Jonah sat on his bed, staring intently down at the unplugged table lamp sitting square in the middle of the floor of his dorm room. It was a fancy, antique lamp with a mahogany body and a crinkled, concave shade. It was a gift from his roommate Glenn, who claimed to have got it off an antique dealer who claimed to have got it off a travelling salesman who said never to mind where he had gotten it. Regardless of the where the lamp originally came from, however, the salesman, dealer, and Glenn all apparently agreed on one thing: it was magic, and contained the spirit of an ancient genie who would grant any who rubbed the lamp three wishes. Glenn, alleging to have already received his own wishes, bequeathed the lamp to Jonah and left on an "extended vacation" from which Jonah imagined he was unlikely to return.
Jonah was skeptical, obviously. Who wouldn't be? But he supposed there could be no harm in having a go of it, and so he set the lamp in the middle of the room, bent down, and gave it a good rubbing. This appeared to have no effect. Jonah waited. He waited for several moments. He had been waiting for almost a minute when all of a sudden the lamp continued to do nothing interesting at all. Jonah sighed. He had, against his own better judgment, gotten his hopes up and been let down. He was about to bend down to put the lamp away when suddenly the room was awash with bright green light and Jonah was thrown into the wall against which his bed rested.
The flash had knocked out the ceiling light, leaving the room bathed only in the eerie green glow. As Jonah watched, an ethereal figure rose up out of the lamp. It seemed to be composed of purple smoke, and was vaguely humanoid with a slender frame, garbed in smoky silken veils that covered its face and chest. The genie looked down at Jonah, and Jonah looked up at the genie, and finally it spoke:
"Jonah Brown," the genie boomed, in a voice barely human, "you have summoned me from my tastefully carved antique prison! As an expression of gratitude for this fleeting breath of freedom I shall grant you . . ." the genie paused for dramatic effect, ". . . one wish!"
Jonah's face fell, his awe and excitement quickly diminishing in the face of his greed. "That's bullshit! It's supposed to be three wishes!"
"Don't push it, kid!" said the genie, its voice filling the entire room, shaking the very foundations and setting Jonah's teeth on edge. "I know you got the lamp from the other guy, and you're goddamn lucky that I'm giving you any wishes at all! Now shut the fuck up and make your wish!"
Jonah was shaken, but he persisted nonetheless. "It should really be three."
"Oh, fine!" the genie roared. "Fine, fine fine! Three wishes for his majesty, who thinks he knows more about the genie rules than an actual genie, and who didn't even go to the effort of finding the lamp in the first place! You know most people don't just have wishes fall into their laps! They have to work hard scouring dangerous middle-eastern ruins and boring antique shops! They do constructive things with their wishes, like travelling the world and doing good! You know the amount of entitled, shallow saps who somehow find themselves in possession of my lamp honestly sickens me! It's because of people like you that I sometimes think of getting out of this business!"
Jonah tapped his chin and watched the genie fume. "So for my first wish," he said, "I want to be beautiful."
Jonah was a rather plain boy, in all respects. His face was on the worse end of unremarkable, his straw-like hair was stiff and flat, and he had a thin, bony frame. He had never been satisfied with his appearance, and had always wanted to change it, but he had been unable to afford plastic surgery and in any event didn't trust it. He spent no small amount of time fretting about the doors that his less than tasteful appearance left closed for him.
But when the genie waved its hands in a sarcastic show of mystical power, all of that changed. His features shifted, becoming softer and better-proportioned, with large, long-lashed eyes and a well-formed jaw. His hair flowed lustrously, lengthening slightly and cascading around his new features. His body, which had previously been scrawny, maintained its lithe proportions but abandoned its skeletal hardness for smooth, supple flesh and subtle muscle tone. Throughout the process Jonah felt a pleasing warmth radiate from the affected regions, and when he stood up from his bed and ran to the mirror over his desk he was absolutely delighted with the results. When he turned back to the genie, he was grinning from ear to ear.
