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“Fifty cents?”
Alice raised her eyes to the cloudy orange figure above her. The genie’s eyes rolled golden as the massive head nodded. “It is what you asked for, Mistress.”
She scowled at the palm of her hand. “What are they: magic self-duplicating quarters so I never run out?”
The huge oblong head inclined toward her. “No, Mistress. They are but two average coins.”
Alice started to throw them on the ground but stopped herself. “I wished for all the money I’d ever need!”
“And such I have given you, Mistress.” The genie nodded again, but apparently at something over her shoulder.
Turning to look, Alice saw the big tag of “50” above a newspaper box by the entrance of the Taco Bell across the street. Below the window displaying the morning edition was a big poster announcing their massive sweepstakes. “ENTRY FORM IN EVERY ISSUE!”
“Ah!” She nodded to the genie and hurried to the box, slipping the quarters into the slot. She did not notice, bending to open the metal door, the girl who ran into the street after her dog, or the car pulling too fast out of the Taco Bell drive-through, which veered to miss the pair, and wound up plunging along the sidewalk.
The genie nodded one more time and picked up his cheap antique bottle. “They make it so easy.”
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AUTHOR BIO:
Dan Crawford is the author of a series of fantasy/mystery novels published in the 1990s to a fanfare of apathy. He used to be listed in Wikipedia so people would not confuse him with the NBA official or two evangelists of the same name but has apparently since been deleted.
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WHY WE CHOSE TO PUBLISH “Coming True”:
We’ve surely all seen many genie stories. Some of these involve twisting wishes contrary to what the wisher expected. We found this flash fiction piece by Dan Crawford especially imaginative, even if the ending is a tad grim.