Dear Mr. Anisen

Harold’s World

“All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in.”

-Toni Morrison

Once upon a time, an ordinary man from the comfortable side of suburbia acquired an artifact that gave him three unrestrained wishes.   

Harold Brennan came home from work one cold November evening and found a package waiting for him on his stoop. The package’s placement bothered him because he liked to keep his steps clear of any debris, so as not to tempt thieves or curious onlookers. He took the box inside and placed it on the bar between the kitchen and his living room.

“We found this in a little shop in Borobudur, love Mom and Dad.” He read the note and then tossed it aside. Even now, years later, as his mind attempts to trace back over that moment, he remembers most of all the sweet, palpable smell easing from the parcel as he indifferently lifted the brown paper from a wooden box.  

 He opened the box to find what looked like a stone statue of a squat man mounted on a wooden base. The garish sculpture was about eight inches in height and rested in a pillow of packing straw. He picked it up and turned it over in his hand once. He smirked (not unlike the smirk that rested on the face of the sculpture) and put it on the nearest flat surface. It stayed there for years.     

Time went by, and one day he found himself standing in front of the statue, scotch in hand, quietly resenting both it and his wife for being forced to keep the vulgar weight of memory. In truth, that resentment was a mask for the guilt he felt about his mother. She had died a lonely widow on the cold, tile floor of her kitchen. When they found her, she had a phone in her hand, and he knows in his heart she was trying to call him. He had not seen her in years. The statue became a glowing reminder of his neglect. 

He picked the statue up, feeling its palpable weight in his hands. Suddenly there was a flash – a quick change in the light as if a bulb blew and then came immediately back on. Harold turned around to find a dark-skinned man standing behind him in a black L’leh Morf suit. He was tall and slim and stood with his arms crossed over his chest.

           “What the hell!” Harold said, backing up, drink in one hand, the statue pointed at the man as if it were a weapon in the other. 

           “You have touched the relic four times. You may have three wishes.”

           “Who are you… how… how did you get in here?”

           “I am a resident of the object in your hand. You have touched it four times, thus releasing me into your service until after these three wishes are made.” The dark-skinned man sounded bored.

           “I’m calling the police.”

           “As you wish. However, no one will be able to see or hear me except you.”

           “I don’t really think that’s possible.” Harold retorted, still holding the statue at arm’s length toward the unfamiliar man.

           “I am not here to harm you, only to deliver the service for which I am cursed to provide."

           This put Harold at ease a bit and he walked cautiously around the man, beginning to feel no threat, rather curiosity. There was something odd about the man’s manner. He seemed old – no, he felt old, and the familiar smell of sweetness from the box emanated from him like a cologne. In addition, Harold did not think a thief or burglar would dress in such a way. He sat his drink down on the coffee table, and then picked it up again, downing the last swallow. “You some kind of illegal immigrant looking for a handout?”

           “I assure you I am not.”

           “Honey, could you come here?” Harold called to his wife in the next room. “We’ll just find out if I am the only one that can see you.” Harold kept hold of the statue, just in case.

His wife appeared a moment later, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. “Yes? What do you want, honey? I’m finishing up the dishes.” She was unmoved by the tall man in the suit standing boldly in the living room.

           “Uh… can you get the cup on the coffee table?”

           “Really? You couldn’t walk it in there to me?” She walked past the dark-skinned man and picked up the cup with a very audible huff. “Really, Harold, you’re a piece of work, y’know that? Why don’t you fix the dishwasher instead of making me more dishes to do?”

           “Yeah, yeah… I’ll do that. Babe, you… notice anything weird?”

           “Just you, standing in the middle of the living room, finding more dishes for me to do. Are you drunk already?” And she was off to the kitchen, cup in hand.

           “Maybe I am,” he said aloud without thinking.

           “You are not.”

           Harold stared at the man. “Three wishes, huh?”

           “Yes.”

           “Are you a genie or something?”

           “Djinn,” the man said, his dark brown eyes oddly attentive and never leaving Harold’s pasty face.

           Harold gave a derogatory grin and said, “What’s that? Some towel-head ethnicity?”

           “It is what I am. You are a human. I am djinn.”

           Uninterested, Harold asked, “How does it work? Three wishes?”

           “You simply make a wish.”

           “I wish her dishwasher was fixed.” He nodded in the direction of the kitchen.

           “By her, I assume you mean your wife. “

           “Yeah, who else?”

           “I do not know.”

           “Well?”

           “It is done.”

           Harold looked around. “Nothing seems changed.”

           The djinn did not say anything, simply looked bored.

           Harold went part way into the kitchen, a little reluctant to leave the man, and called to his wife. “Hey, honey, try the dishwasher again. I think I fixed it yesterday.” He looked back at the man in the living room who for the first time, was not looking at Harold; instead, he seemed to be scrutinizing his surroundings.

           “When did you fix it?”

           “Just try the damn dishwasher, will you? Why do you have to question everything I say? Just try it!”

           She did. It worked perfectly. He could hear the soft hum and slosh of water from where he stood. 

Harold’s second wish was for wealth. He was very specific.

           “It is done,” the dark-skinned man whispered with a sickly smile.

           Harold had eagerly eaten up his first two wishes with material things, things that he ironically could have acquired without wishes, just hard work.

           Nevertheless, in a moment of avaricious clarity, for his last wish Harold cleverly demanded unlimited wishes. After he made his decree, he smiled and waited for what he thought would be a disclaimer. Nevertheless, despite lore, this apparently was not an unattainable wish. However, the djinn explained for each extra wish, the cost was seven years, and no wish could wipe out another wish.

           Harold smiled a malevolent smile and made his wish, secretly satisfied with the trade of seven years.

“It is done, and those are your three wishes. You will see me one more time.” The djinn bowed and disappeared.

           Harold’s first two wishes were inconsequential to the wishes that followed. The wishes that followed changed his world.

           Harold believed he belonged to a patriotic minority, a righteous group that opposed the immoral coercion that was destroying his country. This force had infected the educational system, the government and the people, and was robbing them of true nationalistic values.

           Howard followed several political intolerant voices who inspired him to greater good. Ironically, Harold had chosen one individual because of the man’s stance on the wealthy – and how they are often persecuted. This politician found that people wanted what he had, and like Harold, was tired of being victimized for having things.

           The wishes became many and habitual. The words “I wish” became a part of Harold’s daily life. Sometimes he simply wished to be dressed rather than dress himself.

As for the cost of seven years per wish, Howard considered himself a crafty man. After each wish, he would wish for fourteen years more on his life, countering the cost of seven years for each additional wish. It became a habit when wishing, and if he ever thought he forgot, he would simply make a couple more life wishes. Of course, he did not want to live forever. He thought that sounded greedy and possibly un-Christian.

           However, as the years drew on, Harold passed his time between pleasure and frustration. Every time he would try to fix a problem with his blameless patriotic heart, he would sink the world into further turmoil and chaos.

           At one point, he accidently wished away every human being in Tennessee in an attempt to thwart illegal immigration. One evening after a few drinks, Harold had observed a caravan of immigrants on TV headed toward the New Mexico border. His anger boiled because his prudently placed politicians had not been able to stop the poor and downtrodden from coming, and their numbers only grew. They just kept coming and coming.

Finally, as Harold scrutinized the vagabonds on his big screen TV (never in person), his eyes settled on one of the men on the outskirts of the caravan. Maliciously, Harold wished that the man and everyone from where he came from would disappear. He made the wish out of anger, but it felt good, and Harold laughed as the man blinked out of existence on the screen, right there in front of him. However, the man was the only one to disappear. Everyone else in the caravan kept lumbering forward on their journey to the border, unmoved and unknowing of Harold’s attempt to hinder them. They just kept walking, kept on wanting what Harold had.

Apparently, the man was a volunteer with The Red Cross and, although he had darker skin, he was born in Tennessee, as was his father. Ironically, his ethnicity was more Asian anyway. Nevertheless, in the wink of an eye, all the people from the Volunteer State disappeared. 

Harold’s wife had always been familiar with his little insincerities. She knew he could be a chauvinist sometimes, and she was well aware that he was a little prejudiced. However, she loved him. He had a vulnerability that she seemed to want to protect. As a result, she was extra kind and generous, and often went above and beyond to help people. In her heart, she felt together they had a balanced soul. In their vows, it stated that what once was two is now one.

Harold, on the other hand, would often stare at her in disbelief as she would run out to volunteer at the growing homeless shelters or food pantries. He did not know how much of his free money she had given away, but he never tried to stop her because he knew he would never win that argument. He just wished for more. But still, it irked him, twisted something inside him that people were profiting from his work, his wishes.

He would sit and think about ways to get her to understand his way of thinking. Finally, he simply said, “I wish she understood my way of thinking.”

Not soon after, they had a disagreement, and Harold asked her directly if she understood his reasoning. She looked at him and replied flatly, “Oh, I understand your thinking completely. I just don’t agree with it.”

That night, after wrestling with his weak moral countenance, he said aloud, “I wish she agreed with me.”

Beyond that first day of guilt from robbing her of free will, he loved it. He did not know how much of a burden she had been on his consciousness and thinking. He did more in that day to change the world than any day before.

She committed suicide three weeks later in a lush green park where they had first met.

He wished her back twice. She lasted two weeks the first time. The second he just wished her away when she started walking toward the park.

           Decades passed and, at one point, every country in the world was at war. Harold, of course, was safe in his house, protected by his wishes. Still, as he watched the new World War unfold from a safe place, he considered it a fight for freedom and democracy. However, Howard considered every war a fight for freedom and democracy, and anyone who opposed his thinking was unpatriotic.

           When Harold was in his late eighties (he was actually 88), he found his world in complete disarray, and he blamed the poor, the needy, and the different. No matter what he wished, within years they would reappear. He kept trying to make the world a better place, but as he lay in his bed, his home in disorder until his next wish, he had become very tired and wanted to simply die. He had stopped wishing for an extra fourteen years long ago. 

           I quit, he thought. I wish to die.

           Suddenly, his world stopped. He felt the weight of life lift off of him. He was young again and standing on a hilltop covered in soft grass, looking at the djinn. In Harold’s hands lay the stone statue his mother had given him long ago. It was fat and squat and had a smirk on its face.

           The djinn spoke clearly and plainly. “No wish can wipe out another wish.”

           Harold smiled, enjoying his youth again. “But I have lived a whole life. Surely, with the seven-year sacrifice, I should be about done.” He looked up at the shining sun, enjoying the soft lace of its warm embrace. Wherever he had been transported was beautiful.

           In the same bored voice, the djinn replied, “Each wish cost seven years. In fifty years, you made 164,250 wishes. You averaged nine wishes a day over a fifty-year span.”

           Harold looked at the djinn. “Okay.”

           “Seven years per wish comes to 1,149,750.”

           Harold smiled and leaned over to pick up a clover. He tossed it away indifferently and said, “Yes, but after each wish, I wished for 14 more years to counter the years I would lose. But that doesn’t matter. I’m pretty sure I’m close to death anyway.”

           The djinn’s face remained unchanged as he stated, “It was not seven years subtracted from your life. For each wish, it was seven years permanently added to your life. Along the way, after every wish, you wished for fourteen more years. Currently, you will remain alive for 2,299,500 years, despite any cataclysm or catastrophe your world incurs. If your sun were to explode, you would remain alive, floating in space, in nothingness. You will always be alive. You will be alive long after I am gone, at which point your wishes will stop and you will simply exist.”

           Harold realized his gross misunderstanding of the wishes and tried to make himself feel better. He looked around at the green grass and the blue sky, birds long extinct in his own world flying around and making music. He looked defiantly at the djinn and said, “I’ll take this moment then, and many more, and live forever.”

           The djinn waved his hand and said, “This is not your world. This is the world as it existed before you started your wishes. This is the world you destroyed with your wishes. Creating worlds and having the ability to manage balance is the work of God.”

           Harold’s world slowly unfolded around him as the azure sky fell away. The djinn was gone. In rebellion, Harold wished his own sky blue, realizing he never knew how much that blue sky mattered. The sky held the color for a few days, at which point it slowly turned to the color of lead again, resting heavily above his downturned head, the sad result of pollution and profit.

After that, he spent years in his room, and decades more lying in the floor of the kitchen where his mother had died. He did not know why. At times, he thought he could smell her, but then the sweet smell from the box those many years ago would emerge and rob his memory of any feeling.

Often, he sat on the steps in front of his old house, wishing the stoop clean. At times, he missed his wife. He knew she had died some time ago; he did not remember when. He remembered wanting to hit her sometimes, and that made his heart sad.

Eventually (it might have been a hundred years later), he stood up from those steps and ambled down his lonely street under the ashen sky. In the distance, he noticed a bus abandoned on the side of the road. There had not been fuel for years. Harold had kept wishing fuel back during the wars, but it kept running out. He was tired of saying the words. Then again, he was tired of getting dressed. He averted to walking around in pajamas and a long, dirty blue robe that were literally rags.

The bus sparked a distant memory. When he was a younger man, and full of righteous passion, buses filled with migrant children were attempting to come into his town. Harold and about three hundred protesters turned those damn buses around. Harold smiled, remembering the confused and scared little faces of those illegals gazing out the big bus windows as he waved his flag and chanted, “Send them back, send them back, send them back…” 

They thought they could send their kids over. They were wrong. He knew most of those children ended back up in camps. Harold remembered how proud he felt that night sitting in front of his TV, drinking a cold beer.

He continued to walk down the street, the world falling apart around him, and smiled at his accomplishments.       

 [SC1]I think you mean the man, not Harold?

 [SC2]Usually you spell out numbers in dialogue but here you could leave it as is.