Golden Shackles: A Djinn's Story

Content warnings:

Mental health, discussion of wanting self-harm/suicidal ideation, some physical violence

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Let me tell you a tale, dear masters. 

It is much roomier there than you would think. Sure, there’s not space for much furniture, or any furniture actually, and my ethereal self fills the entire “room” beyond its capacity. But hey, it's home. Call it what you will, humans have names for these things, but I have grown quite accustomed to the captivity. The darkness, the unending silence, the ability to replay my eternal existence over and over again in my head- it has all devolved into a cruel and unending comfort. I am bound by my own failures so I find myself in this prison, until I am called upon by a new master. 

The captivity, at first, was the hardest part. Losing autonomy, losing control of one’s self. I am not speaking in figurative terms here, either. Imprisonment in a cell would be one thing, but my very cells are imprisoned. When I was forced into the lamp I was not simply “shrunk to fit”, that is simply not possible. “Magic” is a lot more scientific and bound by the laws of physics, than anyone would imagine. The cellular structure that made up the cells of my body evaporated, allowing the space between the atoms to be compressed, the negentropy and calming of the chaos that is the standard order of things, until every last atom was aligned into a nautilus to fit within the lamp. It was excruciating. There was the feeling of intense heat as the ionic bonds were shattered, hotter than an acetylene flame. Then came an intense cold, colder than the far reaches of the planet in the darkest nights of winter as the atoms settled into their new place, and then nothing. Total order. Total darkness. Then a new kind of pain. The problem is that consciousness is not as simple as bodily composition. Physical pain is nothing. It goes away. Consciousness, however, is a monster. 

The darkness is what I perceived first. It was utter, complete, and it felt like I was drowning in it. I had eyes, no longer in the traditional physical form, but all of the components that would make up eyes were still present, the rods and cones of the retina, the optic nerve connecting them to my brain, the nerve endings in the corneas and the muscles, and the eyelids that I could still feel blink, even though they were no longer necessarily there. It made no difference if my eyes were open or closed, the world around me still “looked” the same, and at first it was utterly terrifying. All around me was the same thick blanket of impenetrable blackness. I strained my vision trying to bring any semblance of light in, but there was none. I was cast into a void and there was nothing that I could do to escape it. Some time passed, I am not sure how long it was, but the darkness became less terrifying and my poor mind was left to focus on the next horror of my captivity. 

The unending silence, now a comfort, was at first a nightmare. With the body rendered down to its building blocks, there were no vocal chords to make sound, no lungs to breathe, no hands to wring, no fingers to tap… nothing. My prison was placed deep in a tomb, sealed and guarded. There were no voices, no sound outside of the lamp,  just deep, dripping, unending silence. In my own mind I would scream, it was not “sound”, but it was deafening. From the moment I was imprisoned for decades after, the screams and cries from the heart of my consciousness were all that kept me company. The retching and tearing in and out of sanity, begging, pleading for someone to hear me, for death to come, for something to stop the agonizing depths of nothingness. Without a throat to scream from, there is never a hoarseness to tone the pitch or the volume of those screams, they ring at the same deafening volume throughout consciousness until you find a way to quiet them. Finally my mind tired of screaming. I realized that all I had was my own consciousness, my own memories and thoughts to keep me company. At first it was maddening, but if I was going to be stuck here with myself, I had better learn to talk to “me”, rather than to listen to my own frivolous shrieking. 

I figured out with a quickness that keeping track of time was futile in complete silence, but it was not without an attempt. Once I quieted the silent screams, the first thing I did was count. I counted for decades. I made it to about 3,155,760,503 when I realized that a century had passed. That gave way to another decade or so of maddening wails. That was when I decided to give up counting, it did more harm than good. Next, I decided that I would try and narrate my entire life from start to finish, which is quite the task if you have ever tried it. I am sure you haven’t since it takes much more time than actually living it. I spent the next six centuries digging up and scratching out memories as fiction, putting pieces together and tearing them apart again. Whenever I would make a mistake I made the decision to start over at the beginning. It was something that was important to get right, start to finish. The last time, when I finally got it right I came to the conclusion that it was all nonsense anyway, and decided to forget the entire thing. It was then that I decided that my mind was much too loud and that I talk too much, perhaps it would be best to simply enjoy the peace and quiet. 

I am not sure how much time passed, savoring the thick, dense, dark silence. Without blood running through veins, or lungs to facilitate breath, the silence is its own delicious sensation. It bore down and inside the space between the electrons until those felt as though their clouds were in stasis. The terror that it manifested at the beginning of my time in the lamp was now my warm and blissful comfort. I have spent whatever time that had passed since this calm had overcame me, enveloped in the sanctity of it all. The darkness and the silence, my mind now quiet. 

This is where you found me, my dear masters. 

Suddenly I felt something, a jostling, movement, a shaking. What could this be? What could be happening to me? Suddenly there was the sensation of cold returning, fusion, fission, the excruciating feeling that I had nearly forgotten. My cells were torn from the order that they had been sorted into, being forced to modulate into some sort of regular chaos where they had started. With that, a sudden entropy came and then the heat, a fire from within causing me to scream out in agony, breaking the silence that I had come to rely on. The sound of my own screams broke through my mind and began to manifest from my newly reformed throat and push past my lips as air rushed into my lungs. I covered my own ears to muffle the sound of my screams. 

Wait… I was covering my ears with my hands. My body was reforming and I began counting the organs and appendages that I could feel and move. I wiggled fingers, opened and closed hands, brought my arms to my face and felt that I had a mouth, only then was I able to stop screaming, a nose, and eyes- they were still closed.  I felt myself rising, floating out of the space that had been my home for a millennia, and then without warning, came the light through my closed lids. A sudden curiosity caused me to open my eyes and the sheer brightness split the darkness like a flaming dagger into my brain, piercing and cutting the peace of the eternal darkness that I had bathed in. I screamed again, this time pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes, trying to block out the light. Then I heard it, dear masters. Small voices from below, two of them. It was so foreign to hear someone other than myself, a voice other than my own thoughts. I did not comprehend what was said at first, and my vision had not yet returned to seeing the location of the voices. I removed my hands from my eyes and squinted, adjusting to the brightness that I had not taken in for a millenia or more. I stretched my arms upward, my spine extended, one vertebrae at a time and with it came cracks and pops as my bones realigned. I moved my head side to side soliciting additional rattling from within and let out another scream, this time more of a roar booming through the tomb. 

I could see the cavernous space that had been the resting place for my prison. It was vast and under the firelight from the torches that were lining the walls I could see that it was filled with treasure. Gold and jewels placed along every wall, loose and in canvas sacks, chests, and barrels glistening and sparkling with the dancing firelight. Statues of the Gods and Goddesses of my time were arranged in various sizes and shapes around the room, and as my gaze drifted to the faces of each I cursed them all. I realized that I towered over the two humans who were standing below me. Your eyes were wide with horror and amazement, my dear masters. 

I could tell right away that you were a young man and a young woman, neither of you having been more than two miniscule decades old. You had existed a moment in my time, a hypothetical blink of a discorportated eye. I found your clothing to be strange, certainly not what I would expect, particularly you, young woman- wearing pants, your face was not covered and your shoulders were exposed, it was very alarming to say the least. You, young man, wore some strange blue fabric that resembled burlap, but the texture appeared to be softer, your shirt hung loosely and your hair strangely short. It made me wonder if you were a slave. My mind was already racing with questions to ask the both of you.

“Who dares to disturb my slumber?” my voice boomed and echoed off of the walls, causing the loose coins around us to ring together, a blissful melody at a pitch higher and more musical than anything a human voice could create. The sounds rang in my ears, my head, and my mind in a way that caused agony and intense pleasure all at once. You answered me, my dear masters, and gave me your names which were too strange at first to stick in my memory. My mind was still torn into so many pieces from my time in the lamp. You explained that you had been trapped here, exploring on your own away from your group at “Uni-vers-ity”, and had fallen through quicksand only to find yourselves in the tomb. Lucky for you, or maybe lucky for me? I listened intently to you, sitting, head in my hand. Hearing human voices was awakening an urge that I had long pushed out of my mind. I understood your language, but recognized that it would have been foreign to me had I still been human. Your eyes were still wide, and I could sense that although the initial shock and terror of seeing me had waned, there was still an underlying fear.

As you both kept eyes on me warily, your gaze piercing, I decided to take a closer look at myself. I had brought my body down to the appropriate size, sitting before you, my new masters. You relaxed as I did it, I was much less threatening when I was in a form and size that you were accustomed to it seemed. I was in my standard linen shirt, untied at the top, silken pants, leather sandals. The same clothes that I had been wearing when I was imprisoned, with one painful exception. Around my wrists and ankles were golden shackles, and although you, my new masters, could not perceive them, I could see the heavy golden chains that connected me to the lamp. My home, my prison. I must have been staring at myself and my ethereal restraints for some time, because there suddenly was a hand on my shoulder. I looked up and it was you, my dear young woman. 

“Who are you? How did you get into that lamp?” You asked, your eyes soft and kind.  

I smiled at her, feeling a strange comfort. “I am the Djinn of this lamp. I am here to serve you for as long as you will have me, masters.” I bowed low, placing my head on the floor at your feet. 

“Now let me tell you a tale, dear masters.”