Not Your Contract
Fiction
If you could have one wish, what would it be?
Really, consider for a moment. Would it be the riches of the underworld: diamonds and rubies and gold? I could give that all to you. But when you say, “I wish,” you do not bind yourself to your own contract, no. You bind yourself to mine.
All the riches under the earth will be yours — the emeralds, the silver, the sapphires. All the riches under the earth. All. Do you know what “all” really means?
Because it means the bones of billions, trillions, the graves of those not turned yet to dust down six feet under. Oil, the blood of Mother Earth in her slumber; coal, leftover wounds that her children left behind. You may find yourself with jewels up to the ears, but it may be difficult to spend them with lungs filled with oil, a body rotted to bone. This was your wish.
But if you did not wish for all the riches of the earth, what would you wish for? Would you restore someone from beyond the grave: a lover, a parent, a friend? I could bring them back for you. But it is not your contract, it is mine. You must remember.
For I may bring your loved one back to life. I will replace their flesh, their breath, their memory. But I cannot keep them here on this plane. They are not meant to be here.
That flesh that I replaced will rot away. It will not take to their bones. Skin will shrink away from the face, all bared teeth and bulging eyes. They will want to die, but I will not let them. This was your wish.
What else could you wish for? Would you like to be a Superman, to fly with the birds and mingle with humanity? I could give that all to you. But I think you know by now that this is not your contract to write. There is a price for everything.
You can fly as high as you would like — are you a bird, a plane? Faster than a speeding bullet, and all that, of course. You will be free. But you will not be human. Not anymore.
Feathers will sprout from your arms; you will lose your teeth, your speech, your nose to a beak. To fly is to be free. To fly is not to be human. You humans wear shackles around your ankles to keep you on this Earth. You are not meant to leave it. This was your wish.
What else could there possibly be? Don’t be ashamed; I have heard every iteration of selfish want and cruel vengeance. Nothing could faze me. What else? World peace? An end to hunger? I have never been asked for that. I couldn’t do that if I tried. You humans hate and fear too much for me to fix the world that you have broken.
What else could you ask for?
You ask me to rewrite your contracts. You plead, “Mercy, mercy, I did not know what I was doing.” You drown in oil, choke on feathers, rotting flesh and greed. You did not write this contract, and you cannot change it. How many times did I warn you? How many times could I warn you?
I think I might have been human once. I wanted to fix your world, your broken, filthy, stupid world, full of broken, filthy, stupid people. I might have been kind, or generous, or lenient. I might have let you rewrite your contract; I might have waived the price of your wish. I might have. I do not. Not anymore.
I have been your wishing well, your Holy Grail, your shooting star. For eons, I was the pit without a bottom, the voice with no lungs. Your ancestors came to me, and they named me wish-granter, Satan, djinn. I did not ask for this. But you still ask me for things. I am sick and tired of you asking me for things.
If I had one wish, what would it be?
Why, certainly, to be free. But don’t you know? I don’t write my own contract. I only write yours.
