bargain."
"I'll pay." Leu had come prepared for the mundane musts of this world.
Her smile cut thin. "We shall see."
She lifted a vial glowing with blue firelight. "The before is not that hard. The afterward is."
She asked for his right hand, and Leu presented it to her. Then, she grabbed a knife and made a cut on his hand. Immediately, she poured the drops of his blood into the potion and smiled hardheartedly. Following the mixing, she passed the potion to Leu.
Leu swallowed dry and asked, "Side effects?"
This time her laugh rippled the shadows… "Every story has a price. Some costs are collected later in life."
"What do I offer?" he whispered.
"Your certainty. Your permission to be rewritten. Refuse, and something will be taken."
The words sank deep. He nodded. He had no other choice.
The way back to the city was easier. Leu couldn't wait for the first sip. That night, in his rented room, the vial sat beside his laptop. A fan ticked, the mosquito coil glowed. He uncorked the bottle. The scent rose: rain-soaked pages, ink, a storm waiting. Cool metal touched his tongue. He thought the effects would be immediately apparent (but nobody had said that). Minutes passed. Nothing.
The whisper was searching for his soul at first. Then, in their time, they arrived timidly, between silence and sounds. When he finally managed to decipher the words, his fingers touched the keys. Words poured out, unstoppable, trembling from his hands.
Nonetheless, the worst thing about all of us is despair. Leu was not immune to this human condition. Before he was celebrated, before he was whispered about, before his name filled literary journals and podcasts, Leu Seyer was only a young man staring at a blank screen. The cursor blinked at him with cruel patience.
At first, he told himself it was temporary. Writer's block was standard; every author endured it. He tried the usual remedies: writing prompts, fragments stolen from other authors, or even the Bible, and rephrased. He scoured Quora threads, Reddit forums, and blogs that promised hacks to "unblock creativity in ten minutes." But nothing worked.
The more he failed, the more desperate he grew. So, when he hears the rumors of the "Haitian Whispers' Potion"—not in print but in hushed margins—he was ready to believe. He laughed at first, yet the idea took root. Could there really be a cure for writer's block? He asked himself that question night after night, staring at his blank screen.
So, his obsession grew. The search consumed him. He scoured late-night forums from New Orleans, chased false leads, and sent emails to strangers who never replied. He heard gossip about a man who had traveled to Haiti and returned transformed—less brilliant, somehow broken. But he never found proof of it. Still, he couldn't let the dream go away. The very impossibility of it only made him hungrier.
If there was even a chance, wasn't it worth trying? That was what he thought, and it was the last straw. He booked the cheapest hotel he could find in the southeastern part of Louisiana, from where he would gather the information needed to later find the potion in Haiti.
Leu knew he had to make sacrifices. Thus, to chase that dream, Leu began to sell pieces of his life. He borrowed money from family and friends. He sold his brand-new Honda Accord for far less than it was worth (just a little). He took out a loan from the county credit union where he was working. He even applied for a new credit card and drained it before the ink on his signature was dry.
Every dollar, every borrowed cent, went toward a single purpose: the trip to get the potion.
The spending was reckless, but he silenced the guilt with visions of success. If this worked, if he returned with stories flowing through him like rivers, it would all be justified. The debt, the lies, the sacrifices—none of it would matter. Then, as if by chance, he got an address in Port Prince, Haiti, that promised to lead him to the potion.
The night before he left for Haiti, Leu could barely sleep. His thoughts galloped ahead, racing into futures he had not yet earned. He saw his name on book covers, imagined awards, interviews, and admiration. He pictured himself as a knight of words, a modern Quixote tilting at the windmills of silence, and winning.
When morning came, he packed with trembling hands. His bags bulged with notebooks and pens, as though the act of carrying them might guarantee their use. The Uber ride to the airport felt surreal. Streetlights blurred past as he rehearsed the story he would one day tell: how he had risked everything, how he had sought the mythical potion, how it had made him a successful writer—or maybe I should come out with another story—he suddenly thought.
The flight took three and a half hours, yet to him it felt like minutes. He stared out the window at the shifting clouds, heart pounding, imagination soaring. He was already writing the triumph in his mind.
The plane descended onto the cracked pavement of Toussaint Louverture International Airport as Leu stepped into the Haitian air, a different weight pressed against his chest. The air smelled of salt, earth, and something older—an ancient breath riding the wind. Golden light stretched across the tarmac, shadows long and strange. Customs passed without issue, but the strangeness did not fade.
Once out of the airport, the city pulsed with sound and color. Hawkers shouted in Creole, drums throbbed from side streets, and murals of loa spirits stared from crumbling walls. The smell of griot pork tangled with diesel fumes and rum. Tap-tap buses honked their painted prayers; each side scrawled with saints and slogans. A young pickpocket tried stealing his cellphone, but Leu had the New York City alertness on all the time.
Leu walked the streets and felt eyes on him—curious, assessing, sometimes unwelcoming. He wondered if they saw his desperation. The deeper he went, the more the city shifted. Modern avenues gave way to narrow streets where candles glowed in shop windows and murals of Papa Legba loomed, hat brim shading knowing eyes. Candles flickered beside powders, charms, and bottles of Kleren rum. Conversations lowered as he passed. Everywhere he went, he caught fragments of gossip—always the same word, circling like a moth: potion.
That was his first step towards the end of his career. He had not yet met the priest. He had not yet entered the jungle. He had not yet drunk from the glowing vial. But already, the path had closed behind him.
Still, months after his disappearance, long after the rumors of the "Library of the Unwritten Books" had passed into legend, a strange report emerged. On a deserted stretch of coast in northern Haiti, a Dutch tourist wandering beyond the usual paths stumbled upon a man staggering in the sand. His clothes were ragged, his body thin as parchment, his lips cracked with thirst. He walked in small, feverish circles as if bound to an invisible axis, murmuring fragments of unfinished stories.
It was Leu Seyer, the famous author of "The Accidental International Incident of Mr. Flumple."
Barely alive, sunburned and delirious, he collapsed into the arms of his rescuer, who carried him back to the city and later to the lodge where the owner and locals crowded around in awe. He had returned from nowhere, inexplicably dragged back into the world of the living. Yet something was missing. His right hand—his writing hand—was gone, the stump crudely sealed by a scar that looked older than the time he had been away.
Notwithstanding, in Haiti, a legendary priest said that it was his price. The spirits of the unwritten stories had released his body, but they had taken their due. Inspiration would no longer flow from his pen; he could only speak in fragments now, broken lines that dissolved before they reached completion. "With rest and therapy…" specialists said he could return to functioning normally in society.
Some said the spirits had shown mercy, allowing him to live. Others believed he had been expelled for failing to finish their endless books. All in all, Leu Seyer never explained. He only whispered to those who leaned close enough:
"Take this as an omen," he rasped, "not a myth."
With a little more effort, he concluded: "The spirits of the unwritten stories are still in hunting season."
On a side note:
As unbelievable as it may seem, rumors persist that miracles still happen. Leu's young wife came to rescue him—or did she come so she could transfer his accounts to her name?
- - - - - - -
The spirits are still hunting, the laptop keeps writing, and somewhere between the locked room and the world that reads, the unwritten are still searching—patient as a blinking cursor—for the next willing mouth, the next empty page, the next author desperate enough to open the door.
-
REFERENCES
Brown, K. M. (1991). Mama Lola: A Vodou priestess in Brooklyn. University of California Press.
Fernández Olmos, M., & Paravisini-Gebert, L. (2017). Creole religions of the Caribbean: An introduction from Vodou and Santería to Obeah and Espiritismo (3rd ed.). New York University Press.
Dayan, J. (1995). Haiti, history, and the gods. University of California Press. (Reprinted 2008 by University of California Press.)
Nwokocha, E. A. (2023). Vodou en vogue: Fashioning black divinities in Haiti and the United States. University of North Carolina Press.