Poor little Johnny suffered a grave and rare illness that forced him to bed for most of his life. Even though he tried to be content with his life, he couldn’t help but slip into depression.
His loving uncle brought him a gift from one of his journeys to middle East, to try and cheer him up. It was an old oil lamp, and Johnny’s uncle gave it to him with a smile, saying “Maybe if you rub it, a genie will come out.”
Johnny thanked his uncle and faked a smile,even though the gift didn’t make him any less sad.
When his uncle left and he was alone in bed as usual, he tried to distract himself by looking at the lamp. It looked very old, and was covered in strange writings he couldn’t understand. There were a few rusty spots, and Johnny tried to clear them away with the sleeve of his pajamas.
At that moment, a bright light erupted from the lamp with the sound of a thunder. Scared, the kid let the lamp fall on the floor, out of his reach. When he averted his gaze from the lamp, a shirtless man with dark, glittering skin was at the foot of his bed.
“Who..? Who are you?”
“I am your servant, Master. My name is Jezal, and I’m here to make your wishes come true.”
“WHAT?” – the shock hit Johnny like a train, resulting in a minute of violent caughs he couldn’t control. When he stopped, with tears in his eyes, and the taste of blood in his mouth, he asked “Are you saying you are the genie of the lamp?”
“If that definition pleases you, Master, you can certainly call me so.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“That’s your prerogative, Master. Nevertheless, all I said is nothing but truth.”
“Oh really? Then I wish that my bed was made of gold.“
“As you command, Master.” The man snapped his fingers and the bed shined as a wave of gold covered it.
“Wow! You really are a genie.”
“Yes Master. It is my duty to inform you that you have two more wishes, then I will go back to rest inside my lamp.”
“Oh. Ok. My second wish is that you turn back the bed to how it was ten minutes ago.”
“Yes Master.” Another snap, another transformation.
“And my third wish…. I know what I want. My life has always been full of suffering due to my illness, and my existence has ruined my parents’ lives because they always have to take care of me. For years, I have thought that it would be better if I were never born at all. So that is my wish:
I wish that I was never born.”
Jezal couldn’t believe his ears. He had had thousand of Masters, and not one of them had ever expressed a wish like that. Johnny had even worded it in a way that circumvented his own interdiction to kill, so he had to grant that wish, even if doing so would fill him with a sadness he had rarely felt in his long life.
“It deeply saddens me to hear that, Master, but your wish is my command.”
When he snapped his fingers, a dark smoke erupted from his hand and grew into a thick cloud that enveloped the bed and his Master, with faint wisps moving like tentacles around the room. Johnny, even if scared, smiled at Jezal before being completely covered by the smoke, saying a quite “Thank you”, while tears streamed from his eyes.
Jezal had never been a trickster – he knew others of his kind that found solace in perverting their Masters’ wishes, but he had never done that – yet this time he used all his knowledge of magic and its intricate rules to find a way to save Johnny’s life despite the boy’s will.
The black smoke erased all traces of Johnny’s existence from the world, then started swirling around the room faster and faster. Jezal was concentrated pouring all his abilities into what was the hardest enchantment of his career, treading on a very thin line on the verge of the very laws of magic.
Lightning bolts started striking the smoke from every direction, and the quick vortex changed its color in flashes of white. It was like every tornado of the world had convened into the room. With a movement of Jezal’s arms, the smoke stopped and coalesced in a pillar of white porcelain.
One last gesture from the genie, and the pillar exploded into dust, revealing a gorgeous man inside. A specimen of male beauty and health stood in the room: a young muscular man, blond and handsome, was standing near the bed, softly breathing with his eyes closed.
Jezal snapped his fingers again, and the man opened his eyes for the first time. He looked at his impressive pectorals, jutting out from his chest, then at his swollen biceps and his tattooed forearms. He touched his prominent abs and discreetly adjusted his manly parts.
Then, he looked at Jezal with a blank stare, triggering the final part of the enchantment. His mind filled with memories of his identity, of his life, of his love for Jezal… and with much surprise from the genie, his own mind was changed as well, gaining memories of living a human life, meeting John and falling in love with him.
Jezal had succeeded in his intent to alter Johnny’s wish for the best: as his Master had asked, the lovely but frail Johnny was never born in this reality, because the strong and healthy John was born in his place, even though the pure core of his heart and soul was exactly the same. The laws of magic were safe, because life had not been given nor taken, only changed.
What Jezal had not anticipated, though, was the price of his stratagem: if Johnny had never been born, he could not have freed him from his lamp, yet he was here, free and without a Master. The universe could not allow for this paradox, it had to be sorted, and the only way was to rewrite Jezal’s life as well.
Even though he still had the memories of his life as a genie, he knew that it was in the past, because he was now only a human. A very lucky human, because he had found love and was free to make his own choices.
Somehow, his last enchantment had granted Jezal his own three wishes, the wishes he could never express for centuries: being human, being free, and being loved.
purplepangolin 