2016-08-25 - spike - The Final Curse Part 2

Author: spike
Title: The Final Curse. (Part two)
Date: 25 August 2016

The Final Curse. (Part two)

It didn’t take long for him to find out why he’d reappeared in the lamp bound to the wall facing it.

Suddenly, he heard a whip crack.

Pain lanced through his back with an agony he’d never experienced. He screamed. Then another, and another. He began to count them in the hope he’d be able to work out how many, but by fifty he was screaming, sobbing incoherently and begging for mercy. But there was no mercy. The whipping continued. By one hundred he’d given up on the count and still the whipping continued.

He’d expected the pain to cause him to pass out long ago or at least that he’d become accustomed to it, but each lash felt as bad as the first and as much as his mind fought to withdraw into itself, something prevented him. He was forced to experience every single lash.

As quickly as it began, it ended and with a flash, he was facing the front again and watching the cavemen torture each other.

The pain took seconds to subside to nothing.

He gasped for breath. “What the hell was that?”

“Punishment.”

“PUNISHMENT?!”

“The fifth curse. For every wish you grant in a set, you will receive punishment. For a selfish wish, you will receive one hundred lashes per wish.”

“What if it’s a selfless wish? A wish that in no way benefits the wisher?”

“It is forbidden for me to say, Only the part of the curse you have experienced am I permitted to tell you.”

“There’s more?”

“Yes.”

“So, every time I grant three wishes I have to go through that?”

“It is forbidden for me to say.”

The rest of the day was spent staring blankly at the cavemen. Then he fell asleep.

He awoke to find himself facing the wall again. Again, the lashes commenced. Again, he screamed and sobbed and pleaded. But there was no-one to ease his suffering.

Finally, he was facing the front again.

“And that was for?”

“The punishment is daily until the next wish is granted.”

“WHAT? I have to go through that? For a hundred years?”

“Or more, yes. Just because the lamp becomes easily findable, doesn’t mean it will be found and rubbed.”

“Oh fuck! Shitting hell! How the hell could I remain conscious through all that? I should’ve blacked out!”

“Unconsciousness is forbidden. You will experience every single punishment fully. Another part of curse five.”

“And there’s still more to it?”

“It is forbidden for me to say.”

“So that’s a yes then! Why am I being put through this hell?”

“The djinn explained that. As retribution for his mistreatment by humanity. I said he was an evil spirit didn’t I?”

“Is there any relief from these tortures?”

“Only between the first and third wishes will the tortures end. Then new torments will begin based on the wishes of the new Master.”

* * * * *
Another hundred years had passed and still the punishments continued. The lamp informed him when it had reappeared in the world. He’d asked it to.

Still no sign of a person finding or rubbing it.

As the years progressed, the punishments didn’t become easier, they remained exactly as they had the first time. The exact same agony, no relief, no getting used to it. Just daily bouts of utter agony.

Finally, after what the lamp had said was a further ten years had passed, a rub. A faint tingle of pleasure and the whoosh out of the spout.

Jim looked around. He was in a museum. Before him, a broken display case. Standing beside it holding the lamp, a man head to toe in skin tight black, not even his eyes were showing.

Again, the words came unbidden.

“I am the genie of the lamp! Tell me your wish, oh Master!”

“A genie? Pull the other one.”

“Yes, a genie. And I beg you, please, show some mercy. I realise you’re a thief from your getup but take the lamp, make your first wish, but, and if I had knees right now I’d be on them begging, please hold off a few years between the second and third?”

“Why are you begging? What the hell happens in there?”

Jim began his tale. Everything from his wish to become a slave to the result of his final wish. He told of the curses, the punishments. It took half an hour, but it was half an hour out of the lamp and able to move relatively freely and he valued it.

“Bloody hell! You go through all that? Every day?”

“Without fail, yes. The only small mercy is that once each session is over the pain stops immediately. I suppose being a djinn means I heal instantly. I’ll have to ask the lamp.”

“Well, I certainly seem to have hit the jackpot here. But I warn you now, I’m not one for selfless wishes, every wish I make whether it’s now or in fifty years will be selfish. Utterly selfish.”

“At this point, I don’t know if a selfless wish will result in a harsher punishment anyway, Master.”

“Alright then. For my first wish. I wish every single work of art worth over one million dollars in this museum be transferred to a lockup capable of fitting all those things, with me the only person who holds the key or knows where it is.”

Jim summoned the power, he was actually looking forward to this bit now. The wave of pure pleasure. He clicked his fingers. “Your wish is granted oh Master.”

And with that, he was sucked back into the lamp and back on the wall, again staring at the cavemen.

He noticed the odd difference now. They seemed to have begun learning. Fashioning more elaborate tools. Still stone aged technology, with flint and bone, but they certainly seemed to be getting better at it. And better at causing pain without as much damage too. Sometimes a slave would now survive for several years of servitude, but it still never ended well for them.

He remained there, staring at the screen for ten years before suddenly, he woke one morning to find himself facing the wall.

Again, the whipping commenced and this time, it went on a hell of a lot longer. He had no idea why, his grip on his sanity was slipping by the end of that first session but then, as with the first time, without warning, he was facing the front again.

“What now! I haven’t even completed those wishes yet?!”

“Your Master is dead. He is incapable of completing the wishes. For each wish ungranted, you will suffer five hundred lashes. That totals one thousand one hundred lashes per day.”

“WHAT!?”

“I said, for each...”

“I heard. I heard! So now I have to endure THAT for the next hundred plus years?”

“Yes.”

“How can I remain sane under such punishment? I nearly lost it at the end of that one!”

“Insanity is forbidden, your lucidity will remain throughout.”

“So no escape from that by going mad either?”

“No.”

“Good god! No-one deserves such punishments! Not even the worse war criminals in history!”

“I agree. But I have no control. Only the curses determine your fate now. I can only provide you with company.”

“So how did that idiot die?”

The scene changed on the display.

A middle aged man carrying a box that appeared far too heavy for him. He entered a house.

“I’ve come with the merch, is Mr Smith available?”

“Yes. Come this way.”

He was lead into a back room. One door, no windows, just a desk with a man sitting behind it with another standing by his side. He wore what could only be described as a designer suit, obviously showing off his wealth with all the gold rings on his fingers.

The man smiled. “So, you are the famous museum thief. I’d love to know how you emptied half a museum in one night. But right now I have only one concern. Show me the relic.”

“Show me the money.”

Mr Smith pulled a case from under his desk and opened it. Inside, what looked like small plastic rectangles. “Each of these chips holds one million dollars. I know the value of the item you’re selling. I need to see it.”

The man picked one out at random and plugged it into a wrist band. A display lit up. He nodded and placed it back in the case.

Mr Smith closed the case again.

Greed showed in the eyes of the man, the man Jim could only presume was his late Master.

He heaved the box onto the desk and opened it revealing a solid gold Incan relic. A golden skull. In its eyes, huge emeralds. Giant rubies for its teeth and its head decorated with diamonds in elaborate patterns.

Mr Smith reached for it, picked it up and began examining it, then handed it to a man standing beside him. The man took out a jeweller’s monocle and began examining it in much greater detail.

Mr Smith watched his expert with interest. The expert nodded. Then Smith did too.

A man behind his master placed a gun to his head and fired.

The screen returned to the cavemen.

“How did you do that?”

“The curse has the odd loophole. The scene does show the depravity of the human spirit and a death so it was within my capability to bend things slightly. But I can’t do it often. Only when a Master has died a violent death. And only then at the hands of other men.”

“So now, my hell is even worse for a hundred years.”

“Yes.”

“Just how long did it that whipping take?”

“Six hours.”

“I wish I hadn’t asked that now.”

* * * * *
The years turned into centuries. Masters came and went. Most uttering the most selfish of wishes. Occasionally a selfless wish found its way into the mix and the genie finally found out how many lashes that would result in.

Twenty.

By now, that was his only dream. To find an utterly selfless Master so he would only have to endure sixty lashes a day.

As the centuries turned to millenia, his humanity dwindled just as his hatred of it increased. He began to enjoy the sights of the slaves being tortured as they were forced to build the pyramids. He began to relish it. Those worms deserved nothing more.

They were insects compared to him. The amount of suffering he’d had to endure at their hands.

Again, that shiver of pleasure.

“I am the genie of the lamp! What is your wish, oh Master?”

Again a man. Again, the look of shock and fear that quickly became replaced by hunger. He probed its mind as had become a habit by now and smiled. This one, he would make suffer much more than he was.

“Bloody hell.”

“It’s true. Any wish, it is yours. Three in total. Make them as far apart as you are able to ease my suffering, I beg you.”

“Your suffering?”

“For each set of wishes I grant, I receive a daily punishment that is a torture that would leave you a gibbering wreck with only half of it. Only when those wishes are spread far apart am I spared this torment for a time.”

The genie knew it was pointless. The mind probe had proven that. But he knew what these wishes were going to be and he knew exactly how he was going to grant that final one.

“Years? Years apart? You’re my slave until I’ve completed my wishes, if the folklore is true, correct?”

“Yes, Master.”

“Then you do what I say. I couldn’t give a damn about you. I wish I had the wealth required to live the rest of my life in luxury with no tax or risk of any backlash.”

The contempt in the genie’s voice as he clicked his fingers was almost palpable. “Granted, Master”

“Whoosh, back into the lamp.”

Then immediately, “Whoosh, out of the lamp.”

“For my next wish, the fertility of the human race has hit a massive decline over the past five centuries and I am one of those deemed infertile. I wish I had the virility of the most virile man of two thousand years ago.”

Again, the wish he expected and again a click of the fingers. Again, that wave of pure pleasure before he was sucked into the lamp.

Less than a minute and he was out again. By now his contempt for this mortal was absolute.

“And your final wish, Master?”

“I wish for eternal youth.”

This time, the genie didn’t immediately click his fingers. He laughed. A laughter filled with pure malice.

“For your utter disregard for my pleas, for the suffering I will have to endure, I curse you. You will be transformed into an eternal twelve year old. And not just any twelve year old but a statue of one. A magical, living statue that will never age or crack. One that will be utterly indestructible in fact. You will see and hear and think, but your cries of agony will go unheard for the rest of time and beyond. Your transformation into stone will be the most excruciating torment any living thing has ever endured and it will never end, as, indeed, you will never end.”

The man recoiled in terror. “No! I didn’t mean...”

“It doesn’t matter what you meant. I choose to interpret your wishes as I please. And this pleases me greatly.” The genie clicked his fingers. “Granted!”. The pleasure this time was doubly ecstatic. He relished it.

Stood on a plinth before him, a naked twelve year old boy. Possibly the most handsome boy ever to exist. The boy tried to move from the plinth but looked down in pain as his feet became a part of it, solid marble. The marble slowly crept up his body, he writhed in agony until a minute later, the process was complete.

Stood on the plinth now was a statue of a boy in the throes of torture. His face no longer handsome, but contorted into a visage of terror and excruciating agony. The title on the plinth. “The folly of man”.

Whoosh, the genie was back again facing the wall awaiting his punishment.