But he screwed me, and not just in the biblical sense.
Anyway, give me a break. Wouldn’t you do the same?
Hopefully not, after you’ve read my terrifying account of events. Every wish-granting story results in calamity and horror — it’s a cautionary tale as old as mankind.
Still, you might be unfazed by the title. I get it. Look, I’m not squeamish about sex. Clearly, given the deal I made. But the egregious entity wanted more than ‘pleasures of the flesh’. He showed me something infinitely worse than death.
Let’s start from the beginning. I have a social media addiction. I hunger for Reddit upvotes. Seriously. It’s animalistic. There’s something horribly hypnotic about that orange-hued arrow. The numeric counter flicks past 100, injecting dopamine into my woeful mind. But the snowball slows, slows, then eventually stops — there’s nothing sourer than the come-down.
“I can never get past 400,” I said.
“Huh?” My flatmate, Ian, sighed.
“On r/cats. You think Jerry’s cute right? Look at his little whiskers. I just want 1,000 upvotes. That’s not too much to ask, is it?” I asked, pouting.
Ian rolled his eyes. “For fuck’s sake, Faye. Put your phone down. Jerry doesn’t give a shit about upvotes, and neither should you.”
He was right, of course, but I wasn’t going to change my ways. I probably needed to see a therapist for my psychological issues — issues which multiplied tenfold after the terrifying events that followed — but I sought comfort from anonymous validation. Free medication.
“My friend told me about a way of getting whatever you want,” Brian, my other flatmate, said.
Ian huffed. “Ignore him, Faye.”
I shushed Ian and motioned for Brian to make his pitch. He smirked playfully, given, as I can only hope, that he had no understanding of the powerful forces he discussed.
“A wish-granter,” Brian said. “That’s what you need. Sam says-”
“- Sam is full of crap,” Ian barked.
Brian cleared his throat, continuing. “Sam says he found a guy in his meditation group who can make a person’s wildest dreams come true.”
“A scammer,” Ian corrected.
Brian shook his head. “Nope. This guy… Well, he isn’t really a guy at all. He’s a…”
“Don’t say it,” Ian groaned.
“… genie,” Brian whispered dramatically.
I smiled. “Thanks for the great suggestion, Brian.”
“Are you being sarcastic?” Brian asked. “I thought you believed in spiritual stuff.”
“I do,” I replied. “But a genie? Really?”
Brian hurriedly typed on his phone. “I’m texting Sam, and he can introduce you to the guy. The group takes place every Sunday. You know where to find the town hall meeting rooms, right?”
“Some sketchy man from a meditation class is going to help me to get 1,000 upvotes?” I asked, grinning.
“A genie,” Brian said. “And he can grant as many upvotes as you want. Dream big, Faye. Dream big.”
2,000 upvotes? I wondered. Fuck, why not 5,000? Better not be any greedier than that though.
I had my doubts. I’ve always been a spiritual person, but I believed in ghosts and positive energies. Genies? That felt like fantasy fiction to me.
It was no fiction, and it certainly wasn’t fantastical. I wish I hadn’t gone to the class last Sunday. If I ever had to be granted another wish, it would be that.
“Hey!” Sam said. “You’re Faye, right?”
I nodded, awkwardly shaking Sam’s hand and dropping my gym bag to the floor. I was surrounded by an eclectic group of people — retirees, sweaty students, and TikTok influencers. The typical meditation crowd. Nobody who looked like a supernatural wish-granter. Brian’s friend chuckled at my furrowed brow.
“Brian told me you were sceptical,” Sam said. “I was the same, but then I wasn’t.”
“What wish did you make?” I asked.
“Nothing too grand,” He said. “I was worried about the catch. There’s usually a catch, right? But it doesn’t work like that.”
That was a lie.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Sam awkwardly cleared his throat. “Well… He doesn’t offer wishes for free. He names his price.”
“Oh,” I gulped.
He smiled. “Yeah… I wanted to be rich and famous, but… the price was too steep. I just wished for my family’s health. I thought that was a nice, morally-justified action.”
“And what was the price?” I asked.
Sam opened his mouth to answer, then — like a gormless goldfish — he closed his lips, grinning at something behind me. He nodded his head, and I turned to see a man.
Just a man.
Nothing special about him. He wore black, baggy joggers and a loose-fitting T-shirt. In spite of his bushy grey beard, he had a youthfulness to his face. Actually, no. I would say he looked ageless. My spiritual radar, if a person can possess such a thing, was tingling. I can’t explain it, but I knew that this ordinary man was no man at all.
But that tingle wasn’t good. In hindsight, I was clenching my chest in frightful — rather than gleeful — anticipation. Something about the banal gentleman was off. His ordinary appearance was a façade. His bright eyes and endearing smile both felt disingenuous.
“Hello, Faye,” He said, grinning.
I chuckled. “I suppose Sam warned you about me.”
“Something did,” The man cryptically replied.
“Of course. What’s your name?” I asked.
“An idea needs no name,” He replied. “I am simply what is required. I am whatever you need.”
“At a price,” I said.
The man nodded. “Yes. So, what is it that you’d like?”
“We’re starting the group now,” The instructor announced. “All conversations must be taken outside. This is a quiet place.”
The unnerving man beckoned for me to follow him outside, and I did, despite the nauseating knot in my stomach. My instinct was telling me to leave this unholiness alone. It felt wrong, and yet I was unable to resist. I needed to know whether my wish could come true.
But I wasn’t going to be greedy.
“5,000 upvotes,” I said, once we were alone in the corridor. “That’s what I want.”
The man shook his head. “No, it isn’t.”
I scoffed. “I think I know what I want.”
“Then tell me,” He said.
“5,000 upvotes,” I insisted.
“What you really want,” He pushed.
I gasped in existential dread as I stared into his beaming brown eyes, which weren’t really eyes at all. They were carnivorous chasms, waiting to consume me. I silently screamed at something within his pupils — a vision inexplicably large and distinguishable.
It depicted a solitary, leafless tree in a barren wasteland. It was the desolate Hell that the man felt I deserved. I could feel it. And though I trembled at the predator before me, I found myself unable to walk away. I gave him the answer he wanted.
“Wholeness,” I said. “I want to be happy.”
The man nodded, grinning wickedly. “Yes, but you’ll settle for falseness, won’t you? Pride. Glory. Validation. The placeholders for true happiness.”
A tear cascaded down my cheek, and my lips feebly fluttered. I watched the landscape change in the pupils of the inhuman thing before me. A noose appeared from one of the tree’s spindly branches, and I shrieked in horror at the sight of my breathless body hanging from it — a festering corpse. I watched orange maggots crawl from my orifices, ascending the tree. Ever higher. Unearthly upvotes.
You’re already dead, the genie whispered, but his lips didn’t move. The words sounded in my mind.
“What…?” I murmured.
He smiled. “5,000 upvotes on Reddit. Is that right?”
I shuddered, nodding slowly and biting my lip to stem the sobs that were itching to burst free. Sam hadn’t mentioned anything about the torturous nature of the man. He’d described the fellow as a genial genie.
“What would it cost?” I asked. “I don’t want to be rich or famous. I just-”
“- want something small,” He finished. “Not too much, and not too little. You’re not asking to become rich or famous, after all. You’re not asking for anything immoral, right?”
I silently blubbered, and the man placed a hand on my shoulder. It was anything but comforting, but I don’t think that was ever his intention — he was there to reveal the ugliness of my true self, not to help me. That much was abundantly clear.
“If you lie with me, I can grant your wish,” He plainly said.
I cried. Though it was less horrifying than the scenes he had revealed in his paranormal pupils, his stated price filled me with a revulsion that I cannot quite put into words.
And yet I agreed. Don’t ask me to explain it. I can’t. He did not coerce me. I could control my bodily functions. Well, I hope so, anyway. Who knows what was happening in my scrambled mind?
I won’t tell you about the deed itself. It took place in a storage closet. I detached from my body, picturing that glistening orange arrow and the 5,000 digit beneath a picture of jovial Jerry. It was not the act itself which terrified me — that was the same as sex with any mortal man.
There was a catch. There’s always a catch.
We were standing, reclothed, in a storage closet lit by a solitary, swinging lightbulb. And suddenly the darkness transformed into that arid landscape from the vision. The brittle bark of the wintry tree loomed before me, as did the noose.
The man, with a wheezing, demonic voice, barked his orders. “Empty yourself. You’ll never desire wholeness again. This is my parting gift to you. A free wish granted.”
It wasn’t my wish at all, of course. I didn’t want to die. The noose swayed in the slight breeze of that fabricated apocalyptic landscape, which I realised was no more than a hallucination in a cupboard. I screeched, but no sound would escape my mouth, and my limbs seemed to operate of their own accord.
As I lurched towards the noose, the man motioned at the pocket of my joggers with his head.
“Take a look first,” He said. “Your post.”
As I clutched the noose with my left hand and slotted my head inside, I found I could freely move my right arm — but only to unlock my phone and see a glorious picture of Jerry on r/cats with precisely 5,000 upvotes. Tears streamed freely. The twisted truth is that I felt a slight rush of endorphins before the terror of my impending death befell me.
Not death. Eternal torture, the man silently whispered, reading my thoughts.
“You’ll never need to worry about being happy or whole again,” He said aloud. “This is a wish I grant only to the truly broken.”
Phone jittering in my hand, I had one final idea.
>Delete post?
>Yes, Delete.
I tapped.
The hellscape fell still. No breeze. No movement. No sound but the genie’s guttural grunts of disappointment. The man cocked his head to one side and observed me — the girl who was standing in floods of tears, head neatly knotted in a noose. His smile transformed into a frown, and he nodded.
“I will have you,” He croaked.
With a sudden bang, the hellish tree vanished. I found myself lying on the floor of the dim storage closet. Violated, both physically and psychologically, but alive.
What terrifies me is that I still crave those upvotes — that fiendish fix. Did the man corrupt me with this desire? Was it already there?
I don’t know, but I know he longs to grant my wish.