The Djinn Incident
by Nicholas Merlin Karpuk

“What the hell are you doing?” Cindy said.

“It’s a moat,” Billy answered. He didn’t stop shoveling.

“It’s a hole.”

Billy took a moment to wipe off his gigantic forehead. Sweat spread in patches across his gray tank top and caked dirt covered the rolled up ends of his blue jeans. A child prodigy with more speed than sense, Billy handled summer vacations poorly, and believed all answers lay in organized projects.

“I worked it out. I can have a moat with koi fish and a bridge. It’ll be fed from the line put in to run the bird bath. I worked out all the schematics and required materials on my laptop.” Billy reached into his pocket and pulled out a small remote control. With one button click, a laptop on a stump nearby hummed to life.

Billy’s ambitions centered on the largest tree in a spacious backyard closed in on three sides by perfectly even fencing. Strengthened by the noonday heat, the pungent scent of fresh cut grass permeated the air.

“Why would you need a moat?”

“As a preliminary line of defense, obviously.”

She eyed the hole suspiciously.

He stabbed a finger in the direction of the laptop. “Double check my work if you’re so incredulous.”

“You know what? I think I will.”

Cindy and Billy hated each other in theory. As the head cheerleader, 4.3 honor student, and potential valedictorian, she should intensely dislike her pissy, malcontent, ten-year-old sibling pulling in mediocre grades at a school for the gifted, yet somehow they always ended up spending time together to keep the argument going.

She put her hair back in a ponytail with a scrunchy, a pre-concentration ritual, and poured through the pages of diagrams. “This is actually pretty cool. The renovations on the tree house would actually make it more stable than our real house. How are you going to pay for the concrete?”

“Dad said he’d cover it if I kept it under the estimate.”

She made a soft noise of approval. “Does a tree house really need a buttress?”

“It looks tacky if you half-ass it.”

Cindy sauntered back to the hole, leaning over to get a better look at the massive progress in the width and depth of the moat. Powerful, wiry muscle moved in Billy’s arms at a regular, rapid rhythm. Years of pet projects provided him the fortitude of a steam engine.

The shovel stopped with a clink, jarring Billy so badly he stumbled into the dirt. Billy jumped out of the hole and Cindy immediately took several steps backwards, eyes wide, remembering the fiasco with the gas line when Billy was eight.

“I thought you knew where all the utilities were,” Cindy said.

“I did, jackass, look around you.”

Tiny yellow flags decorated the yard, flapping in the light breeze.

When no leak sounded and no liquids spewed, Cindy jumped into the hole and began feeling around the dirt by the shovel’s tip.

“Oh come on. You are absolutely screwing with me!” She climbed out of the hole holding a dirt encrusted Arabic style lamp.

Billy laughed. “Rub it and see.”

“If you’re messing with me I’m going to beat you until your ears bleed.”

“God, do your friends know how scary violent you are? Come on, give it a quick, dirty little hand job, and see what jumps out at you.”

“Do your friends know what a creepy little pervert you are?” she fired back.

“Trick question. I happen to be a troubled loner with few if any ties.”

With a melodramatic flair, Cindy gave the dirty lamp a single sharp rub.

A two-story tall cliché burst out in a swirl of smoke, all baggy red pants and a long sash, his head bald, his facial hair styled towards the sinister.

Billy rolled his eyes. “Oh this is just retarded.”

Cindy looked up at the genie and asked, “Really?”

“Oh yeah,” answered the genie.

“With the wishes and everything?”

“You got it.”

“Restrictions?”

“You get three, nothing that destroys me or my home, and no wishing for me to give you more wishes.”

“Hey, you added the one they used in that movie.”

“I’m certain I don’t know the Disney production you’re referring to.”

Cindy crossed her arms, bobbing the lamp thoughtfully. “I guess I need to make this count.”

Billy coughed politely. She kept thinking. He coughed less politely. The thinking persisted. He coughed rudely.

“Do you need me to slap you on the back?” she said.

He walked up and wrote something on the pad of paper he kept in his back pocket at all times. Tearing off a sheet, he turned the message towards her.

Cindy read. “Oh you’re good.” She looked up at the genie. “Genie of the lamp, I wish for you to locate and deliver unto me another functioning genie lamp.”

“You little bastard!” The genie yelled indignantly, glaring at Billy. “You get away from her, no helping!”

“The lady gave you an order, Big Poof.”

With a sigh, the genie spread his arms, and a similar lamp dusted in sand appeared on the lawn. Billy picked it up and rubbed it. Another genie of similar stature appeared, the main differences being blue pants and a different configuration of sinister face grooming.

“Amir,” he said with a nod.

“Rashid, been a while.”

To his own blue pants genie Billy said, “Genie, I wish you would remove any restrictions regarding number of wishes from Cindy Olson’s genie.”

“You little bastard!”

“Is that a no?”

The second genie made a similar wish granting gesture, and the first genie groaned.

“I’ll have what he’s having,” Cindy said.

“You can’t say stuff like that to a genie; you’ll get screwed by an overly literal interpretation. Christ, crack a book once in a while.”

“Fine, fine. Genie, I wish you would remove any restrictions regarding number of wishes from Billy Olson’s genie.”

And so it was done.

“So,” Billy said, “what do you want to do today?”

---

A lightning storm the size of Texas tore across the blighted, dead earth, funnel clouds swirling and writhing as far as the limits of the horizon. Billy approached the meeting point clad in several hundred feet of armor forged from the flesh of cherubim and mechanical engineering designed in the 27th century, all powered by a link with a dying star.

Reaching the specified point, he stopped and watched the army of fifty ton battle elephants approach with Cindy riding on the back of a saber tooth tiger, her skin glowing with the power of every soul purged in the great wars.

When the tiger came within speaking distance, Cindy jumped off and waved to her brother. “Hey.”

“Hey yourself.”

“So how goes it?”

Billy sighed, leaning against the control panel of his war machine. “Pretty boring. Turns out I’m almost entirely goal oriented. How about you?”

“Ditto.”

“Still, an eye opening two days it’s been.”

“Yeah, I guess. I do like the tiger.”

The regarded each other silently.

“Wanna put it all back?” she asked.

“Yes, yes I do.”

They both pulled out their lamps and made a series of specifically worded wishes.

---

Billy leaned on his shovel, looking at the hole in the lawn, the sweat matting his sandy blonde hair to his large skull. Standing arms akimbo beside him, Cindy laughed.

“You should have asked them to finish the moat.”

“Wouldn’t that be kinda missing the point?”

“Huh. Good call, good call.”