Week 3 Story: The Last Wish

The Last Wish

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We've all been there haven't we?
Stuck in-between breaking a sacred oath
or the complete destruction of the planet...
Just me?...Oh...

I take it that you would like to here my story then.
Life as a genie isn't always as easy as it sounds.
Being an all powerful magical being seems fun.
Three wishes and that's it, easy enough, right? Wrong!

Sure, you get your occasional person who,
feeling bad for all the things they have done,
wishes to give back, and to help others.
It is people like this that I live to serve.

However, this is rarely the case.
It is surprising, the amount of cruelty,
spite, and rage that exists between Humans.
Anyone and everyone always has someone they hate.

Today’s case was far different from the rest.
Years back, I had served a man with the largest of grudges.
For he held in his heart an amount of anguish so great,
that even the hearts of two men would break.

This man been the victim of bullying from a young age.
Through his life, there was no break from the violence.
Whether through humiliation or defamation this man
was never allowed to fit in.

So with the first of his three wishes he thought long and hard
to determine what he could do to be accepted his peers. 
“I wish I was attractive”, he demanded,
hoping that a newfound appearance would reset his slate.

I grant him the wish. As he stands before me,
his irregularities smoothed out, his face sharpened, perfect symmetry.
I was pleased with my work and as was he. With newfound
confidence off he went back into the world, happier than ever before.

He was gone for three months without returning.
I even began to think he had forgotten about my lamp and I,
but that is never the case. Sure enough, he came back. Still
a man so picturesque, worthy of being carved into a marble statue.

He says to me that he was grateful for my work,
but, however, it was not enough. His new companions
were rich and successful. Therefore, he asked of me,
“I wish to be rich like Benjamin, for he has the most luxurious of lives.”

This is where the trouble starts. Little did my master know, but Benjamin’s
flamboyant spending habits were sustainable and leading him into debt.
Being bound by my duties as a genie, I granted him this wish.
I now regret that he would find this out. Coming back to me in a storm of anger.

It wasn’t even a month before I saw of him again.
He arrived to me in tattered clothes, beaten and bleeding.
With a broken nose and a black eye he looked at me and yelled,
“It was you who did this to me! What have you done?”

I replied, “I simply granted your wish, to be rich like Benjamin.
However, you did not know that he was in debt, on the verge of bankruptcy.”
“You plunged me into poverty”, he yelled, “I’m living on the streets an outcast,
abandoned and left to rot! I just wish that the world would end…”

That is how I got to where I am now. Genies are bound by a quite literal oath.
Anytime our master says, “I wish”, then the wish must be granted.
For the time being, I have frozen time to find a loophole.
Yet I feel as though I am trapped.

I fear I must return now, to finish what I started…

Author's Notes

This story is based on the Ramayana story of Kaikeyi and Dasharatha. In this story, Dasharatha is faced with a dilemma where his desires are at conflict with his previous promises. My inspiration for writing this story is that it is common for people to make promises that they cannot, or would rather not keep. While Dasharatha was simply repaying Kaikeyi for saving his life, the two boons that he granted her ended up severely harming him, eventually costing his life. The Genie in my story is bound to complete three wishes, and he himself has mixed feelings about the results.

Bibliography

Kaikeyi and Dasharatha
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