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She looks like she’s thinking hard… and then her stare becomes an angry glare. “Liar. You’re a liar, just like all men.”
“I’m telling you, I came here only to save you.”
“Liar!” She lifts her hands overhead to weave and conjure, and I see the tall man start to move faster. “You better run, liar!”
Without another word, I dash around the tall man, heave open the door, and race into the hallway. I can tell she’s run out of patience, at least for now. I can tell she doesn’t believe me.
Even though I told her the absolute truth.
I don’t care about the mystic taxes. This time, I came only for her.
As I run down the hall, I open every door, but I’m not looking for a way out. I’m looking for something else.
A lamp. Her lamp.
Now that I’m on the inside of Gunza’s mansion, I’m determined to find it. I’m going to end this perverted jerk’s most heinous crime: genie abuse. The bastard’s a dji
Here’s how it works. The genie must obey her master. The genie has magical powers that can heal any wound, repair any damage. Even to herself.
What better scenario can there be for a twisted sicko who likes to hurt women? He can brutalize her any way he likes, then wish away the damage, removing any sign of the crime, expunging any guilt… and leaving a clean slate for the next round of abuse.
That’s what makes it especially evil. The genie becomes an accomplice to her own abuse. She literally has no choice.
And it goes on and on and on like that, again and again and again. Forever, if he wishes eternal life for himself.
So it’s no wonder Magda doesn’t trust me… but she should. There’s much more to me than meets the eye.
For one thing, I’m state police now, not Department of Mystic Revenue. I work for the Paranormal Victims Unit.
For another thing, I’m someone altogether different from any of that or anything Gunza could ever guess.
But Magda could figure it out. At least I hope she does before it’s too late.
I’m hustling through the gymnasium when they catch me. Two of the ghoulish thugs burst in through the far door from outside the mansion, and another drops down from the ceiling on a rope.
The one from the rope has dark skin and a tribal headdress of tattered fur and feathers. One of the other two has silver hair and wears a tuxedo, and the last one bulges with muscles and pads under a football player’s uniform. More echoes of Magda’s former masters.
As they surround me, I look for the best escape route. My eyes keep flicking to the open door to the outside, where my partner waits. If my text message got through to him, he could come charging through that door at any second, guns blazing.
Just as I have that thought, he pops up in front of me out of thin air. He’s standing, and at first I think he’s still alive… but then he literally falls to pieces- arms and legs and head and torso tumbling to the floor.
I hear Gunza laughing, and I turn to see him floating in midair on a scarlet magic carpet. As he claps, Magda slumps beside him, utterly joyless.
Like I said, she becomes an accomplice. She literally has no choice.
At least she takes no pleasure in it. That’s what makes her worth saving.
She has yet to hand over her soul.
“Bravo!” says Gunza. “Bravissimo! You should’ve seen the look on your face, Oleo!”
I keep my eyes fixed on him, partly so I won’t have to look at my partner’s body parts oozing blood at my feet.
Gunza elbows Magda hard in the side. “You’re getting all this on tape or a crystal ball or whatever, right? So I can watch it again and again?”
Magda nods. “Yes, Master.”
I hate seeing her like that. A woman with so much power, a woman who literally could do anything, reduced to groveling and harming the very people who could set her free.
Unless I can get through to her. “I can help you, Magda.”
Her eyes flick toward me.
“Tell me what you want,” I say. “Ask me for it.”
I hold her gaze for a moment before she looks away. She’s still not ready.
That’s the root of the problem here. A genie, acting always to serve others, knows nothing of selfishness… but she must ask for something for herself to become free.
The key stands in front of her, but it’s useless if she won’t pick it up and turn it in the lock.
I wait for Gunza to become bored with my screams, but it takes a very long time.
He hovers above on his magic carpet as the echoes of Magda’s demented masters torture me. They do it right there in the gymnasium, on a weight bench, using trays of knives and needles and power tools wished up by Gunza.
As the ghouls work me over, I wonder if they are improvising or if every terrible step is drawn from Magda’s memory. The pain is indescribable, unbearable, catastrophic. Each application of blade or pliers or drill bit plunges me into uncharted depths of agony.
Did they do the same to her? Did they twist and pull and crush and cut, sometimes all at once? Did they laugh as they tuned her screams by grinding harder, digging deeper, winding tighter?
Did they cut off bits of her? Did they taunt her as they excavated organs? Did they push her to the brink of death again and again… holding her alive with wishes as they ruined her in every possible way?
And then, did they wish her back to wholeness, repairing every damage… only to start all over again?
The way they do with me?
If so, my sympathy for her increases a trillionfold. More even than that.
Because this is hell. Sheer hell, as the devil himself might design it.
And I wonder, between strokes of the knife and blows of the hammer, how it is that Magda has not gone irretrievably mad.
Finally, after what seems to me like a dozen years, Gunza does grow bored. Tired is more like it. His eyes start drifting shut, and instead of wishing himself wide awake, he floats off to bed.
Lying on his belly on the magic carpet, he winks and waggles his fingers at me. “Back soon, dear.” His braided red mustache jumps as he chuckles. “Don’t miss me too much.”
At this point, I’m in excruciating agony on the bench. This is the sixth time I’ve been horrifically mutilated and left at the brink of death.
My limbs have all been disco
Gunza gives Magda a shove off the carpet, and she thuds to the floor. “I wish you would put Oliver back together, good as new, and get him rested up for our next session.” After he says it, he rolls over on his back, crosses his hands behind his head, and floats out the door, yawning and snickering.
When he’s gone, Magda struggles to her feet. She weaves mystic sigils overhead, and the torture squad of monstrous masters past disappears in a shower of golden glitter.
Standing over me, she gazes down at the damage, then looks away. Turning her back, she weaves more patterns in the air with her agile, flickering fingers.
I feel a familiar tingling. Gold dust twinkles around me, and I hear a fluttering trill like the song of a tiny tropical bird.
Reality stops and shifts like a jump-cut in a movie. There is an instant of nonexistence, disco
My body is intact. My wounds are closed, my organs and limbs back in the right places. For the seventh time today, she has put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
Except for the memories, it is as if none of it ever happened. This is how it must be for her, every time Gunza tears her apart and wishes her restored once more.
I wonder how many times a day she must do it. How many times she has done it since he took control of her.