297

When Paulo heard a man’s voice coming from the seashell he was both surprised and disappointed. Paulo had wanted only to hear the sound of the ocean. He wanted to be soothed. The confident and powerful voice told him to stand back immediately. These words, and the tone of the hidden voice, did not soothe him. The anxiety that he was trying to rid himself of was more pronounced than ever. As Paulo placed the shell back on the sand, a man with extraordinary features emerged from it. The man from the shell announced himself to be a genie, one who had come to grant Paulo three wishes.

“But before you make any wishes, I must warn you that I am an evil genie.”

“What does that mean?” Paulo asked, looking at the genie’s waistcoat which was made of rubies and sheepskin.

“Whatever you wish for will have an unpleasant evil twist. No good will come of anything your heart desires.”

Like all men who seek the sounds of the ocean for relaxation, Paulo wished for a million pounds. He could not imagine a negative side effect of such a bet.

“Your wish is done.” the genie told Paulo. “Check the credit on your mobile telephone.”

“But I’m on contract.” Paulo declared.

“Not anymore.” Paulo entered three digits into his phone and pressed call. His balance was one million pounds. Knowing that there was no way he could ever use this million pounds without hanging around phoneboxes and offering strangers phonecalls at cut rates, Paulo became saddened. He had been tricked, and the fact that he had been warned about being tricked made his sadness even more painful. Paulo could take no comfort in the thought that he would never have to go through the motions of topping up his phone again. He hadn’t had to worry about that since 2001, when he left his Pay as You Go for a monthly contract, after learning that he could get twice as many text messages for the same price.

Paulo was not a good man; he was alone in the world. His first thought after discovering he had three wishes was money, his second was Rachel. Money had always come before the only woman Paulo had ever loved. Paulo’s second wish was this: “I wish that Rachel still loved me.”

“It is done.” the genie said. His words were followed by a smile, the smile of someone who had just committed evil. He had forced eternal love into the heart of a woman.

At that very moment, somewhere on the other side of the world, that woman fell to the floor, spitting coffee from her mouth as the love in her heart was pumped into every molecule of her being.

Two days went by before Rachel came knocking on the door of the man she had sworn to never see again. The last words she had spoken to the man were the opposite of “I love you.”, but those were the words she was now speaking. Not only did Rachel want to see Paulo again, she wanted to see nothing else.

Within an hour of being together, Paulo knew that it would not last. Rachel loved him more than anyone had ever loved anything. Her love was so intense that when he made love to her for the first time in three years, he felt claustrophobic, the anxiety was too much to bear. His panic attack prevented either of them from climaxing.

Although he was a millionaire on paper and he had the love of a beautiful woman, Paulo was four times more depressed than when he had met the genie just two days ago. Determined to at least try to make it work with Rachel, he asked her to move in with him.

A week passed, a week filled with gentle sobbing whenever Paulo used the bathroom. Rachel could not be apart from him for one second, and so, she removed all the doors from the house. There was nowhere for him to be alone, nowhere for him to hide, not even his own thoughts. Every gap in conversation was met with “What are you thinking?”

A week was all Paulo could stand, love had torn him apart. Calling upon the genie, he wished for Rachel to stop loving him.

“Your wish is done.” the genie spoke.

Paulo soon settled back into his life of a week ago. All the while, Rachel was back on the other side of the world drawing up plans. The genie had not only removed Rachel’s love, he had injected her with hate. Rachel hated Paulo more than anyone had ever hated anything.

While Paulo spent his days offering offpeak phonecalls to the homeless, Rachel was gathering an army. She was preparing to launch a war against the man she had recently promised to love forever. It was not hard for her to find supporters for her cause. Women will always come to the aid of one of their kind, and men will do anything for a pretty face.

News of a fifty thousand strong force marching towards Paulo’s location reached Paulo’s television. The reporter spoke of angry men and women armed with guns and broken bottles, even small children waving flags of hate had been called up to the fight. This worried Paulo.

In a panic, Paulo used thirty-seven pence of his remaining £999,989.67 balance to call the genie’s shellphone.

“You’ve got to help me.” he said. “They’re a mile away from my house!”

“I’m not really supposed to do this, but I like you and I feel bad. I will grant you a fourth wish.”

“How should I stop this army of hate marching on my house?” Paulo asked, his anxiety worse than ever.

“I probably shouldn’t answer that. I am an evil genie after all. Whatever answer I give will surely be rooted in evil.”

“Ok, ok, fine. Can you give me superpowers?”

“It would be the easiest thing for me to do. To show you how truly sorry I am for this whole mess I will give you powers beyond even Superman. It is done.”

Feeling uncharacteristically brave, Paulo put on some trousers and left his house, ready to wait for the battle. Soon there were fifty thousand men, women and children standing at the entrance to Paulo’s street, a cul-de-sac with no escape. At the head of the impeccably organised angry mob was Rachel, her white t-shirt was stained with raccoon blood, the only thing she had eaten in days. Hate had driven her mad. Just like everyone else in the crowd, she was pointing a rifle at Paulo’s heart.

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out.” Paulo shouted. “I still love you, you know.”

“Too late.” she replied.

“Fine. Give me your best shot.” Fifty thousand guns fired, flashes of light, thunderous explosions and a strong breeze, but nothing else. The air between Rachel and Paulo remained empty except for the hate. For a moment Paulo laughed to himself. Blanks. She still loved him and wanted only to scare him. Not even a genie could take away their love. Then he noticed the ground at his feet, a river of red ran from the curb to his toes. Moving his hand along his chest he felt the holes where the bullets had entered, his torso had become the bloody surface of the moon. There were no blanks. As he fell to the floor he realised what the genie meant when he said he’d have powers beyond Superman - he could see through lead.

James, England.

62

I used to go to school with a genie. He was the most popular boy in my year, but when you looked in his eyes you could tell he was also the most unhappy.

Amy, Bedford.

50

I was walking through the park a few weeks ago when I found an oil lamp. Being in a curious mood I picked it up and gave it a good old fashioned rub. Nothing happened. I put it back on the floor and carried on walking across the grass. Then I saw something which blew my mind: another lamp. I'd been walking through this park everyday for the past couple of years and not once before had I found a lamp, but on this very day I had seen not one, but two. The odds of this one being a magical lamp were very much in my favour, so I gave it my patented old fashioned rub, and, just as I had hoped, out poured a genie, half man, half gas.

"Congratulations on discovering me, strangely clothed stranger." he said "Your wish is my command. I grant you two wishes"

"Two wishes?" I asked "Aren't I supposed to get three?"

"No, that was the old tarriff. You only get three wishes online. You have now used one wish"

"But I only asked a question" I said.

"Yes, but you wished to know the answer."

"So I've only got one wish left?" I asked.

"Yes." And with that he was gone in a puff of smoke. Easy come easy go, I suppose.

Angus, Norwich.

46

Many, many years ago I used to work in a lamp shop. It was boring work, but it paid the bills and I got to read a lot of books during the quiet hours.

One morning the back of my hand accidentally brushed against an old magic looking one, and sure enough, it was magic. I'd been warned about not wearing gloves because of the risk of touching a magic one, but I was hungover and not really paying any attention. Just as I'd seen in my induction video, out popped a genie. The stench
was unbearable.

"My wish is your command, master" he said.

"No thank you" I told him. I explained to him that I didn't believe in accepting help from supernatural sources, because I wanted my life to end up as it should be without cheating and shortcuts.

"If I was meant to have a million dollars, then I would earn a million dollars. I don't need a genie for that." I said.

"But I can give you anything" he said "I can let you dance inside raindrops, swim inside a cloud, cum inside a lady, whatever your heart desires."

He just wouldn't take no for an answer, so I explained in no uncertain terms that at no point in my life would I ever make a wish, not upon a star, a birthday cake and certainly not with a suspicious looking genie.

"So if you could just leave now. I've got to get back to my book" I told him. Sadly, it wasn't that simple. He informed me that he couldn't leave until I'd made my three wishes. He suggested that I made two insignificant wishes that would have no effect on my life and then use my third wish him to go away, but I told him that I couldn't guarantee that those wishes wouldn't completely change the course of my life.

"Haven't you seen Sliding Doors?" I said. He hadn't. That's how it began. I was doomed to spend the rest of my life with a genie by my side.

With hindsight, nothing could have had a bigger effect on my life than me not making those wishes, but I was stubborn. I should have just used them a couple of weeks later when I saw how much of a problem he was going to be, but as the years went by it became harder to go back and change my mind. It was a battle of wills. I think he could have moved on if he wanted to, but neither of us wanted to be the first to back down.

It's hard to meet women when there's always a strangely dressed foreign man standing next to you. I tried dressing him in modern clothes, but he just looked like an idiot tourist. The only women I could have sex with were weirdos or prostitutes, and even then I had to pay double for having him there watching. Within ten years of rubbing that lamp I was thoroughly depressed. After fifteen I didn't have a job or a single friend. Nobody wants to employ or befriend a man with a genie. He's seen as a loose cannon, because with one wish he could have your job, your wife and your children. The closest thing I have to friend is the genie.


John, Dundee.

30

I'd only met the genie once, but he was really keen on granting me three wishes. You don't meet people like that very often, especially at the gym. I know what you're thinking, gay, gay, gay, but he really wasn't.

My life was lacking a certain drama at the time and I wanted it to be like in the movies, so I asked him to change my life into black and white. Yes, I know it was a really pretentious thing to do, but I didn't want to be boring like all those people who wish for money or tentacles.

I tried it out for a week, but my life seemed as meaningless as ever. So the next time I saw him at the at the gym I asked him to give me subtitles. "Right, this is it!" I thought. There was no way that my life was going to be mundane anymore, not if it was in black and white and had subtitles like all those foreign films you get sometimes.

So I did what I thought I was supposed to do on my third wish, thinking that I was sorted, and set the genie free. Boy, did I make a big mistake.

My wife found out about the genie the next week and got really mad at me for "wasting" my three wishes and she left me. Finally my life had some drama, real hard hitting stuff, all I needed when she left me in the park was for it to start raining, and it did! It really did. I was in drama heaven.

Then, after she left, I couldn't keep up with the mortgage repayments and my house got reposessed. I really should have wished for the money.

Tom, SW19.