It was morning, 6AM. The same slowly strumming song that he’d had as his alarm for however long it had been filtered through the noise of the traffic outside, louder than the alarm, but he’d learned to filter it out. He’d learned to accept the dilapidated mess that was his apartment, windows boarded up, fridge never stocked. He’d learned to accept the presence of the cloaked figure sitting in his room every day. He rubbed his eyes. “Morning.”
.
The figure stirred, then stretched in his rickety chair and stood up. “Another day another dollar. And just in time for your next challenge!” he grinned. If you could call it that. The withered old man had never seen his cloaked companion’s face but he could hear the smile in his voice. “You didn’t forget, did you?”
.
No, he hadn’t forgotten. It was the first of March, and he’d only been given 28 days to complete the previous challenge, not that the extra two or three would have been any help. He’d been at it for years, after all. The memories of his first encounters with the figure pushed at the edges of his consciousness. Trying to fight them, he’d found, was a wasted effort – as was much of the rest of his sorry life.
.
“Yes, that’s right. The power to grant wishes. I’m a philanthropist." the figure in his memory giggled.
“Thank you. I’m not interested. Please leave my house at once.”
“Don’t you want to try it out? What about on her?”
A young girl, no more than fifteen or sixteen, materialised next to the figure, who held her tightly with a hand over her mouth. She could not move. She could not scream. Neither could the man, paralysed. Not old, here, but well into middle age.
“Right now, this girl’s wish is to be anywhere but here. You can grant that wish, if you want.”
The man looked at the figure, then at the girl. If he could, he would. But–
The girl vanished.
“Where did she go?”
“As I said, anywhere but here. You want to try again? I can bring her back.”
Silence, broken by the figure’s laughter.
“Why so nervous? I’m not that scary, am I? I just gave you a superpower. Come on, the girl’s fine. Just a little scared. She’ll think it was just a weird daydream.”
The man relaxed a little, and sat down on his bed.
“Of course, something like this doesn’t come without a caveat or two.”
.
The caveat. It came in the form of a tattoo on his arm, spelling out a name. Sometimes he didn’t understand the language, not that it mattered, really, because that name would be dead if he didn’t manage to grant a wish within a month. That was the curse.
.
“You can get out of it, you know. I’m not that cruel. Just grant a wish. A real one! None of those get-rich-quick schemes. A REAL one. A deep-seated desire. Then no more deaths, no more wishes. Nothing. But don’t kill yourself, please, or figure out some other stupid loophole, that’ll piss me off. I’ll just kill ‘em faster.”
.
The early months were frantic. Most would dismiss him as a lunatic. Some, terrified by his panicked approach, would call the police. “He’s on drugs.” They’d say. Maybe he was. If only he was.
.
They’d locked him up for a while, of course. Long enough for him to realise that his approach needed to be an order of magnitude less aggressive. And so he’d improved – he’d even granted a few wishes along the way, but to his distress, none sincere enough to count against the figure’s arbitrary rules.
.
And here he was, watching the umpteenth tattoo dissolving. Marking the death of another unknown person from whatever cause the figure dreamt up, to be replaced by another…
.
Emily Barlow?
.
“That one died from a construction site injury. Cinder blocks.” the figure laughed again, evidently taking great pride in his methods of killing. “Watch out for them! You never know where they’re going to come from. Best to avoid construction sites if you’re not wearing proper PPE, that’s what I say. He had it coming, really. Idiot.”
“Which Emily Barlow?”
“Huh?”
“You know what I’m asking.”
The figure paused for a moment. And when he spoke, his voice was calmer than before, his words carrying more weight.
“You know the answer.”
Silence.
“You son of a bitch.”
“Well, things were getting boring. I thought I’d up the ante.”
.
The man rose in a quiet rage. Nothing would come from fighting, he was weak nowadays. But his vision was tunnelled and his mind was a white void. Calmly, he walked to what was left of his kitchen and drew a knife from the holder, dusty from disuse.
“Grandpa?”
“Emily?”
“They told me you killed someone.”
“I lost control,” the old man said softly, his voice breaking. He motioned to the figure in the corner of the cell. “He drove me to it.”
“There’s no one there, grandpa.”
A pause.
“My tattoo’s gone. I had your name on my arm. It’s gone.”
Emily’s eyes welled up: the grandfather she’d loved was nothing more than a shell. She allowed the nurse to lead her out of the padded room.
“He was suicidal.”
The old man smiled, recalling the hollow look in the eyes of the man from the first of March, who’d ignored him like so many others. Nothing more than a victim of irrational, blinding fury.
“Yeah. I know.”