Three More Wishes: Be Kind To Your Genie (13 page)

Where in a mansion do you hide a brass genie lamp? I thought I’d hide it in the safe—till I actually opened the safe. It turned out that Uncle Warren’s safe was designed for storing flat things. Even with everything pulled out, there was no room for the lamp.

But opening the safe wasn’t a total loss. Among the items I temporarily removed from the safe was $66,340 in small bills. I put a hundred dollars of that windfall in my wallet.

I wanted to be able to rub the lamp anytime. So that meant not storing it off the property, in a safe-deposit box or some such.

I thought of storing the lamp in the attic—till I climbed the attic stairs. Jeez, it sounded like I was walking on kettle drums! Scratch trying to sneak into the attic.

I realized then that I wasn’t thinking fourth-dimensionally. I was both smart and strong now—how could I use that?

In the end, I carried a ratty recliner from the Electronics Recreation Room up the stairs, and put it in the master bedroom, in a corner by a window. Then I grabbed a standing lamp out of another bedroom, and put that lamp by the recliner. (Did I mention that the mansion has twenty bedrooms?) I put the footlocker on the recliner’s left side. Anyone seeing the footlocker would presume that its only purpose was to be a side-table for whoever was reading in the recliner; and a scuffed-up footlocker suited a well-worn recliner.

In short, the footlocker now was in my bedroom and was easy to get to; but nobody would wonder,
Why is this old footlocker in Marvin’s bedroom?

With the important problem of “Where do I keep Fatima’s lamp?” finally solved, I got out my key ring. I opened the footlocker’s padlock.

****

I’m not sure if Fatima was excited because Uncle Warren’s mansion had lots of neat stuff, and she was seeing everything for the first time—or if she was excited simply because she was out of the brass lamp. In any case, excited Fatima was great company.

Eventually Fatima and I wound up in the main kitchen. (Did I mention that the mansion had a main kitchen and a poolside kitchen? Did I mention that the main kitchen was as big and fancy as something in a restaurant?) I nuked some canned Chinese food, and set out some chips and salsa. I offered Fatima a beer; she declined.

Then I looked around. “Wow, it’s too quiet in here.” I stood up again. “I’ll be back in a moment; let me get my boom box.”

Fatima raised a hand. “May I do something about the quiet?”

“Go ahead,” I said. “Show off for me.”

“ ‘Show off’? I love it.”

Fatima was thoughtful for maybe ten seconds, then she pointed at an empty section of the monster kitchen. Suddenly I saw and heard a dance band, complete with a young woman soloist. But everything about that band—the men’s hairstyles, the singer’s clothing and hairstyle, the microphone that she was singing to, and the Art Deco lettering on the music stands—was old-fashioned. From the Thirties, I guessed.

“What am I seeing?” I asked. “Who are they?”

Fatima said, “This is Warren’s memory. His parents took him to a speakeasy in downtown Chicago that was celebrating the return of legal beer. For eight-year-old Warren, the place was magical—and the singer fascinated him.”

“So how are they here? Did you transport them through time?”

“They’re illusion; nobody but us can see them or hear them.” She smirked. “You don’t need special glasses to see
my
illusions.”

I replied, “This is all illusion? Really?”

I was still standing, so I walked up close to the band. The men took no notice of me, but the soloist turned her head to watch me approach, and smiled at me (as much as her singing would permit).

I reached for the microphone stand, curious what would happen when I tried to pick it up. The singer, who had been caressing the microphone stand, pulled her hands away and smiled at me.

My hand went right through the vertical bar as if it wasn’t there, and I didn’t feel a thing. No matter where my hand went or what it tried to do, I couldn’t make contact. But the illusion held: During one moment, I had the microphone stand growing out of the back of my hand.

My eyes went from the microphone stand to the singer’s face, which was less than three feet from my own. I could see the pores in her skin, individual eyebrow hairs that were painted over with eyebrow pencil, and flaws in her fire-engine-red lipstick that was highlighting her mocking smile. And even though I’d just proven that she couldn’t be real, I could smell her: something sweet (Hair oil? Shampoo? Bath powder? Perfume?) plus Ivory soap, plus a hint of sweat.

The song went into an instrumental passage, thus idling the singer. She grabbed the microphone stand and pulled it aside. Her again-mocking smile said
I can do something you can’t do, nyah-nyah-nyah!
She leaned forward, lips puckered. I bent my knees to complete the kiss.

Even when her face filled my entire vision, and her lips had to be touching mine, I didn’t feel a thing.

She broke the kiss, leaned back, pulled the microphone back to upright, and went back to singing. She gave me a theatrical wink.

Shaking my head, I walked back to the kitchen table. “I’m blown away,” I told Fatima.

She grinned at that. Then my expression got serious, as did hers. She said, “Master, you look like you want to ask me something.”

“I do. Right now, my wishes are granted, I’m not dead yet, the lamp isn’t swiped yet, and you’re out of the lamp. King Solomon made all those rules about wishmaking, so I presume he made rules for today’s situation too?”

“Yes, Master. Like before, if you rub the lamp, I must come out; if you order me back into my lamp, I must go in; if you ask me a question, I cannot lie to you. If you order me to do something nonmagically, I must obey—”

Now Fatima was looking at me nervously. “—but if you tell me to do something magical, now I may choose to say no.”

Why is she so nervous now?
I wondered. Then I realized why. If I’d give a magical order and she could say no, then the flip side would be...

“Good grief,” I said. “You can grant me a seventh wish. Or a seventieth wish. Or a seven-hundredth wish.”

“It won’t be a wish
officially
. But yes. Except that King Solomon set down rules about what I may say yes to.”

“Go on.”

“I may not grant you a throne, nor may I cloud men’s minds so that you wind up with a throne. I may not kill anyone magically on the date of their fated death, nor may I magically make someone so sick or injured that death soon is certain, even when the person’s fated death is soon. I now cannot—”

“So King Solomon just shifted the thou-shalt-nots from me to you. That’s fine.”

“But now I cannot postpone anyone’s fated death by even an hour. No
djinni
normally can do this. Such power I have only when granting a wish.”

I nodded. “Then it costs the wisher.”

“Finally, Master, I may not use magic to prevent another human from taking the lamp from you. If you would guard the lamp, you must do so on your own.”

Now Fatima’s eyes were searching my face. Clearly she wanted to know,
Will he be content with what he already has, or will he always be bothering me for more?

I wasn’t yet ready to think about something so important. Instead, I said, “Let’s back up to the ‘nonmagical’ rule. Suppose I hand you a bucket of water and a sponge, and I show you where the garden hose is. Then I tell you, ‘Wash my car.’ I don’t say
nonmagically
, but that’s pretty much implied. Now suppose you think,
Doing it nonmagically will take too long.
May you hocus-pocus the car clean, even though I didn’t request this or suggest it?”

“Yes.”

“So if I ask you a question, you’re allowed to pop up a scrying ball to answer my question, even though I never mention using a scrying ball?”

“Yes.” Then she smiled mischievously, adding, “Or I might Google the answer instead.”

“One last question. You tell me you cannot postpone someone’s fated death. But what if you and I are with George, and it’s George’s day to die but you and I don’t know that, and George gets in a jam and you decide to save him. What happens then?”

“Something goes wrong, seemingly accidentally. If I try to cast a spell that can’t fail to save George, then the spell doesn’t work at all. As if someone disconnected the battery.”

I stared at her. “How awful you would feel, if you really wanted to save the person, and you found out afterward that all your efforts were doomed to fail. I hope that when it’s my day to die, you don’t have to suffer something like this.”

“That’s easily fixed,” Fatima said brightly. She summoned her scrying ball, worked it for a few seconds, then looked at me. “Would you like to know the date of your fated death?”

“Is it within the next ten years?”

“No.”

“Ask me again, ten years from now. But telling me right now? No way!”

“May 14, 2020, ask you again. Got it, Master,” Fatima said. Then she vanished the scrying ball, and then she went back to searching my face.

So I thought about the question that was so worrying her.

After a time, I said, “Right now, I’m worth thirty-two
billion
dollars. I can’t wrap my brain around that, it’s only a number to me. I’m getting all the sex I want. My favorite relative is getting well, and my parents’ marriage is strong. Why would I want a seventh wish, whether it’s called that or not?”

I saw Fatima relax.

I added, “So if you ever get a chance to drop a different magic lamp in my lap, don’t. Give the new lamp to someone who needs it.”

Fatima replied, “Except that I can’t hand you the lamp if I find one. No
djinni
can touch a bound
djinni
’s Vessel. Our hands turn to smoke when we try.”

“Wow. Really?”

“That’s why you humans must rub the lamp or bottle to make the bound
djinni
come out. Only a human can grasp the Vessel, and only a human can rub his other hand solidly against the metal. King Solomon made sure that no bound
djinni
could have a
djinni
for a master.”

Then Fatima gave me a sunny smile, and toasted me with a can of Dr Pepper. “I’m so glad that you are my master, Marvin Harper. I don’t know of many masters who, given a chance to own a second bound
djinni
, would say, ‘No thank you.’ ”

I shrugged. “As far as me asking you for magical favors, I’m sure I’ll ask for little things. ‘Fatima, I left my umbrella at home. Would you pop it here, please?’—that sort of thing.”

I yawned then. I looked at Fatima and asked, “Genies don’t sleep, do they?”

“No, Master.”

“Then let me connect my computer up, so you won’t be bored tonight.”

She smiled at me. “Don’t worry, Master, I’m sure I won’t be bored.”

We both stood up from the kitchen table. Fatima gestured, and the dance band vanished, except for the singer. The now-solo soloist blew me a kiss, said “That’s all,” then she too disappeared.

I laughed, slipped my arm around Fatima’s waist, then the two of us walked into Uncle Warren’s computer room.

For the time being, I set up my computer on the same desk where Uncle Warren had his. Sometime while I was connecting cables on my computer, I said, “If you leave or enter the house, don’t let the neighbors see. Wherever you go, be here with me by 8:15 tomorrow morning.”

“Yes, Master.”

Once my computer was assembled, Fatima and I went upstairs, hand in hand. As I brushed my teeth, I got a thought.

After I spit and rinsed, I asked Fatima, “Normally a
djinni
can’t kill a human when it’s not the date of his fated death?”

“Nope!” she said cheerfully. “So we
djinn
aren’t scary after all.”

“Not you, not Ashnadim, no
djinni
can?”

“Nope! Neither can Kharmesh and neither can Jerngert.”

Rather than ask
Who’s Jerngert?
I said, “But when you’re granting wishes, you’re able to change the date of someone’s fated death. So if your master were tricky in his wording, he could wish someone dead? Even when it wasn’t the victim’s time to die?”

Fatima thought it over, then smiled at me. “I don’t see how. King Solomon forbade me to kill anyone, anytime, except to defend my master or myself.”

“Good,” I said, “You don’t deserve murder on your conscience.” I yawned.

I undressed to my briefs, then climbed into Uncle Wal—into
my
bed.

I pulled down the coverlets and patted the mattress next to me. “Snuggle with me till I fall asleep,” I ordered.

Fatima and I kissed for a while, till I got too sleepy. When I broke the kiss, she remarked, “I’ve never done this before.”

“Done what?”

“I’ve never seen my master fall asleep.”

“Mm,” I replied, being too sleepy to say more.

She pulled my head to her bosom. “Sleep well, Master. Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life.”

I woke up in a strange bedroom, with Fatima’s green-veiled face only inches from mine. My cock was getting lightly stroked, and was having a grand time.

Fatima asked, “Do you wish me to let you sleep, Master, or may we scorch the sheets?”

By then I’d remembered whose bedroom this was, and why Fatima was here. I glanced at the bedside clock. It said 7:16—a full hour before I had to jump in the shower.

I yawned, then replied, “Hm, sleep for an hour, or make love to a genie? Easy choice.”

Then I said, “Kneel on the bed. Let me see you.”

What I saw was, Fatima was wearing lingerie for a sultan.

On her head she wore a brimless green cap that was decorated with much gold embroidery. I’ve already referred to her semitransparent green veil, which covered her lower face and throat.

A green bra-like garment had been tied behind her back and also behind her neck. Below the bra-thing were gold coins, connected up and down by gold chain-links. When Fatima moved, those coins clinked, and their motion drew the eye to Fatima’s tits. Covering the bra-thing was a tiny garment, of dark green cloth and gold embroidery, that extended only slightly forward from the armholes, and only with generosity could be called a jacket; its sole purpose was to cover up Fatima’s breasts a little more.

On her arms were green semitransparent baggy half-sleeves; the half-sleeves went from just above her elbows to her wrists, and were cinched tight at each end by green ribbons.

Below Fatima’s waist, she wore green harem pants with bell-shaped legs. Again, green ribbons that were used as drawstrings tightened the waistband and the ankle cuffs.

The baggy pants were transparent enough that Fatima’s pussy would have been visible, except that around Fatima’s hips hung a gold belt, down from which hung gold coin-chains that made a triangular veil that covered up the good stuff.

As I was getting up on my knees myself, I said to her, “You are so beautiful and so desirable, Fatima. You are a wish granted.”

She smiled at that.

I reached around her head and untied the strings that were keeping the green veil on her face. I laid the green veil aside, then I kissed her. The kiss was long and slow.

As I was pulling that embroidered cap off her head, I asked, “How long has it been since you’ve had sex?”

“It’s been 812 solar years, five months, and thirteen days, Master.”

“Then I need to put a dent in that backlog,” I said.

It took me ten minutes to get her undressed. Mainly because I had no clue where the fasteners were for Middle Eastern clothing.

Fatima’s nipples were chocolate brown, and they were jutting out. Her tits were perfectly shaped, with no sag at all—and were they bigger than when I’d met her a week ago?

I got a happy surprise when I removed the gold-coin belt around Fatima’s hips. Through the semitransparent green cloth of her harem pants, I could see—

“Your pussy’s trimmed!”

Fatima smiled. “Yes, Master. From memory-reading you, I know that you find trimmed pussy hair more attractive. I want to look good for you.”

As soon as I got her harem pants off, I stroked the pubic hair under discussion, and the pink parts nearby. Fatima moaned.

By now she was nude and laying on her back, and I was lying next to her. Her hands were moving over every part of me that she could reach; she even caressed my neck. She said in a husky voice, “Your body is magnificent. I am getting wet, just touching you.”

I replied, “Then you’ll get even wetter when I touch you back.”

Which I did. Remember, Reader, that I had been a virgin less than a week earlier; and all my previous fucks had been ruttings, basically. This was the first time I really tried to do foreplay, and I wanted to do it right.

Soon I was at last understanding the term ‘erogenous zone.’ The breast skin around Fatima’s nipples was an erogenous zone. The skin on the side of her waist, another erogenous zone. The skin on the backs of her knees, still another. Her fingertips and palms were a
huge
erogenous zone.

At one point, I was stroking a leg. I said, “Thank you for shaving your legs for me.”

She giggled. “Armpits too. I didn’t shave them exactly, I made them be hairless. Not the same thing.”

“Either way, you did it for me. Thank you.” We kissed.

By the time I stopped caressing Fatima, she was squeezing a rocky bicep and muttering, “Oh Master, oh Master, oh yes...”

That’s when I finally moved atop Fatima. Her look of lust changed to a look of confusion when I then moved down the bed—and down her body.

Seconds later, she gasped. Then she said, “Master, you don’t need to—It is I who should—”

I raised my head up from where it was (a tongue’s-length from Fatima’s clit) high enough that I could make eye contact with her. I said, “Hear me, O Fatima, bound
djinni
of the lamp: Your master commands you to lie back and enjoy this. And if you
aren’t
enjoying this, you are to inform me instantly, so that I fix my mistake. Obey me now.”

Fatima’s head plopped back onto the pillow, and I went back to what I was doing. In the next five minutes, I learned two things—

1) Aroused
djinn
women don’t smell quite like aroused human women. When I got Fatima writhing and moaning, mixed in with the familiar odor was the smell of sandalwood.

2)
Djinn
clits, when properly stimulated, can make their owners scream and thrash just as hard as human clitorises can.

I ate her pussy for ten minutes. After about five minutes of licking, she started moaning and writhing continuously. Reader, it’s a real problem how to score that—do I count it as one five-minute orgasm, or five one-minute orgasms, or thirty ten-second orgasms?

But as I said, after ten minutes of eating her pussy, I stopped. I moved up the bed to where my face was next to hers, then I kissed her. “You may move now,” I said.

FOOM
—instantly Fatima was halfway down the bed, sucking me hard.

When I was ready to party, I asked, “Do I need a condom?”

“No, Master,” Fatima said. “
Djinn
women don’t get pregnant unless the chief of the tribe orders it.”

I looked at the clock. It told me that I had thirty-six minutes before I had to jump in the shower.

I made good use of that time. Discovering, in the process, why guys prefer
not
wearing a condom to fucking
with
a condom.

What was especially nice was that Fatima put a green-smoke ring around the base of my cock. I stayed hard and excited, and didn’t shoot my cream till I was ready to. This was so generous of Fatima, don’t you think?

And when my cock was sliding in and out of Fatima’s wet pussy? She seemed to enjoy it. Which wasn’t bad for a virgin-a-week-ago like me.

****

Twenty minutes after Fatima and I had climbed out of bed, I was staring at my cock’s reflection in the bathroom mirror.

Somehow I hadn’t noticed, in all the fucking that I’d done before Fatima and I had showered together, but my cock was over two inches longer than it was yesterday. My cock was also thicker.

Fatima was stroking my cock, and smiling. Her reflection told me, “Your cock is now exactly the right length and thickness to best delight Anna Kay’s pussy.”

Then Fatima’s reflection gave me a well-fucked smile. “Of course, since
djinn
are shapeshifters by nature, I’ve tweaked my pussy so that your cock is also the right length and thickness to give
me
the most pleasure. Anyway, I waited for the last day to hit you with this ‘little’ surprise, Master. Just like I waited till today for Harold’s surprises.”

I snapped my fingers. “Harold! I need to call him.”

Fatima frowned. “Why?”

“He doesn’t know that it’s all over now. By now he probably wakes up every morning with a sense of dread.”

Fatima let go of my cock, and said in a neutral voice, “You’re the master.”

I took one last glance at the bathroom mirror, before going to hunt up my cel. What the mirror was showing me was amazing.

I was 6′8″ now. When I’d walked into the bathroom in flip-flops, the top of the doorjamb had mussed my hair. I had to bend my knees now, in order to comb my hair; if I didn’t bend my knees, I couldn’t see the top of my head in the mirror.

I was also muscular. Jeez, I was barely this side of inhuman. When I’d walked into the bathroom, my cantaloupe-sized triceps had barely missed the side doorjambs.

After I walked out of the bathroom (my hair brushed up against the top doorjamb again), I was singing, “Oom-chukka, oom-chukka, oom-chukka mao-mao...” Another of Fatima’s last-day surprises was that I now had a bass voice.

****

I didn’t like Harold one bit, and I would never do him any favors, but I thought that letting him worry needlessly was cruel.

Fatima’s attitude was the exact opposite: that Harold/Hank was getting off easy. So no surprise, when I asked Fatima for Harold’s cel-phone number, she didn’t instantly summon her scrying ball. Instead, for thirty seconds she was frowning, and she glared at me. I was two seconds away from calling Natasha, in order to ask her for Harold’s number, when Fatima finally summoned her scrying ball.

Seconds later, I punched-in Harold’s number. “Natasha?” a girl’s voice answered.

For a second, I was too surprised to speak. Then I said, “Is this Harold? This is Marvin.”

“Marvin? Your voice sounds different.” Then the girl-voice laughed bitterly. “But why should I be surprised, hm?”

“The reason I called, Harold: There are no more changes for you and me. Everything is done.”

The girl-voice sighed. “So I’m stuck like this. At least I’m still male—technically. I was scared shitless I’d lose that too.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. So I said, “Well, I’ll see you and Natasha at the party tonight.”

“Yeah, Natasha is picking me up in a few minutes. She’s got my whole day planned.”

“Okay, Harold. See you tonight.”

I was just about to hit the “OFF” button when I heard the girl-voice say, “Marvin, will you tell me why this stuff has happened to us? Since you seem to know?”

I went silent for a long time, while I thought of what to say. Harold waited quietly, not pushing me. At last, I said—

“Harold, sometimes what goes around, does in fact come around.”

“This isn’t fair. Now everyone at school ‘remembers’ me taking tranny pills since sixth grade, telling kids in seventh grade, ‘I want to be a sissy when I grow up.’ I’m at the bottom of the social ladder now, even dating Natasha. Do I deserve that?”

“Yes,
Hank
. Because last week you were at the top of the social ladder, and you were a Grade-A asshole to me.”

****

I was buttoning my shirt when I said to Fatima, “If you haven’t already dried your hair, please do that. Then dress in something casual. I want you looking both stylish and sexy, but not
too
sexy.”

“I’m going somewhere with you, Master?”

“Yeah, breakfast with my parents. I’ve decided not to lie to them anymore.”

Fatima’s eyes went wide.