The sun gazed down like an angry eye, emptying down its invisible arrows over me, wringing me out of my fluids like a sponge. I look around, draining the last of my flask of water as if it were damnation. Still, every direction, a blanket of sand. The heat was visible too, shaking the air as though the sun’s height was giving it momentum; heaving its weight down and making the particles scatter.
It hadn’t changed. Nothing had changed.
“Why,” I said, taking big heavy blinks, not believing my surrounding. I was standing in the exact same spot, the dusty antique lamp still red-hot in my hand, the genie floating in front of me, unfolding out of the funnel in a thick coil smoke, devouring the space of the desert with its gently bobbing, almost mockingly. He has a long and solemn face like something sculptured on Easter Island: it seemed gentle and innocent, wise and trusting too; but now looking closer it was held so high upon his neck in pride it looked like that head was planted on a stick.
He’s taking me for a ride, surely, I thought. He’s playing me, probably been stuck in there for years, has been itching to get some kicks. Then he nods to me.
“Your wish, my lady?”
“My wish?” I said with delicate disdain, “I’ve done my wish, you just granted it apparently.”
“My lady, if I had granted you a wish I would have known, I would be free from these shackles,” he says, lowing his arms down to me and showing two golden bracelets wrapped over his wrists, his smoky hands dancing out from them the way ink bleeds into water.
“You’re screwing with me,” the words came heavier now, freshly banged like a fist on a table. “You… Did you just take me back in time? Before I made my wish to go back in time?”
The genie makes a little shrug. “I recall of no such thing O Mistress. I am but a humble genie. If my future self were to send you here I am yet to know of it.”
“Oh fuck you,” I laughed, the exaggerated kind which accompanies the release of tension. “And fuck this!” I threw the lamp straight at the genie to no avail. It just slipped through his chest, tumbling through the sand the way a hollow and empty bottle is pushed along by the wind. The genie just stares at me with his arms now folded behind his back. His body open and face concerned, with no hint of judgment. Patronising prick.
“You know what this is like?” I shouted. “This is like that guy who gets to ask one question to the smartest guy in the world. So he asks, ‘What is the best question I could ask you and what would that answer be?’ And the smartass says, ‘That was the best question you could have asked, and that was the answer to it.’ You bloody arsehole!” I run over to where the lamp is and kick it as hard as I can, scooping up a load of sand in my sandals as I do so. “Fuck! Fuck!” It feels like pulverised shingle or grit. The genie turns to the lamp and regards it sadly, his features in the smoke drooping, as if they had become too heavy to be held.
“Please my lady, that’s my home. I shall still have to live in it after you leave.”
“I don’t care!” I yelled back. “I wanted –“I was so mad, I could feel the rage radiating out of me. I didn’t even care that the skin on my left hand had burst open, wet and red and grinning from the heat of the lamp. I didn’t care that I had lost my bearings, every direction leading to the same rolling golden hills and tired clouds melting like porridge into the sky. I was as lost as a duckling at sea and I didn’t care.
“I wanted to change my biggest regret! I wanted to have never met him, never let him hurt me. And you took me back in time before I even made the wish! I… I thought I had a chance to be happy again you piece of shit!” I swing at the wisp of smoke below his stomach, the only part I could reach, knowing full well that I wouldn’t hit him, but feeling like I had to try. The sensation of all the hairs on my arm being singed off ran up my skin. “Fuck fuck fuck!” I withdrew it; it felt like an open wound being dipped in alcohol. “Fuck it all,” my soft spoken words emptied onto the sand like powder, and I joined them, slumping down and sinking into it. “I’m a fucking idiot for trying! An idiot for trying to better myself, for trying to do something good to my life for once!” I felt my eyes stinging but no tears loosening out, I must be too dehydrated to even cry.
The genie creased over in half and faced me, taking in a large slab of air as he did so. It turned to smoke as he swirled it around his mouth, the wisps climbing up his teeth and scratching at his throat. He reached for my arms, offering big, but graceful hand. I kept them clamped to my body tighter, but finally relinquished to him. My arms floated underneath his touch, feeling like they were objects in space. He blew the smoke gathered in his mouth at me, and instead of a burn it washed over my wounds with a surprisingly cool breeze; the parts of me it touched began to feel like they were plated with metal. The smoke buried itself in the wounds, knitting the skin back together until there was only a gentle stinging and a few red rashes to even prove their existence.
“My lady, I believe I understand the problem,” He was looking at me with eyes of kindness, like soft silver melting.
“Yeah,” I say, hurling the word at him. “Yeah? What? Okay, spit it out then.”
“From what I see O Mistress there was no rebuke when I once granted your wish,” he says. “Simply, I granted the truth, preventing your biggest regret.” He spread out his arms and grew like a bonfire. Flames beginning to unfurl out of him slowly and delicately, as if he were a flower blooming. They waved at me, and all I could think was that this must have been what Moses felt like when he saw the burning bush. I scrambled back in the sand, fearing being swallowed up by him. “For you and you only I have been gifted the boundless capacity of the Universe,” he continues, the voice seeming to toll from everywhere at once and across a great distance, like the voice of God. “I am your limitless potential. I am your heart’s desire. No matter what has previously happened, no matter your greatest regret, it pales in comparison to what you can achieve. The world has opened itself to you, and what it gives you is not always good, but an opportunity to learn and become better. You should not avoid it. So if you were to waste your one wish on mere regret, then that decision would indeed become your biggest regret.”
He started to cool, embers dropping off him as if they were pencil shavings. His eyes of coal met mine, now blue with heat and lit deeply from within. Folding his arms in front of him he began to float backwards, his chest puffed and head high; a sculpture couldn’t make him seem any more spectacular than he was right now. “That regret has yet to be made,” he bellows. “Your wish remains intact.”
His look ignited the embarrassment lying dormant in me, before, just barley smouldering, it now poured upwards and flushed into my cheeks.
Turning my eyes away I began to focus on the discarded lamp, and making myself seem busy I stood up and shuffled over to it. The dent I made bruised it mauve and yellow as it distorted the sunlight, reflecting fragments of myself masked by four shadows splayed inside, making the dimple look slightly like a crumpled head of a flower.
“I… I’m sorry about your lamp,” I say, face so low it was almost buried in the sand.
“It matters not my lady,” he spoke. Smoke from his arms slither over and wrap themselves around the lamp, rubbing against the dent. “You see, a small mistake like this can always be fixed with a clear and happy mind, and without the mistake taking place in the first place I would not have seen what could be improved.” The smoke stumbled back to him leaving behind a lamp gleaming in the daylight, the dirt wiped clean and restoring the colour so it shimmered like a preserved golden treasure. “I never would have noticed the dirt if you hadn’t kicked it,” he says with a smile. “Now, are you prepared to make your wish?”
I hold his lamp, rubbing my hand over the newly smoothed surface, seeing a now polished reflection of myself staring back at me. I had to double take, initially not recognising the face without a scowl or a frown. It had been so long.
“No,” I finally say. “I don’t think I’m ready for my wish. Not quite yet.”
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