The Jinni awoke to a blinding California sun and the sound of an aggravated actor making a ruckus.
The Jinni got up and wandered to the sliding glass door in the kitchen, beyond which was a fenced-in patio and a spot of gravel not quite the size of the bathroom. The lamp and its velvet shade lay covered in gravel dust.
The actor caught his breath, hovering over the lamp. Laying by his feet was a small hammer. The kind that came in the small novice toolkits they sell around the holidays for renters and first-time home-buyers.
“What are you doing?” asked the Jinni.
Out of breath, the actor turned to him, “Trying to destroy it.”
“Uh-huh.” He leaned on the door frame, “and did you think that maybe if you did that, it would have destroyed me too? Or left me stranded in the hell dimension on the other side?”
“So not a metaphor. I knew it!”
The Jinni rolled his eyes.
“This thing is indestructible! The fabric isn’t even torn! The fucking thing isn’t even scratched!”
“I know. Look, I made a deal,” he took a breath to let his next words sink in, “and I’m not getting out of it, and I’m okay with it.”
“How? How are you okay with this?” He turned around to kick the thing, and it bounced off the wooden fence. Hurting his foot more than the lamp, the actor only grew more pissed off.
Resigned to his anger, he picked up the lamp and tried to pass it off to the Jinni, “Here.”
The Jinni didn’t flinch. “Yeah, I can’t touch that thing… Like, physically cannot. It won’t let me. I can’t be my own master.”
“What? Are you kidding me? Ugh! What kind of fucked up supernatural shit is this?” He groaned and lost all energy. His shoulders slumped, and he dragged himself inside. He set the lamp back on the end table with a bang, and he collapsed at the kitchen table.
The Jinni closed the sliding glass door and looked at him in mild amusement.
“Is there nothing I can do?” The actor looked up at the Jinni helplessly.
The Jinni nodded, and sat at the kitchen table with him. “You’re already doing it. You’re being my friend.”
“That’s not enough.”
“It has to be.”
The actor squinted at him for a hard moment and said in a goofy voice, “‘You know how you sound? Like a man who’s trying to convince himself of something he doesn’t even believe in his heart.’”
The Jinni said, “Isn’t that from a movie?”
The actor groaned, and said in a whimper, “Casablanca. You liked Casablanca.”
“That’s right!” He continued in his best Bogart impression. “Of all the djinn joints, in all the towns, in all the worlds, you found mine.” He gestured to the lamp.
“Quit flirting! I know you play for the other team.”
“Huh?” The Jinni tilted his head.
“Ingrid Bergman?”
The Jinni’s eyes went soft and dreamy, “Yeah, she’s a babe- was. Alright, I’ll quit flirting with you.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
The actor asked, “Why the fuck are you trying to make me feel better?”
“Because, I know what it feels like. To feel powerless. Helpless. To have no choice on the outcome.”
“No choice? I don’t believe that for a second!”
“Well…”
“No. Shut up and listen!”
The Jinni shut up and listened, as he was commanded by the owner of the table lamp.
“You have to keep fighting. You can’t give up. No matter how dark it gets. You have to have hope. Even if it’s not me who gets you out of this, someday, somehow, you’ll find a way, but you have to believe there is a way!”
The Jinni felt something inside him change, and he nodded, knowing he had just been commanded by his only friend to endure the worst of all evils.
“Say something!”
“I couldn’t. You commanded me not to.”
The actor ripped his hands through his hair. “That’s a thing?”
“That’s a thing.” His tone was flat. “That’s why I love peanut butter. You said, ’You can’t not love peanut butter.’ So, I now love peanut butter.”
“Magick sucks!”
“Yeah. Pretty much. If I could have one wish- just one, it would be to be human, and to have died that way a long time ago. And Djinn magick can do that, go back in time and undo things like that- for other people. Not for Jinn though. That curse on that lamp is unbreakable. It’s the most intricate ritual I’ve ever seen. Other good people before you have tried, and failed, but we’ll find a way.”
“Okay,” he nodded, and quipped in his own best Bogart, “‘I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.’”
They gave each other sympathetic looks.
Two weeks later, while the actor was at a casting, his apartment was robbed. They took the Xbox, the controllers, and the flat screen. They took his coffee can filled with savings. They took his bike, his alarm clock, and his tablet. And they took his damn lamp.
