Your Wish Is My Command

MOON DANCE

As far back as she could remember, Madison had been scared-petrified-of boys. Her earliest memory of the opposite sex was being laughed at by them in her bathing suit, as she stood alone on the side of the school swimming pool, shivering and dripping water onto the tiles. The situation had not overly improved… she had avoided school dances, hid beneath her books and her smugness, and no boy in school would touch the precious “teacher’s pet.” She was always the first to be called on in class, and the last to be picked for teams in gym. It seemed a fair trade to her… she saw in boys only violence, misogyny, and manipulation. Really, what was she missing? Un-wanted pregnancy? Sexually transmitted diseases? The chance that someday, her heart would break and her eyes would simply wash out of her sockets from the amount of crying boys would cause her… she had promised herself, as she stood there by the pool, she would forget those cruel mysteries they called men, and never look back.
So it seemed unnaturally bizarre to find herself, one moment in the middle of a packed bar and the next in her living room, so preoccupied by the embrace of a strange male she couldn’t avoid bumping into walls. Even the sharp corners of her dresser didn’t hurt as they rammed recklessly into furniture, though some small voice in the back of her head told her she’d pay for that later. Some small voice was screaming at an ear splitting volume, and yet Madison found she could ignore the voice with eerie ease…
“Genie…” she mumbled, but he ignored her; the moment her lips left his mouth, he had moved on to her neck, nibbling and caressing in a way that sent fire to the tips of her fingers. Everything was blurred, and everything seemed to happen faster and slower than it should. He moved with heightened frenzy, and yet her world was calm. She knew only his touch, his embrace, and her own echoing thoughts.
Madison had never once jumped from a plane. She had never leaped from a bridge, or a cliff to tumble headlong into water hundreds of feet below. She had never driven a car with the top pulled down, or danced half naked in front of her mirror in the dead hours of the night. But in that one suspended moment, it seemed as if she was doing all of these things at once, and if she didn’t stop, kept pushing, she would push right past the pain and the agony and the burning that his touch left on her skin.
“Genie!”
He pulled back in alarm, his handsome hair tangled and matted,” What?”
“I… can’t. I can’t.”
Dozens of expression fought for control of his features: anger, confusion, disappointment. He spoke the only word he could seize upon,” Why?”
“I just can’t. This isn’t right.”
He let her go instantly, and threw his hands up in frustration. “WHY?”
“It just isn’t. I can’t… be with you. You don’t love me.”
He sneered,” Says the cold fish! What do you know of love, little girl?”
“I know it’s the only thing that makes sex worthwhile.”
He threw back his head and laughed, but it was a distorted, humorless laugh. “You’re telling ME this? Do you think that ANY of my myriad masters and mistresses loved ME? Yet I fulfilled every one of their desires! I granted every one of their wishes!”
“I wish to be loved!”
He opened his mouth in anger… but slowly, like the melting of wax, the creases of rage in his face softened, and he sighed. “I cannot grant that wish, Mistress Madison. I am sorry. But the Genie is bound, and there are three wishes I can never grant: to fall in love, to bring people back from death… and to kill.”
Madison crossed her arms; she suddenly felt cold in the depths of her self. “You’ve never killed anyone?”
Genie shrugged offhandedly, but she saw the mere flinch in his deep eyes.
A strange silence fell between them, and for a moment Madison couldn’t bare to meet his gaze. Finally, she said, cautiously,” No one has ever loved you?”
“No. I am a sex genie, Mistress. That is all I am for.”
“Well, then can’t you understand why… why I want to be with someone who cares?”
“No,” he snapped, suddenly fierce,” Because that is an impossible desire. I have seen many things, Mistress, but I have never seen love. Unless love is a fragile, bitter dream that cracks under an ounce of reality.” And suddenly, he turned upon his heel and marched from the room, and did not return. Her head had begun to swim, and with every last ounce of effort, Madison staggered to her bed and collapsed on top of it, still fully clothed, and with tears leaking from the corners of her eyes.