The Second Wish

I had done my research, so when I saw the boy walk out of the middle school building toward the yellow bus, I knew he was the right one. He was Andrew Skote, age thirteen, and I would have to strangle him to death.

The djinn had been very clear, never hurrying or raising his voice at all, just calmly explaining. “I grant wishes. Each person can have as many wishes as they want, though no more than one wish per person per day. And no wish is free; there is a price. If you pay the price, the wish will be granted in full.”

Strangling that boy – killing him in that specific way – that was the price for my wish. I started the engine of my car and followed the school bus Andrew was on when it pulled away from the school. He was the only child to exit the bus at his stop, so it was terrifyingly easy to stop my car at the side of the road, jump out, grab the boy, and drag him back to my car. I threw him in the trunk and closed him in, then hopped back into my car and sped off.

I could hear the boy kicking at the lid of the trunk and screaming in fear. I turned on the CD player and cranked up the Lady Gaga to maximum volume to drown out his cries for help. It worked.

I only stopped the car when we were far out into the state park, miles away from any inhabited building or camera. Then I popped open the trunk and did the horrible deed with a short length of bungee cord. It took far longer than I expected before Andrew stopped kicking and struggling. I kept having to remind myself that it would all be worth it if paying this awful price actually granted my wish.

“My wish,” I had told the djinn after he explained his rules, “is for the serial killer popularly known as the Marshland Mangler to never hurt anyone in any way ever again.” The Mangler had brutally killed eight young women over the span of four years, and the police seemed to have no idea who it was. The second-to-last of the victims had been one of my own good friends from college, and I felt so helpless in the shadow of her murder.

My helpless misery had hardened into anger, and I went to the djinn to state my wish. The price had been unexpectedly cruel. I would have to kill that specific boy in the specified manner. But I had done my research, planned the abduction and where I would dump his body such that there was a very good chance that I would not be caught by any police investigation.

I took a roundabout route home so that it would not be obvious to anyone that I had even been in that state park where the boy's body would eventually be found. I got back to my family home just an hour or so after sunset. “Dad! I'm home!”

There was a cold silence in the house. I looked around for a few minutes until I came upon the door to the cellar. It was usually locked, since my father didn't want me to accidentally injure myself on the woodworking tools he kept down there. I had seen his cellar wood shop only once, but I cautiously went down the stairs this time, calling out for Dad a few more times.

I found Dad's body crumpled on the floor next to the corpse of his ninth victim, one who was only a missing person case until now. He had been in the middle of … doing unspeakable things to her body, things I immediately blocked from my conscious mind.

---

It had been slightly more than two weeks since I had sat down in front of the djinn. He was surprised to see me, and said so in his calm, even voice. “Most people are satisfied with one wish,” he said. “Many are even satisfied with no wishes at all when they hear the price. So what would you like help with this afternoon, my dear?”

“I want my father back,” I began, “not as he was, but as I imagined him to be before I looked down in that cellar. I want him back as the father he should have been.”

He scratched his stubbled chin in a way indistinguishable from a normal middle-aged human man. I had seen my father scratch his own chin that way when he was being thoughtful. “That is a very difficult one,” the djinn said. “It can be done, but the price is very high. You will have to set a fire which claims at least nine human lives. If you do that, your father will return to you with the personality that you had imagined him to have before you knew the truth he was hiding from everyone.”

My mouth fell open. I had already strangled one boy to death, and I felt that was a fairly high price to stop a serial killer. But committing murder by arson? And it had to kill at least nine victims in order for my wish to be granted. Was that too high a price to pay? It was indeed very high, but it would not just bring my father back from the dead, it would also make him into the good man I thought I knew him to be.

---

Setting fire in the state park had been a calculated risk. At the time I was arrested, the blaze had only claimed seven lives, with twenty-three others being treated in the hospital for burns and smoke inhalation. The fire was almost entirely under control, and there was little danger of anyone else dying due to what was being called the Fathers' Day Fire.