“Your Slightest Wish Is My Demand” [FICTOID]

“Do not leave me!” the addict screamed at the departing caravan.

The Bedouin camel riders ignored him though their leader, more knowledgeable in the ways of the west that the rest of his tribe, flipped the addict off as the caravan crested a dune and disappeared from sight.

Sand.  Nothing but sand from horizon to horizon.

The addict rubbed his lips, anxiously casting his gaze about, desperate for salvation…

…or at least a fix.

The Bedouins left him a prayer rug, a half empty goat skin of water, robes, and a pair of slippers.

“Can you fly?” the addict asked the rug.

No answer.

“I can fly,” the addict said.  “Gimme a fix and I can fly.”

He looked around, trying to figure out where water / food / drugs could be found.  He picked a direction purely at random, rolled up his rug, and started walking.

. . .

He walked a day, a night, and halfway through the following day when the djinn showed up.

“Hi,” the djinn said in an oddly American accent.  “Whatcha doing way out here?”

“Trying to find my way home,” the addict said.

“You are home,” the djinn laughed.

The addict kicked sand in the djinn’s direction.  The djinn laughed again.  “Aren’t you going to ask for a wish?”

The addict eyed the djinn carefully.  “I’m desperate and strung out and dying,” he said, “but I know a deal with the devil -- or a djinn -- always carries a blowback.”

“No blowbacks,” the djinn said.  The addict arched his eyebrow.  “Promise,” the djinn said.  “Cross my heart and hope to become human.”

“You don’t want my soul?”

The djinn laughed a third time.  “No!  What would I do with that?  No, no, no, I want to offer you something.”

“What?”

“A fix.”

“Not rescue?”

“What good will a rescue do you?  You’ll only get strung out again.

“No, I’m offering you a fix -- an eternal fix.  One to last you the rest of your life.”

The addict stopped and looked at the djinn carefully.  

“Okay, I’ll bite,” he said. 

The djinn nodded and instantly the addict felt a bliss fill him as never before, a bliss brimming with warmth and light as bright as the sun -- 

And with that, the smiling addict fell dead, face first into the ground.

“Well, that was easy,” the djinn said, meeting her quota for the day.

© Buzz Dixon