The Madman's Three Wishes

There once was a genie trapped in a bottle.

And there was also a man, trapped in his mind.

To all who passed by that little antique shop, the bottle in which the genie lay appeared not particularly interesting or very well extraordinary.

To all who walked the stretches of corridor of the institution in which the madman lay jailed, he looked to be very much insane. The man remained in his proper asylum and the genie remained in his altogether amiable antique shop, non-prospective and unsold.

Whatever their predicament, they were two different beings trapped in the wrong world.

One day, a doctor of the institution, who had also coincidentally taken care of the man of the asylum, passed by the pleasant antique shop. He walked the aisles to find the very uninteresting bottle and decided it a fine thing to place flowers in. So, the genie had finally been purchased and brought along to the asylum.

The doctor returned to check on the man of the asylum, carrying his shopping bag with him, and unexpectedly fell to the floor next to the man’s cell. He had passed by means of a heart attack. The man, seeing the bottle so very near to him, decided to get ahold of it so as to possibly break it and take a shard to kill himself with and rid himself of his jail. Instead, at the last moment before the bottle shattered upon the floor, the genie appeared. It grinned and happily asked, “Three wishes, sir?”

The man, seeing an even greater opportunity to rid himself of his cell, thought over all the possibilities. However, the nurses, he knew, would come soon to check up on him, so his clock (so to say) was ticking downwards at an alarming rate.

Feeling very rushed, he mistakenly made his first wish, “I wish I knew the exact thing to wish for.”

An idea popped into his head, then another.

“I wish I had more time!”

Nothing happened, but the genie grinned cruelly in the sport of it all.

“I wish I was cured of my insanity!”

At once, he opened his eyes, for he had been holding them tightly shut in fear that he’d ruin it all somehow. Instead, all he saw was a concerned female nurse enter his sanctuary of whitewashed walls and check for the fallen doctor’s pulse. Seeing the doctor dead, she turned to the only witness, the man.

The man, however, was uncooperative, and instead was keening and wailing, “It didn’t work!”

Alarmed, the nurse took a few steps back and inquired, “Excuse me, sir?” She had thought he had been sedated, for he had stared at the now empty bottle with a corpse’s expression in his eyes. Upon hearing his cries, she realized that this madman was very much conscious, and also a threat to her well-being.

“I saw a genie, and wished three wishes fairly! He cheated! Unfair! He cheated!”

“Of course,” She remarked drily, “And whatever did you wish for?” She took another step back.

“To know what to wish for, obviously.”

“Ah, and what where your final two?”

“I wished to have more time.”

“Of course,” she soothed, not particularly sympathetic, “You’ll have all the time in the world to stay in the center for as long as you need to recover.”

“That’s not what I meant,” He sniffed and added triumphantly, “And anyways, I’m cured of my illness now!”

“Oh is that so? And what made you think that?”
“The genie told me so!”

“Really? And what madness were you cured of?”

“I was a notorious liar, but I can swear I’m telling the truth!”

“A… genie?”

“Yes, from that bottle, over there.”

There was a lull into silence, and the nurse finally took up enough courage to repeat, “So a genie, eh?”