For Halloween 2024.
I
You roll over to try and get comfortable, but no matter how hard you try, the wood feels solid and firm on your back. Trying to lie on your arm isn't any more helpful either.
You think back to when you found the genie in a bottle. That was, how many years ago? You've lost count. A worm crawls across your toes. You flick it away. You think that those would all be gone by now; nothing left to eat.
The first wish had been easy. One billion dollars. One billion is a big number, bigger than most people realize. One million seconds? A little less than two weeks. But one billion seconds? That was a little less than 32 years. You wonder if you've been in this box that long. Feels like it sometimes.
The second wish was something you've wanted since high school. Your skull itches and you absent-mindedly flick a beetle away. Your second wish was to be able to sleep uninterrupted. You were tired of your teachers trying to wake you up in class, or your parents trying to wake you up on Monday morning. That was probably why you were here now, you realize.
You're not really sure how your arms and legs still work, figuring they're just long thin bones now. You sigh and try to get comfortable and sleep for the millionth time. Things would be a lot better if it weren't for that third wish, you decide, yet again. Not only is there a big difference between a million and a billion, but you figured out, when you first started to decompose, that there was a big difference between eternal youth and what you wished for.
Man, how you wish you hadn't wished for immortality.
II
Ricky Dismock walked down the road on Halloween night, smirking. His bag was filled with candy of all sorts, and he had already eaten a lot of it.
He turned down another street and went up to the first house. Oh, boy! Another bowl on the front porch. Ricky walked up to it and turned it upside down into his bag, leaving the bowl empty. Then he quickly skirted back to the street.
A few houses down, the porch light was on, so he knocked on the door. An older lady opened it. "Trick or Treat!" Ricky declared, hoping for some good king-sized candy bars. What he got instead were pieces of black licorice. As soon as the lady shut the door, Ricky made a disgusted face. He poured out the nasty black licorice all over her yard, and knocked over one of her Halloween decorations on his way past.
The night went on like this for a while, until he came to a large brown house. Like other houses before, this one had its treats on a small table outside in the driveway. It was a tray of brownies, with a sign over saying: "Warning! Please only take ONE!" Ricky scoffed and grabbed the whole tray anyway. Perhaps he would return the glass pan later. Perhaps not, he didn't care either way.
That night he went home and feasted. Reese's Peanut butter Cups, Snickers, Milky Ways, and, of course, the whole tray of brownies. It wasn't until later in the night when he was asleep that his stomach started to bother him.
He awoke in a cold sweat, and promptly turned over in bed and vomited all over the floor. Perhaps I may have overdone it on the candy, he thought. He stumbled into the bathroom and collapsed on the floor. Did some of the candy have drugs in it? he thought.
A half hour later he still wasn't feeling better, but really had to use the toilet. He struggled up and used it, only to discover that his pee was a blue color. He had heard of that before-if you put methylene blue in a cookie or some other treat, in small amounts it was harmless, and would turn a person's urine a blueish color.
As his stomach seized up again and he fell to the floor, he had two other horrifying thoughts. The first was that while in small amounts methylene blue was harmless, in larger amounts it was actually quite poisonous. You should never eat more than one snack spiked with it.
His second thought, as his eyes fluttered closed, was: The brownies.
III
James smiled and raised a glass of champagne to himself. He was finally done!
Alone in his office late at night, he drank down the glass and set it down on his desk. Proudly he looked at his creation: a large metal modem, about the size of a large car. Wires of all different colors ran across the outside of it, sometimes haphazardly, sometimes nice and ordered. He had worked hard for over a decade on this machine, a machine that was able to turn time backwards.
Soon, he would be able to use it to go and visit his childhood. He relished in the thought.
NO! the universe screamed at him. He ignored it.
His first stop would most likely be his high school, see the girl he had had a crush on again. And then after that, perhaps his college days. Visit where he had worked as a custodian for a year while studying to become a technician.
You don't understand-Time wants to move on-I want to move past this moment- the universe tried its best to get James to realize his mistake, but he was too giddy to realize something was horribly, terribly wrong.
But before his high school, and his college, and any of that past-James stuff, he would need to do a smaller test run. Just to see if it would even work. About one minute or two into the past would do, he decided. He flipped some switches and calibrated the energy flow.
Standing triumphant, James stood on the platform and held the button in his hand that would run the machine. The whole universe would go back in time, resetting everything to earlier.
That's the thing! Your memories of this happening! They will also be- but the universe didn't get a chance to finish before James hit the button. Time jumped back exactly 87.38 seconds. . . .
James smiled and raised a glass of champagne to himself. He was finally done!
Alone in his office late at night, he drank down the glass and set it down on his desk. Proudly he looked at his creation: a large metal modem, about the size of a large car. Wires of all different colors ran across the outside of it, sometimes haphazardly, sometimes nice and ordered. He had worked hard for over a decade on this machine, a machine that was able to turn time backwards.
Soon, he would be able to use it to go and visit his childhood.
He relished in the thought.
BONUS STORY
It was a dark night in October, and two old friends were talking outside the bar, smoking their cigarettes.
"Have I ever told you of the Darkness Man?" one asks his friend.
A chill runs through the air. "No, you haven't."
"He, or it, is the most terrifying monster in all creation. It can grant you one wish-but at a cost. The trick is knowing how to summon it."
"And how do you do that?"
"Aye, for that you need to wait for a full moon. Then you must wait until midnight, stand in front of a mirror, and chant its name three times."
"Okay."
"And after each time you say its name, you must turn around once. Clockwise, then counter clockwise, and then counterclockwise again."
"Sure."
"After you've said its name, turned, said its name again, turned, and then said it a third time and turned, you must balance on one foot, and repeat the sacred mantra: 'Oh please don't take my life, I simply ask for a wish.' Then, you must hop to the other foot. Then you have to say its name backwards eight times, all while closing your non-dominant eye."
"Uh, sure."
"Now here's the important part-after you said its name eight times backwards, you must state what your wish is, but it has to be in iambic pentameter. If your wish is any longer than the length of a Shakespearean sonnet, then you have to do this on a Tuesday. Otherwise, any Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, or Monday will work, unless it's the first Monday of the month, in which case you'll need a live chicken."
" . . . "
"Ok, so once you've stated your wish, you have to be sure that you don't get your soul sucked out. Which is why doing so in front of a mirror is so important, because if things get out of hand you can always call on Bloody Mary or Candyman to come help you out. Just summon one though, otherwise Bloody Mary and Candyman will end up fighting each other instead of holding back the Darkness Man. Also, having a tophat may be helpful with this next part, because you have to pin it down. Depending on the day of the month you'll need a different hue. If the day is divisible by 6 or 8, then you'll definitely want a purple tophat, although if it looks too blue than you're out of luck. It also helps to do this 5.7 meters away from an ancient Indian burial ground, especially if someone by the name of Flying Bird is buried there, although that always isn't a requirement."
"Hey, uh, I just realized I have to go..." The man began to inch away slowly.
"Okay, so if you can't find an ancient Indian Burial ground nearby, that's fine, but only if your first name starts with the letters A-H. Last names may count too, but only if your mother happened to be the second child and you the first. Otherwise your great-great-grandfather on your dad's side should have immigrated from a foreign country. Now, the Darkness Man usually doesn't try to attack people who have a middle name with a prime-number number of letters in it, but-"
But by that time he was alone, talking to himself.
