Read My Story or Rabid Wolves Will Eat Your Soul.
At the time, I thought I would have been a fool not to accept the prize I had won. I hadn’t entered any contests, and I had no idea how these people decided that I was to win this all-expense paid trip. Turned out that I, along with twelve others, happened to be the beneficiaries of an eccentric old millionaire who had recently passed away. In his will there was left a significant fund that was to be used to send thirteen random telephone customers of MCI on a trip to see the Pyramids of Egypt. All I knew at the time was that I was going to Egypt for free. Naturally, I accepted this rare opportunity to see one of civilization’s most ancient wonders.
In any case, things didn’t go as well as I had anticipated. At the airport, there was an excruciatingly long delay, as some nutcase felt the need to call in a bomb threat. Everyone was evacuated. The suspect, a one-eyed man with a peg leg and bushy black beard, was found in the bathroom near the El-Al terminal with a cell phone. Security officers promptly took him away as he was flailing his arms wildly shouting something about jihad.
A solid four hours later the “all-clear” announcement was given. Thankfully, the announcer on the P.A. system said the threat was just that: a threat. No bombs were found, and business returned to normal. Relieved to finally hear the good news, I walked back into the airport. I then wandered over to the nearest Food King to grab a sandwich before the long flight.
“What can I get for ya?” The greasy kid behind the counter looked like he had been working at the over-priced airport café for far too long.
“I’ll take a chicken sandwich with a coke,” I replied. I couldn’t wait to get out of this place.
“All out of chicken, man,” the kid told me, in a pseudo-caring tone. Clearly, he was not trying to sound as apathetic as he truly was.
“Make it a burger then.” I tapped my foot impatiently. With all the delays, my flight was scheduled to leave in twenty minutes. I hadn’t even met up with the group yet, or checked in to let the MCI sponsors know that I had arrived.
“No burgers either, just used the last one and the others are all frozen. Gonna take a few minutes to thaw ‘em and cook ‘em.”
I looked down at his nametag. Fittingly, his name was Joe. I laughed, and apparently Joe thought that I was laughing at his sad excuse for a café.
“Look man, I’m sorry. We got tofu burgers, how bout it?” Joe was beginning to sound like he was paid on commission.
“Nevermind,” I mumbled, and walked away. I glanced down at my ticket. I picked up the pace and hurried toward terminal B.
At first, I thought that I had stumbled into the wrong terminal. There were groups of people holding signs and chanting something to the effect of “No more cuts!” or something like that. After asking a few questions to several of the protestors, I surmised that this scene was that of a strike by the employees of United Airlines. I glanced back at my ticket. Funny thing, I thought: my ticket had United Airlines printed under the MCI logo. Bomb threat, no food, and now a strike at my terminal: things were going from bad to worse. In any case, I found my group in the corner of the terminal at a booth with a massive MCI banner overhead. I glanced down at my ticket again.
“Can I help you, sir?” I looked up and saw a short black man in a gray suit smiling at me.
Definitely a PR guy, I thought. “Yeah, I’m Ty…Am I in the right place? For the Egypt tour, I mean?”
“You sure are,” he replied as he shook my hand. His smile grew into a wide grin. “We’re happy to have you here. My name is Howard. Since you’re the last one, and we’re already running behind, we’re going to get started right away. This way, please.”
He led me to a circle of chairs behind the booth where I saw several MCI and airport employees sitting. Near them were twelve others, much like myself, dressed in street clothes, each carrying several bags of luggage. I looked around, and I took a seat next to a stocky bald man who looked like a representative of the airport.
Howard stood in the center of the circle. He explained the details of the trip and the circumstances we were in due to the United Airlines strike. He said MCI had negotiated with CheapJetz, a value-priced airline, to be a “backup” in case of this United strike that had been looming for days prior. In any case, we were finally told that we had to move to the CheapJetz terminal, which was clear across the airport.
By the time we arrived, I had been in the airport for a good six hours. No sooner than I had seen the CheapJetz sign above the entrance were we ushered to the luggage drop-off and then onto the plane. I looked at my ticket again. I was supposed to find seat A13. I slowly walked to my seat, which happened to be in the middle row. This, of course, meant that I would have no window. I should have expected as much, with the day I’d been having. I sat down, remembering the tofu burger at the Food King and immediately realized I was still hungry. Soon after, I heard a voice at the front of the plane. The voice was that of the flight attendant, and she began explaining the usual flight procedures. I noticed she was the only attendant.
So this is why they call themselves CheapJetz, I thought. I looked above me and noticed that each seat had its own parachute kit on the ceiling. Apparently, CheapJetz wasn’t so sure of their aircraft. I turned to the front of the plane at the woman talking, and then I began to read my magazine.
Finally we took off, and were on our way to Egypt. We had a stop in New York, and then a stop in Amsterdam, then in Istanbul, and finally we were to arrive in Cairo. We were delayed in both New York and in Amsterdam, but the refueling at Istanbul went off without a hitch. Strangely enough, we were to keep the same plane the whole way through.
I was sound asleep, somewhere over Jordan, when the bomb exploded. Immediately the shock jolted me awake, and I remembered the peg leg bomb threat guy. I looked behind me and saw the back of the plane, or what would have been the back of the plane, had it not been torn off in the blast. I immediately grabbed the parachute above me, strapped it on in the confusion and madness, and prepared to jump out the back. I saw the man next to me do the same, and signaled to him to jump first. The roar was deafening as air rushed into the plane and depressurized the cabin. I grabbed the oxygen mask that had deployed above me and put it on. The captain had rushed out of the cockpit and told everyone to bail out. We had apparently reached a safe altitude for jumping, and wouldn’t have much time before we hit the ground. I glanced back at the man next to me who was still preparing to jump. He moved toward the back of the plane, holding on to seats to keep himself steady as his long hair whipped his face. Suddenly he jumped, but at the same time the plane lurched, and his head hit the ceiling and he fell to the ground unconscious. He then rolled out the back of the plane, unconscious with no parachute deployed. I had little time to contemplate the fact that he was likely to hit the ground and die before regaining consciousness. I was just about to dive out the back myself when I noticed the captain was shouting for a parachute. A fire had broken out near the front of the plane and the extra parachutes had been consumed in flames. In all their glory, CheapJetz had provided everyone with parachutes except the captain and the crew. The captain realized this, and lunged toward me in an attempt to steal my parachute. He busted my face up pretty good, but I gave him a couple shots in the face and a kick in the arm and sent him flying out the back of the plane with a bloody lip. Seeing that, the flight attendant, who he had been having an affair with, screamed in a fit of rage. She looked around madly. Looking down, she saw an abandoned meal tray at the seat next to her. She grabbed the plastic fork from the plate and lunged at me in a spasm of bitter hatred. I did not want to use the secret dragon kick of the kung fu masters, but armed with such weaponry as this fork and as angry as she appeared, I was left with little choice. I wound up for the kill, and suddenly another fire broke right in front of me and the crazy woman went up like gasoline. She screamed, but still clawed at me with the fork.
“BWAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” I yelled as I sent her flaming body flying out the back of the plane. The rest of the passengers looked at me strangely, and then they celebrated my victory over evil. We all dove out of the plane just before it was consumed by a ball of fire. The wind scattered us in various directions, I floated to the ground alone. I saw the flaming wreckage of the plane in the night sky. I looked up to see if any other survivors were still on their way down. I saw something coming closer to me, and I squinted to see what it was in the darkness. As I did so, the falling shoe struck me square in the face, and sent me unconscious to the ground.
I woke up. The desert sun was beating down heavily upon me. I was covered in sand, and I assumed I was somewhere between Turkey and Egypt. I stood up, and jumped as I noticed what was lying next to me: a man in a pilot uniform with a busted arm and a bloody lip. I laughed, then I walked around a little and surveyed my surroundings. I walked back to the pilot, eager to find anything he might have that would aid me in my goal of survival. I looked down at him and noticed that a metal object of some sort that had been stuck in the sand had impaled him. I rolled the captain over and pulled out the object. It was a lamp of some sort. The lamp looked much like those old lamps that were the object of so many folk stories about genies and wishes and whatnot. As soon as I realized this, I compulsively rubbed the lamp, sarcastically thinking that a genie would be really nice to have at this point. To my surprise, the lamp sizzled and a genie popped out.
“Ho there!” exclaimed the smoke-like apparition. “I am the genie of the lamp, and you get three wishes!” He was tinted red in color, and had only a torso visible rising from the smoke. He had several tattoos on his arm, and wore a white turban. A golden earring hung from his left earlobe. He had a very slender face, with a small goatee at his chin.
“Excellent!” I replied. This was definitely a strange trip indeed. “So can I wish for more wishes? Or for that matter, more genies?”
“No, sorry…We’ve spent the last few millennia hammering out new legal standards on lamp-usage, due to the amount of loopholes that people have exploited. The last guy I had wanted immortality, and I was forced to oblige. That was some 4,000 years ago, and now he’s not looking so good, but can’t die. The poor guys tried to kill himself some eighteen times, and needless to say, he looks like hell.” The genie glanced at me to see if I had understood his warning.
“In other words, be careful what you wish for, eh?” I asked.
“You could put it that way. Just don’t piss me off and I’ll try not to make your life less than decent. There’s always a way to twist a wish around so that the owner of the lamp gets the short end of the stick. It’s the genie who holds the real power.” I always knew those guys would make great lawyers.
The genie continued. “Now listen, I don’t like you already. You look dumb and I have hot genie women waiting for me back in my lamp. Lets make this quick. What do you want?”
“Geez, you don’t allow much time for decision do you?” Of all the genies in the world, I had to get the cocky one.
“No, and if you give me that tone again I will make your wishes suck. You have been warned. Now hurry up, until you make your wishes I can’t go back to my lamp.”
“Ah, so if I don’t trust you not to twist the wording of my wishes around so that I get the shaft, I could just keep this here lamp and with it, you?” I was beginning to like the idea of making this genie’s life really bad.
The genie seemed to be struck by this, and didn’t seem to like the idea at all. He tried to downplay the scenario. “Na, I don’t think that’d be a problem. I’d just wait until you died and then I’d be free. What’s another few decades of waiting out here in the real world when I’ve been around for at least 6,000 years?”
“Fair enough. I will make my wishes at a later time. But first, tell me how to get out of this desert,” I demanded. “Where’s the nearest town?” I asked.
“Why should I tell you? If you want to know, you should wish for geographical knowledge of this region. No freebies for you.” The genie folded his arms and stroked his bushy mustache.
I thought about what he had said. I didn’t dare to wish for this “geographical knowledge” for fear that the genie would flood my mind with so many facts that I would go insane or something. I didn’t trust this shifty genie.
“No,” I quipped. “Tell me the way to the nearest town or I fill your lamp with sand and bury your ‘hot genie women’ with desert.”
The genie reeled. “Ok, ok, head that way. About twenty miles.” He pointed to the south, in the opposite direction of the plane wreckage, toward a ridge. “Don’t be hurting my females, now.”
I walked toward the ridge carrying the lamp, the genie giving me a cold stare. He was silent the entire time. I looked at the bottom of the ridge, and saw the charred remains of what I guessed to be a flight attendant. I looked at the genie, and asked his name.
“My real name is beyond your comprehension in both length and complexity. You can call me Al-Kalama.”
“How about I call you ‘genie?’” With that, he rolled his eyes at me.
We walked about 5 miles or so, and I realized I needed some food and water or I would end up dying. By then, night had fallen, and I asked the genie for some help in locating food.
“Haha!” he laughed. “You people and your ‘food.’ Genie life is pretty good.” He waved his hand and a martini appeared. He sipped on it.
“Hey, pull some food out of the air for me too!” I exclaimed.
“Maybe you should wish for some food. That’d be a good idea. Yeah…sounds like a very good idea to me.” The genie was pouring on the sarcasm.
I grumbled under my breath and contemplated my options. Finally, thirst overcame me.
Almost impulsively, I said “I wish for some water, and some food too, enough to last me a week, and the means to transport it.” I wanted to cover every possible angle.
“Ok, that’s three wishes there: food, water, and transportation. Sorry, can’t do it in one wish. Please re-word your wish.” I hate genies.
I grumbled again. Why had I wished for that stuff? I could have just wished to be in the city immediately, thus negating the need for food for the journey. I could have wished to be home, thus negating the need to go to the city. Think big, I thought to myself.
“I wish to be at home,” I said.
Instantly, I was in the middle of a dense forest.
“Um, this isn’t home,” I told the genie.
“Of course it is!” he replied, grinning slightly. “It is your home in the year 1331!” He began laughing wildly.
“I wish to undo that wish!” I shouted.
Instantly, I was back in the desert, and I was still thirsty. Now I only had one wish left.
The genie looked at me, and tilted his head to the side a bit. “Ready to be done with this now?”
“Sure,” I said. “After I break your lamp on the side of a rock.” I threw the lamp at a nearby boulder. It bounced harmlessly off the rock and fell into the sand. The genie was laughing wildly.
“This is good fun! You are really ignorant, aren’t you?” The genie was still laughing.
I walked over to the lamp and picked it up. An idea suddenly struck me.
“I wish you were a human: a mortal human.” The genie had no way out of this one. I was going to bury this guy in the sand.
Instantly the apparition faded, and Al-Kalama was standing next to me. He was furious.
“Time to die!” He bellowed, and ran at me almost foaming at the mouth.
I grabbed the nearest rock and tried to bash him on the head. He parried the blow, and put me in a wicked headlock and threw me to the ground. Ex-genies and their martial arts skills are indeed a force to be reckoned with. At this point, I did what any sane person who had just unleashed a kung fu genie on himself would do: I ran like a madman. I turned around back toward the ridge and ran back toward the plane wreckage. The ex-genie took off after me. He chased me for a couple hundred yards, and was gaining on me fast. I glanced behind me now and then, trying to outrun him with every ounce of energy I had. The ridge was coming closer, and so was the genie. I thought that if I got back to that dead pilot I could use my abandon parachute to tie this guy up. I glanced behind me again, and my head suddenly hit the ground with a thud. I had tripped over the burnt corpse of the flight attendant, and I felt blood rushing to my head. I looked up in time to see the sole of a sandal coming down on my face. Everything went black.
I sat up and felt a terrible aching in my head. I noticed I was back in Ancient History class. Stunned, I looked around. Wow, I thought, quite a dream for just a quick doze in class. The professor was discussing the origins of genie lamp legends. He had a peg leg. The clock hit 1:13, and the bell rang. I left class, my head spinning. I made a mental note: not to trust my peg-legged professor, and not to fly CheapJetz or trust any name brand that uses “z” instead of “s” when making a word plural.