It was Christmas Eve and Dale was alone, which sucked. He’d had a date planned but she’d bailed on him for some reason or other, and he didn’t have cable so he couldn’t even watch a sappy Christmas movie to work out his feelings or whatever you were supposed to do. He had streaming, sure, but most of the good stuff, of course, was on the channels he hadn’t paid for. “Life is stupid,” Dale grumbled as he popped open a beer from the fridge.
“You said it, mac, not me,” said the genie.
“Yeah, I-wha!” Dale said, nearly dropping the can.
“Yeah, yeah, sorry, pal, cost of housing these days. I got kicked out of my own lamp, can you believe that? So I had to hide in the can for a while until I can find somethin’ else.” The genie shrugged. “In this economy, you do what you gotta do.”
“I guess,” Dale said. “So, you’re a genie?”
“No, I’m your aunt Matilda,” the genie said. “Of course I’m a genie, ya knucklehead! What, you got other magical beings materializing around here or somethin’? Honestly, you humans. I don’t get you people, I really don’t. Anyway, I assume you know the deal but in case you don’t let me spell it out for you. You get your standard three wishes as per usual, okay? Here’s what you don’t get: you don’t get murder, you don’t get sweethearts, you don’t get more wishes. That okay with you, mac?”
“Sure,” Dale said, still trying to get his head around the whole thing.
“Sure, he says,” the genie said. “A real orator we have here. Well, any thoughts on your first wish there? I don’t got all day, you know.”
Dale tried to think. What should he wish for? What did he want? What did he really really want- Dale stopped himself: now was not the time to get his mind stuck on an earworm of the Spice Girls. That thought reminded him of his erstwhile date, and that thought triggered an idea. It wasn’t a very good one.
He pulled out his phone. It only took a few seconds on social media to find that she was not sick at home as she’d intimated to him, but rather that she was out at some open-air special holiday concert at the city mall with her “besties.” Dale smiled. “I want it to snow.”
“Come again?” the genie said.
“I want an effin’ blizzard, man. Like, now. So anyone who’s, you know, out there is, like, stranded. I want it to last for days. I want like Ice Age conditions out there, you got me?”
“You want an Ice Age?”
“Yeah,” Dale said. “I want an Ice Age, that’s my first wish.”
“You got it, mac,” the genie said, and waved his hand. Everything around Dale disappeared in a blast of blue light. When he could see again, he was staring across a vast plain of solid snow. Dale was about to yell, scream, something, when he heard a huge snuffling noise behind him.
He turned. For the first, and the last, time in his life, he found himself face to face with a woolly mammoth.
Several million years later, the genie shrugged. “Me, I woulda wished for a sweater first. Go figure.”
This story was written for
‘s Flash Fiction Friday prompt:
Oh, that was a funny one. That is one great genie!
lol