The gelatinous grey ooze crept steadily over my hand, ensnaring it in place. It kept going, relentless, until my entire right arm was enveloped in it.
I screamed, rupturing the oppressive silence, and just kept wailing, until the ooze slithered over my mouth. Then my nose. I struggled for air, but only inhaled that gunk, which burned my nostrils and my lungs. It spread steadily, until it had covered my entire body. All the while, I was suffocating, but unable to move, to struggle.
Finally, the paralysis lifted. I thrashed about desperately, convulsing as I tried to cough out the gunk, but the ooze had formed too tight a seal around my mouth and nose. I kicked and flailed, but still, the ooze held me down. I felt a crushing pressure on my chest.
Am I going to die, just like that? At that thought, a cold, calm chill pierced through my raging fear. I forced myself to stop my frantic writhing and think, despite the searing ache for air.
With all my concentration, fuelled by sheer desperation, I strained one arm up from the floor. The ooze slid off the ground with a wet plop. I need air, I thought, as black spots began to colour my vision.
I reached over to the slime covering my face, and grasped as much of the slime as possible, then began pulling. The glob of slime seemed plastered to my face. It wouldn’t unseal my mouth. It wouldn’t unclog my nostrils.
Static began to colour in the edges of my vision. I felt panic seep in once again, felt my brain go blank with terror.
Then I remembered the pact I had made.
I wish to be free of this slime. I wish to be able to breathe, I thought, focusing all my attention on these two thoughts, repeating them firmly in my mind, as my limbs began to jerk uncontrollably once again.
And then I was free. The ooze vanished, just like that. The oxygen rushed into my grateful, trembling lungs and I breathed so hard I choked for a moment. The air in my lungs felt almost viscous.
I wheezed in huge gulps of beautiful, sweet air for a while, then turned over and vomited.
Wiping the puke from my mouth, I turned to look at the small sickly and withered body at the corner of my living room. It was still a ghastly sight. Old, wrinkly skin that was inexplicably pink, stretched over sharp knobs and edges of bones. It had wisps of hair reminiscent of a baby’s, but these were white, and connected to a raw red scalp. Its eyes were sunken deep into their sockets, all iris, no eye whites to be seen. It looked like an old shrunken man, curled into a tiny ball. It was staring at me with its milky grey eyeballs. A wry smile tugged at the corner of its thin lips.
“You tried to kill me, you asshole!” I yelled, voice hoarse, once I’d got enough breath in me to do so.
It spoke, and despite my anger, the low, wet rattling of its voice sent a shudder down my spine.
“You only had to…wish.”
“You tried to choke me out with that god-awful gunk!” I spat out.
“You…wanted…any wish you had…to come true,” it gasped out, “I had to…imbue you with…my essence…”
I nearly retched again. Was that whole ordeal about this thing injecting me with its ‘essence’, whatever that meant?
“Wish away…now. I will see you in…three years…” that little curled up creature forced out, then began to melt before my eyes.
I gasped and stepped back, away from the pinkish grey ooze that its body was slowly giving way to. The odour that emanated from that pile of gloop was like a sledgehammer smacking into my olfactory system and my soul. I ran to the kitchen and vomited into the sink. I was surprised by the amount of vomit my body could store. By the time I got back to the living room, the only sign that it ever existed was an oddly shaped stain on the floor.
Finally alone, and seemingly safe for the moment, exhaustion dived straight into my bones. I sank to the floor and let my limbs spill outwards as I lay down and shut my eyes.
Did all that really happen? I wondered as sleep took over my mental scape and washed me away.
When I woke up, everything hurt. Every inch of my body screamed in pain. There was an intense pounding in my head, and what felt like a tight vice circling my forehead, tightening ever so slowly.
What the hell did I drink last night? I thought, before memories of the previous night rushed back in.
“Holy shit,” I said aloud, and felt my jaw creaking as it moved. A burning sensation washed through my jaw and my entire face. That all happened, for real? I thought. Then I smiled excitedly, ignoring the shooting stabs of pain in my cheeks and neck, realising that I could easily test if last night did happen.
“I wish for all this pain to be gone, for me to be comfortable again,” I said. Poof. The pain left, just like that. I shrugged my shoulders and stretched. My body felt great. Better than I had ever felt before, in fact. The usual kink in my left shoulder was gone too. I swung my left arm around in circles. The tight shoulder was loose. No pain, no tightness, no discomfort at all.
My eyes widened as the realisation sunk in. Everything I remembered did happen, after all.
I really did make a deal with a Djinn. Or whatever it was. Djinn just seemed like a fitting name for a creature that agreed to grant my wishes, save some of the usual no-nos. Wishes that came with a price, of course.
For the first time in many long years, hope welled up within me. Hope, and a rush of joy. The emotions felt odd inside me, unfamiliar. When was the last time I had felt such intense hope and joy? Not in recent years, that was for sure.
My life, once grey, monotonous and soul-deadening, now seemed bright and sparkling with possibilities.
Blasted with a rush of sudden confidence and sense of immense control, I declared, “I wish that I could live in a beautiful forest on an island, with as much privacy as I want, with cool, but not too cold temperatures, and millions of dollars that could last me the entire three years.:
I felt a strange churning in my brain, like it was getting all stretched out. Before me, I saw the path to take. I couldn’t just magically appear in the forest, loaded with wealth. Oh yeah, no inexplicable huge changes that might alert others to any supernatural activity. One of the rules, I thought as I pondered the plan.
I first needed to buy the lottery for that week. I had the winning numbers all in my head. 12 million was the prize. I also needed to reach out to a cabin owner in the middle of a pine forest, in a country really far away. A country I hadn’t really considered visiting before, but someplace I didn’t mind. I can’t say where exactly, I’m supposed to keep my end of the deal and stay undetected, so I won’t be providing any specific information at all.
A lot of other logistics were involved, but I won’t bore you with the details. Basically, in just a little over a month, I was there. In a pretty decently maintained log cabin in the middle of a pine forest, on an island where it was just me, and the boat that arrived every two days with supplies. I had dismissed the housekeeper there, who had seemed relieved to be getting off that island. She must have found the solitude of the island overwhelming.
Finally, with my stuff all settled in, my heart and soul light from being nestled so deep in nature, I made the wish I had been holding back. The wish that was the whole reason I bothered with everything else. I wasn’t sure if it would work – after all, the rule about not raising suspicion about supernatural activity would likely preclude it from coming true. But here I was, alone on an island, in a country where no one knew me, spoke a different language, and had no reason to be suspicious. With total privacy, if needed. Perhaps, it would work.
“I wish for Jason to be alive again, healthy, happy, fully human, and here with me,” I finally gathered the courage to utter, and closed my eyes tightly.
I kept them shut for a while, hardly daring to breathe, focusing all my attention on willing the wish to reality. A minute passed, then two, but still I kept wishing, as hard as I could.
There was a tap on my shoulder. My heart leaping in my chest, I opened my eyes. Jason.
The tears gushed forth as I trembled with exhilaration and disbelief.
Reaching out a hand, I placed my palm on his cheek.
“You’re really here,” I whispered, still not entirely convinced that the wish had come true.
Then he smiled, a wide beaming smile that lit up my heart. He closed the distance between us, and wrapped his arms around me.
The familiar, yet almost forgotten warmth and feel of his embrace sent me into full blown sobbing.
“I’m really here,” he said, still hugging me tightly, “and I’ve missed you so much.”
Out here, alone in the forest, we’ve built a wonderful life. It’s amazing, really. Before I ever met the Djinn, I had a decent job, a home and good friends. But Jason was gone. And I just couldn’t move on. The grief was unrelenting.
Besides, even when Jason hadn’t yet passed, something had always been missing. I was bored out of my mind each day, and I craved a life that was far away from the city, a life that was in harmony with nature. Sure, I had many plants, and I took long walks in the manufactured gardens and hiking trails of the city. But it just didn’t feel right. I yearned to be somewhere wild and natural, studying plants, taking photographs of them, drawing them, and just experiencing the wilderness.
The only times I had felt truly at peace and dare I say, in bliss, were times when the both of us were travelling and living deep within forests and doing nothing but taking long walks through the forest, by the river, and just basking in the sense of freedom and rootedness. We would have long chats, or keep quiet for long stretches, it didn’t matter. It was just peaceful.
But these trips were few and far between. We were comfortable, but not rich enough to do it often and for lengthy periods of time. Even when he was around, I had felt this aching emptiness that refused to go away. I had tried to fill it with busy work, socialising, gaming, reading, writing, TV, food, alcohol, rotating through different near-addictions each time. But any relief I had was temporary, and the gnawing hollowness never truly left. I slowly withdrew after many years of trying hard to fill the hole, and eventually just kept to myself most days, spending time only with Jason and brainless activities of TV watching. Even gaming felt like it needed too much mental engagement. And that empty feeling never left, except when we travelled.
Then Jason died, and I lost the one thing good in my life. I cut myself off from the world almost entirely then. I still worked, but I switched to a freelance job where I could work from home. It didn’t pay as well, but at least I could avoid socialising, and hanging out in a team with co-workers. I was pretty much alone most of the time, and I preferred it that way.
But now, I was happy. Each day felt beatific, magical. Us hidden out here, in nature, with all our needs met by simply throwing money at any problem that arose. Missing our local cuisine? Money would import that all the way to this little island. Needed help with housework? We hired part time housekeepers. Wanted to build a tree house? We paid for workers and materials to be transported in by boat. We lacked nothing, and we had so much of everything. We had each other.
The months passed quickly. A year of joy, exploration and nesting passed, then a year of creating, building, and growing passed. With the wishes, the works and art that we could create were limitless. The skills we wanted to learn, the gardens we wanted to grow and the house we wanted to build, these all came easily. It was incredible, the mind-expanding gifts that we experienced.
But soon, the third year was almost over. It was a mere few weeks to the end of the three years I had bargained for, when I got a reminder.
I was having dinner with Jason, a late-night, home-cooked meal under the stars, when his face stiffened. His warm eyes turned frigid, and he smiled without mirth.
“Almost time,” he said in a mocking tone.
Then Jason, the real Jason, was back. He was confused by the look of dismay on my face, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell him what had happened. I just wanted to focus on having a good night together. The time we had left felt even more precious. The end was just around the corner, and I couldn’t escape it. We couldn’t. I had no idea if Jason would survive beyond me. I wanted him to, but he said he didn’t care to live on if I was gone.
It began to reach out to me more often as the days went by. The delivery guy’s face would go blank, then he would whisper the ominous warning to me. I would be out examining certain trees, taking notes, and grey, unholy ooze would leak from the bark of the tree, the same damn ooze of the Djinn. It pissed me off. I had bargained for three happy years, with all my wishes fulfilled. Not to have it barge in on the last few weeks and taint the time I did have left.
“I wish for you to leave me alone, right up until the day my three years are up,” I said aloud, staring defiantly into space.
To its credit, it didn’t appear again, and there were no more foreboding omens.
It’s back today though. Since it’s my very last day.
It’s just been there, on the floor by my desk, watching, waiting. Staining my wooden boards with its slime. I could sense its impatience and eagerness as its eyes followed me around, its presence a constant reminder of my upcoming doom. But that’s fine. It has given me way more than I could ever have expected from my life. I was good with paying the price.
I was curious about it though, and curious about my fate. It had been pretty vague about all that, and I just didn’t care enough to probe at that time. I had wanted a different life, I had wanted a life with Jason, and I had not given a damn about the consequences. Hellfire, death, whatever it was, I didn’t care. But now, with the end looming so close, I had to know.
“I wish you would answer all my questions for the next half an hour,” I said. This wasn’t against any of the rules, nothing like not wishing for more wishes. It had to grant me that.
It just kept staring at me.
“What would happen to me when my three years are up? In a few hours?” I asked.
It didn’t respond for a while, but just stared at me, a smile forming on its face.
Just as I was about to repeat my question, it rasped out, “You will…be as I…am…”
As it is. Realisation dawned. I would become it. The next Djinn.
I stared at it, processing what it had said.
“You…you made a wish once too, didn’t you?” I asked.
“…Yes,” it responded after a pause.
“Will you be freed once I become you?” I asked again.
“Yes…” it said. A long moment later, it added, “at…last.”
Staring at it, I felt a rush of compassion. It had been just like me. It had a human being who had wanted something more for their lives. It had just been someone desperate for things to go their way. Someone who wanted something, or someone, enough.
“Why did you choose this?” I asked.
“I had…a son…” At its words, I felt tears stinging the back of my eyes. It had a son. It had been a human who had lost their son. Of course they made the pact.
“How long have you been like this?” I asked, not sure if I wanted to hear the answer.
“97…long…years,” came the choked reply.
I felt a rush of dread. 97 years before anyone was willing to take the deal, to swap places with it. 97 years before it met me. How long would I have to wait?
Panic arose within me, and I almost made a run for it, useless though it would be.
Then I took a few deep breaths and calmed myself down.
I have had my good fortune. I have had the blessed three years. I have had so many beautiful memories. There was so much to hold onto, to tide me over the next few years or decades. I would be it, but I would have my memories. Besides, it was time this poor creature got peace.
I looked back to the bed at Jason’s sleeping face.
“It was worth it,” I said softly.
It just stared at me, but I sensed that it understood.
My time is almost up. I didn’t tell Jason that my time is up today. I told him it was up tomorrow. I don’t want him to be there to witness me disintegrating into…that misshapen, horrid form. We had already said our goodbyes a hundred times over in the recent months. I’ve already recorded a video for him too, as I was, before I turn.
Grey ooze is starting to cover my keyboard as I type. Patches of my skin have turned into the smooth, pink, yet lifeless looking texture that was the Djinn’s. Those parts look like they are sweating slime. I can feel a pressure on my bones, as if something is forcing them smaller.
I guess I’ve got to go now, while he’s still out like a light. Let me just write a note for him to read, to direct him to the video. I hope he lives on after I’m gone.
“Does he live after I’m gone? After I’ve become you?” I asked it. It was beginning to look less solid, less defined.
“I…don’t know,” it replied, and I swear, it looked sad. “I never knew…with my son…either.”
I guess one can only hope.
It’s getting painful to type. I had best lug myself out of here, into the forest, into that little crawlspace I had secretly dug out a while back, just for this. So Jason wouldn’t be able to find me. Wouldn’t be haunted by the sight of my morphing.
It was worth it. Those three years. I’m terrified, sure. But I’m at peace at the same time. I think I’m ready now.
If you were to one day come across a small ugly creature, rattling as it breathes, well, make a wish if you’d like. Take the deal. Make the pact. Or don’t. It’s your choice.