Reader Michael Lorton pointed me to The Chaser, by John Collier, which had apparently been made into a Twilight Zone episode. I liked it — short, readable, ingenious, and cruel.
Also, this gives me another chance to mention my favorite short story about love charms, by one of my favorite short story writers, Rudyard Kipling: The Bisara of Pooree. “[T]o work properly, the Bisara of Pooree must be stolen — with bloodshed if possible, but, at any rate, stolen.”
UPDATE: OK, I can’t help myself; I have to quote some more, which might help illustrate why I so love Kipling’s style:
All kinds of magic are out of date and done away with, except in India, where nothing changes in spite of the shiny, top-scum stuff that people call `civilisation.’ Any man who knows about the Bisara of Pooree will tell you what its powers are — always supposing that it has been honestly stolen. It is the only regularly working, trustworthy love-charm in the country, with one exception. [The other charm is in the hands of a trooper of the Nizam’s Horse, at a place called Tuprani, due north of Hyderabad.] This can be depended upon for a fact. Some one else may explain it.
If the Bisara be not stolen, but given or bought or found, it turns against its owner in three years, and leads to ruin or death. This is another fact which you may explain when you have time. Meanwhile, you can laugh at it.
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