Your Wish Is My Command

MISTRESS MADISON

It took Madison three hours and at least half of \"The Divine Comedy\" to recover from her interaction with the gypsy woman. The sky was growing dark as she finally put her book aside, the chill seeping into the walls. She shivered and pulled her oversize sweater tighter around her; just her luck, she moved in on a day when the heater blew itself out. She moved to the kitchen, to make her usual lonely supper of a peanut butter, tomato, and mayo sandwich. She didn’t mind being alone. That’s the way it had always been, ever since she could remember. She had always been alone.

Madison shivered again, but this time not from the cold. How could that old gypsy woman have known? Her words still haunted Madison, somewhere in the back of her mind. Her “birthright,” the gypsy had said. Did the old woman known of Madison’s past? How she had been found one day, a newborn baby wrapped in purple silk, simply laying on the orphanage steps? But how could the old gypsy have known… it was probably just a ploy to get Madison to buy her silly junk and go.

… But the gypsy hadn’t asked for payment.

Madison glanced cautiously at her purchase. The lamp remained in the same place she had hastily it that afternoon; sitting innocently on the coffee table in the living room. It looked so ordinary, a worthless piece of antiquity. Yet everywhere Madison went in the apartment, she could feel its presence, as if it were watching her… waiting. But waiting for what? She wasn’t gonna use it, a dingy old oil lamp like her. Her friends would laugh at her… if she had any friends.

She didn’t want any friends anyway. Not even as a kid. She was always by herself on the playground, in some far corner reading as the other children chased each other. She had big plans, big things ahead for her. Friends would only get in her way. Family would be ever worse… after all, it was her apparent status as an orphan that had gotten her this free ride to one of the best colleges in the state. Why should she mind that no relatives had ever come looking for her, that there had been no note of explanation or clue of her origin? She didn’t care. People got in the way… family, friends, boyfriends… especially boyfriends. She had never had a boyfriend… not once. And she didn’t care. Boys got in the way of big plans. And what boy would date her anyway?

She stood to put her dishes away. Still the lamp was there, hovering in the back of her mind. She dropped them unceremoniously in the sink, and the lamp was still there. She tried to scrub away her thoughts; but the lamp would not go away.

Finally, Madison could stand it no longer. She threw the dishes down into the sink, marched into the living room, and snatched up the lamp. Even as she examined it, she scowled at her foolishness. What a piece of junk! And yet… the academic in her was intrigued. It was old, that was clear… but how old? Aside from the grime, the lamp itself seemed to be in perfect condition. There was nothing remarkable about it, really, but as she gazed at the antique in the light of the ceiling fixture she could just make out an inscription traced into the side of the metal. With the layers of dust and dirt it was impossible to make out, so Madison bent to her task, scrubbing away at the grime with the sleeve of her skirt. Bit by bit the inscription came clearer… the letters seemed to shift themselves between English and a writing system she did not recognize… But no, that wasn’t possible. It was just a trick of the light.

So Madison scrubbed harder.

And the strangest thing happened.

Suddenly the lamp began to quiver. Then it began to vibrate. Then it began to shake, so violently Madison could barely keep hold on it. The metal flashed white-hot, and she dropped it to the floor with a cry of pain. But the shaking didn’t stop; it increased, quaking so brutally the floor of her tiny apartment began to shake with it. Unable to keep her footing, Madison tumbled to the floor; and the lamp began to glow. From deep within, a blinding light emulated and filled her living room with heaven, growing brighter and brighter, and without thinking twice Madison crawled behind her couch and crouched there, waiting for the inevitable explosion.

But it never came.

And just as suddenly as they had come, the light and the quaking stopped. Things were as they had been, so much so that as Madison lay there panting in terror she began to question her own sanity. She pulled herself to her knees and peered anxiously around the corner of the couch at the lamp.

But the lamp was not there. Instead, there stood audaciously in the middle of her miserable little living room the most beautiful male Madison had ever seen. His skin was nearly golden and he gleamed like a cluster of stars in the dim ceiling light. He was bare from his perfect hips and above, displaying a back that was splendid and well muscled without being obnoxious. He was wearing a strange pair of pants, purple silk embroidered with gold that billowed down his legs and hugged his bare ankles. There was gold bracelets on his perfect wrists, but they remained eerily silent as he simply stood there, staring ahead at the blank wall. She could not see his face, with his back turned towards her, but Madison knew with every fiber of her being there was nothing natural or right about this young man, or what had just occurred.

So Madison did the bravest thing she had ever done; she stood, body tensed for flight, and shouted,” Who are you, and what do you want?”

For a moment the young man did nothing. Then slowly, he turned to face her, and said in a voice mechanical and empty,” Your wish is my command, Mistress Madison.”