Annnnnndddd… the fat lady has sung. Well, I don’t actually have anyone here to sing for us but, heck, this is the internet and we’re writers and anything’s possible, right? We’ll just use our imaginations.
But as for our contest, we have a winner. And wow, this was a close one! I was all set to write the victory post for Aisling Weaver and Jeff comes along and takes the win! Yes, our very own, several time winner, Jeff Pfaller, @pfallerj.
I’ve admired Jeff’s writing for a while now. Not just here but on his site with his many accomplishments there and also for his contribution to Sex Scene. A good man and a good writer. Here’s his winning entry. Thanks Jeff!
Sevan Mizrahi swatted at the gnat buzzing around the week-old stubble haunting his face. Sweat beaded all over his skin – a sticky layer of anxious moisture that was, at the moment, largely being ignored.
He tested the weight of the bag of rocks in his hand. He had no idea what was coming next.
He decided to act. His foot touched the loose stone at the base of the pedestal, and when the arms of the ancient Mesopotamian deity came together he deftly set the bag of rocks in their cradling embrace.
This exposed the small cavity in the deity’s stomach which held…”it.”
The lamp.
Sevan wasted no time snatching it up and rubbing it’s dull bronze surface. Nothing happened. No smoke. No flashing lights. Nothing. The map Izaak had given him was useless! A fraud!
He wound is arm back to toss the cursed thing and nearly jumped out of his skin at the voice behind him.
“Ahem.”
“Who’s there?” Sevan asked as he whirled around.”
“Who do you think?” The genie stood with his arms crossed, looking annoyed. For an all powerful being, he looked surprisingly…human.
“Where did you come from?” Sevan asked.
“The lamp, master.”
“No, I meant…nevermind.” He realized he was wasting valuable time and the other fortune hunters couldn’t be much further behind him.
“I am ready to make my wishes.”
“Of course you are. Your first wish?”
“I wish for sixty more wishes.”
The genie rolled his eyes at his foolishness, and started to pick at a hangnail. “Do you think you’re the first jackass who has made that wish. It doesn’t work that way. No genie will grant additional wishes as part of another said wish. Sorry, that wish is void. You have two remaining wishes ” he said, and smiled. A smile that irked Sevan.
Sevan thought for a moment, and grew a small smile of his own.
“Fair enough. My second wish is that after I make my final request of you, you are banished into the lamp for sixty million years and cannot return to this world, even if you are summoned.”
The genie, to his credit, remained stoic. But there was a fear behind his eyes. Fear of whatever demons and horrors would accompany him alone in the lamp for sixty million years.
“And y-y-your last wish, master?” he said, his voice breaking.
Sevan tossed the lamp back into the deity’s stomach, and it came to rest on its side in a small pile of fossilized rat dung.
“I wish for a different genie that will grant me additional wishes,” Sevan said.
