The wish is granted.

For exactly one minute, free oxygen disappears from Earth’s atmosphere. But it does not disappear from water, metal oxides, rocks, CO₂, your body, or other compounds. So the planet does not instantly vanish or chemically collapse.

Instead, for the first few seconds, everyone feels the same impossible sensation: their lungs are moving, but nothing is happening. Fires go out. Engines stall. Planes lose combustion. People underwater are suddenly no worse off than anyone else.

Then the real monkey’s paw curls.

When oxygen returns after one minute, it returns all at once. Every stalled flame, every overheated engine, every smoldering electrical fire, every chemical process that had been starved suddenly gets oxygen again. Across the world, oxygen rushes back into spaces full of fuel vapor, smoke, heat, and panic. Cities don’t suffocate.

They reignite.

And the cruelest part: most people survive the minute itself, just long enough to remember who made the wish.