Summary: “I just don’t want anyone to hurt me anymore,” He said to me, his eyes lowered as though ashamed. That shocked me, one I had never heard before in all my years as a genie. “That’s all I want. Just give me that, and I could be content. You can keep the other two wishes, Zaayon.” God. His smile was so sad.
Quote below by Marilyn Manson.
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“When all of your wishes are granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed.”
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He said that I was the only good thing that had ever happened to him.
Of course, I had heard that before. From the peasants who wished for money and fame and then spent their last begging me to make it go back to the way it was before. From the spoiled noble that wished to be lusted after by beautiful women, from the mother making a misguided wish for their children to be better behaved. They all say that.
They’ve always regretted it. Every single one of those petty fools have regretted their wishes.
It’s my job to make them regret it.
He said it too. But it was different when it formed on his tongue. He didn’t say it when he was giddy. All of the ones before him had decent lives, or even better than decent, and I always turned out making them realize it. That is the curse of a genie, you must know. Did you truly think that we were created to merely grant the whims of you mortals?
Foolish human.
I cannot disclose his name, for that is part of the deal…the contract that is made the moment my master strokes his hands over the surface of my cage. Genies are a secret from all except the master that holds them, and vice versa. It wouldn’t do to have one person know another got their money or beauty from a genie…that’s cheating after all, isn’t it? So we keep it to ourselves.
He was a scrawny thing, and not beautiful by human standards. His hair was the color of straw, his eyes large but unremarkable. He was young, but I do not know how young, for he never told me. I know that he did attend the institution known as “school” but he had yet to be a full grown man. He was pale and almost sickly in stature, they way he walked was hunched and the way he spoke was quick and low. Everything he did was…
…heartbreaking.
He spent a long time thinking over his wishes, many suns had passed, and it wasn’t until the fifteenth that he came to me. I waited inside my bottle for him to call me, though I observed the happenings of his house, the dwelling seemed normal enough at first. He had a mother and a father, and from what I gathered, neither liked him very much. From my experience, that was quite unusual, but I did not think anything of it.
Then on the fifth moon of my stay, late at night, his father went into his room. I will not say more than that, because that in itself makes my stomach clench, it makes me want to vomit, and I do not even eat. His father went into his room, assuming his wife was asleep. But she wasn’t. I saw that too. She was awake, and she was laying in bed and listening, with…with this calm look on her face. Not serene, but… resigned. I think she sickens me most of all. I wanted to hurt his mother. I wanted to kill his father. I wanted to save him.
But I am but a genie, and I cannot retreat from my bottle until my master deems it.
And he was too busy sobbing to think about me, I’m sure.
From my bottle, I can see like a god, omniscient for a radius of about thirty feet. It allows me to know the happenings around me, to shine a little brighter if I see a potential master. I did not look at anything else but the inside of my bottle for the rest of those waiting hours until he called for me. It didn’t want to see it…him. I have never wanted to save anyone but myself before.
His hands shook and his eyes closed and he spoke in such a gentle tone I had to strain to hear it.
“I just…I just don’t want anyone to hurt me anymore,” He said to me in a choked voice, his eyes lowered as though ashamed. That wish shocked me, it was one I had never heard before in all my years as a genie. And I had been one for so many millenniums that I had lost count of the years, and now they tended to blend together like a whirlwind of time that I am merely caught in without a chance of escape. The days, the masters, the wishes…many times I cannot remember which wish belongs to which master.
I don’t know how long I just stared at him for, but each second that passed he grew more and more worried. The thin arches of his brows furrowed and his pupils dilated a bit. But I was still too ensnared by this boy’s merely existence to do anything but stare.
“Is…is that against the rules?” He asked, his breath hitching slightly in fear. He looked so damn scared and I wanted to hold him. I’d never wanted to hold anyone just to comfort them before. There had always been an agenda on my part.
I am not a good person.
No genie is. At least in the beginning.
All genies started out as, more or less, you. A human. A petty human who gave importance to things that truly held little meaning. Those same things my human masters wish for every time. I was like them, and my punishment when I died and had not changed was this life. No heaven for me, no pearly gates and singing angels. Not even hell, unless you count eternal life as hell.
This is purgatory.
Never before had I belonged to a human like him. So unfortunate and sweet, so timid and caring…so real, when all the others were worried about people wanting them and fortune and fame and their own precious comfort. Luxuries, that was all they wanted. All you want, you idiotic foolish humans. Don’t lie, I know. I used to be you.
He just didn’t want to be in pain anymore. He didn’t ask for more than that. Just the bare bottom of what is possible to survive, that was all he wanted. He was not like you, stupid foolish petty humans. You wish for more, you take and you take and you take some more… it’s my job to show you the error of your ways.
“That’s all I want. Just give me that, and I could be content. You can keep the other two wishes, Zaayon.”
God. His smile was so sad.And yet it made my heart jump to hear my name on his lips.
Then he allowed me to be with him, for a while. Again, I’m not sure how long it was, but it seemed both a millisecond and an eternity. He didn’t send me back into my bottle and I thought it was okay. He smiled more. The kids at school were more pleasant to him, and his mother didn’t yell and his father didn’t--No, no, I won’t say it.
I was blinded by my selfishness. I will not be ignorant enough to say it was love that clouded my sight, because love does not blind, it makes everything richer. But it makes you selfish, and that is what truly makes you unable to see. I wanted him. I wanted to stay with him for as long as possible, I knew he was mortal and therefore had an expiration date, but I was determined to make the most of it. I didn’t care, because he had made me real for the first time I could remember. He made me real because he made me love him, and I’m not sure he even knew that. But…I really did think he was going to be okay.
I suppose I’m more fool than even you.
I considered even staying with him like this forever. If he was not going to use his last two wishes, then it was certainly possible. I would not leave, could not leave until he used them up, so I was planning to see him grow old. Soon I could not understand how I could have ever thought he was anything but breathtaking. Oh God. That night…his smile was still so sad.
That night he kissed me on my cheek and sent me into my bottle, and from within it’s walls, I saw him take his own life. I saw him bleed and I saw him fade, and I…
I wept, for I knew the world would not miss him. Though I know that there was not a person in this world that deserved to be missed more than him, and I will suffer that burden alone.
And so I’m left with two wishes and a heart, and no one to give them to.
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Sorry it’s so short, but it’s meant to be…I hope it was poignant enough to make up for it. DX It's so sad...
Nilah
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Subject: Bottled Up 
Sat May 23, 2009 8:05 pm
