The Mission: “April showers bring May flowers. Due to global warming this may need to be adjusted. However, your favorite fictional character has been busy planting their perennials. Their shovel hits something hard. Is it a gas line? Did they remember to call JULIE before digging? No, they’ve discovered a lamp. While cleaning up the lamp, just like in Aladdin, a genie appears.
The genie grants your famous, fictional character one wish. Why not the traditional three wishes? Wishes are expensive and the economy is bad. Last genie that had a steady job was Barbra Eden. Plus, there is a strict 350 word limit. 350 words = 1 prompt about 1 wish.
Let’s review: story must be 350 words or fewer, genie grants one wish to a FAMOUS fictional character (fictional characters can be but are not limited to characters found in movies, TV, or books), and your prompt must be submitted by 6pm on Sunday, May 6th.
My wish is for world peace and 8 submissions. Jusy sayin’.”
What did I do?
Try as he might, he couldn’t even imagine the sound of his best friend’s voice anymore. There were too many times were he thought he saw his face on a stranger. Despite thinking of him any time he saw a fez, a monkey or passed by the palace, there was no escaping that he was forgetting Aladdin.
How long had it been since the Genie had known the terrible taste of freedom? Long enough to watch as everyone he loved had died while he failed to age. Pestilence had claimed some of Aladdin and Jasmine’s heirs and his health was never better. The last of their line had been slain in battle—the Crusades be damned!—but the Genie was indestructible. Even the Carpet—that ageless, anthropomorphic rug—was no more.
Too many centuries had passed since Aladdin had used his third and final wish to grant the Genie his freedom and unwittingly condemned him to an immortal existence of loneliness.
Mudding about in his garden, the Genie was surprised when his trowel struck something hard and metal. His hands brushed aside the dirt and fortuitously rubbed at the hull of the magic lamp…
Ribbons of green smoke rose up from the vessel and soon, a being not unlike him hovered before the Genie. “Oy vey!” this new Genie declared. “My aching tokhis! It’s about time! Not to kvetsh about my tsuris but I was about to plotz!”
Immediately, the Genie—the blue one—recalled the rules that limited his nigh-omnipotent powers: reviving his friends was out of the question but companionship wasn’t…
“All right, you know the spiel: one wish-”
“One wish!?! I gave people three!”
“Don’t be a shmendrik.”
The Genie puzzled over how to phrase it. He wasn’t about to let this turn into a Monkey’s Paw situation. They were immortal. They could change their shape. “I wish you had to spend all of existence with me, looking and acting just like my dead friend Aladdin.”
“You mishegas,” the other Genie grumbled as the transformation began to take place. “Life with a shagetz—my mother’ll kill me…”
How did I do?
I did okay…
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