The Wish

The smoke whooshed out as he’d expected, but then it formed up into a rather lumpy recliner. From the battered cushions came a voice. “Yeah,” it grunted. “You rang?”

“Yes,” said Dave hesitantly. “I, ah, found the lamp. In a dumpster. I thought-”

“Yeah, yeah, you want your wishes I know I know. Can’t leave an old whatchacall alone, can ya, always gotta be bangin’ on the lamp. I hid the thing all over the place, you know. I hid it in palaces, tombs, I hid it in a freakin’ desert, and still, you people find it. I thought maybe, maybe, if I just throw it away, nobody would look, I mean, what kinda whaddya call moron goes digging through the trash but nooo you had to go and look there didn’t ya, so here I am, now whaddya want?”

“Ah,” Dave said. He honestly hadn’t thought about this for some time. When he’d been a kid in the ‘90s, he’d had a few ideas in mind but they hardly seemed appropriate now. Besides, he had a feeling someone would notice if he suddenly acquired a giant money bin in his backyard, and the idea of the investigation that would undoubtedly ensue, not to mention the discussions with the IRS, made him wince.

“How about world peace?” he ventured.

The genie rolled his eyes. “Jeez, pal, can you be a little more specific there? Maybe pick just one war outa the, I don’t know, dozens you mortals got going on all over the place? Also I’m contractually obligated so’s I can’t kill, so what do you want me to do, huh? I could magically pick ‘em up and stick ‘em all in a room together but they’d probably knock the stuffing outa each other with the table legs and those little spinny chairs, you know? I mean, there’s underlyin’ issues we got goin’ on here. Politics, religion, historical divides, all that. I can’t just go shazam like that and poof there’s your world peace, buddy. Wish I could. But I can’t.”

“Oh,” Dave said. “Well…”

In the end, he decided to go with the money bin. It seemed easier.

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This story was inspired by the below prompt from

Scoot

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