The Genies’ three desires
Copyright Robert Fullarton 2013- Taken from Our lives as Fiction
Three
vagrants sat in their own filth by the slums of civilisation, trying to heat
they’re hands against a blazing fire off the wreak of a burnt car and these
three figures, looked doleful enough because they were just sitting in the
normal apocalyptic setting of another modern city. These men had nothing but
their desires, for they were men and men only have their desires in the end,
when you break them down from all the pleasantries and graces we bestow on
others for our own social appearances. But deep down we are all vagrants, us
men, tramps, wanderers, destitute delinquents and beggars of warmth, happiness
and yes, desire, we all crave the unquestionable stimuli fed us by our body,
brain and soul.
These men were
astonished one day to see their own train of thought disrupted by the sudden,
appearance of a blue and grey smiley faced genie that came, like a puff of
cloud off the back of the moving east winds that came to blow out their
desperately needed fire. The men looked stunned to see this apparition in their
midst and a great feeling of dread gripped each man simultaneously as they
looked into the deep green eyes of the genie.
“Gentlemen
I have been summoned from the underworld to go and grant you you’re three
deepest and greatest desires”, said the genie smiling as he floated all before
the withering sight of the three fearful vagrants.
“I don’t
understand this, did we set you free, somehow?” Said the first of the three vagrants
who was a rather plump and short man, a balding man of fifty who wore a filthy
matching pair of stained overalls and was crowned with an old khaki and grey
fisherman’s hat.
“Yes you
did indeed, I came from that old apparently worthless piece of crockery that
you hold in you’re hand. You said the magic words aloud and that was the sign
that triggered my release from my prison which I have been detained in for over
three thousand years”, said the genie while inspecting the awe and sheer
incredulity on the faces of these restless tramps.
“Well what
were the words?” Said the second vagrant, who was a skinny, anorexic, anaemic,
dirty bearded, vile, bag of bones that sat with his knees crossed, while trying
to scrounge for the wasted butt of a cigarette.
“Holy
smoke! Which can be spoken in any tongue, whether it derives from antiquated
cultures or languages or modern speechless garbage, it makes no difference for
we immortals speak all languages and jargons, every tongue and song we know off
by heart, for all languages are the same, you use the same words and you
express your own base instincts through you’re desires”, said the genie in a
bout of laughter,
“Desires,
what would you know of them and what interest does an immortal want with us? We
just want to get shitless, that’s all we ever want to do, so go and find
someone else because we’re not interested in anything you have to say. You are
nothing real to us, you are a phantom apparition, or a whiskey apparition that
has come after the night of a bad bender”, said the third vagrant who was the
more dogmatic and sceptical of the three men and who sat slouched with his back
against a wheelie bin. This man was neither thin nor plump in size but a big,
broad man with a series of scars running all along his face, like as though the
needles off a sowing machine had stitched his face and left the apparent red
marks and scars all around the circumference of his left cheek and around the
width of his chin. His eyes were not deep, but completely hollow with their grey,
sterile globes of austerity, sorrow and aggression that bore out, in a
statement that made the man look empty, restless and almost expressionless past
all the menacing high browed glances that he made to every common pedestrian
and passing policeman that he encountered.
“You should
never doubt my existence or the existence of the immortal dimensions, for they
are as real as you’re eyes can see and they are as real as you’re heart can
beat and as real as the power of you’re perception which is the door to all
facets of understanding. Now I don’t want you to doubt anymore otherwise I will
leave you all back to whatever you three bums were doing and I will never
return and I will go and grant three desires for some underprivileged orphan at
the orphanage up the road, if you don’t stop this nonsense and belief with
you’re heart that I am real, for otherwise how could you see me? Who says that
you are dreaming, or that you’re vile liquor has created me as some drunken
apparition and who says that you are mad, for who is to put the boundary and
place the limits on what exists and what doesn’t exist? It is the greatest
egomaniac of our times that renders a man insane by the wealth of vision he
possesses over others. You should never doubt the possibility of something new
taking place within you’re world and you’re material realm”, said the genie who
grew enraged by the insolence and impertinence shown by third vagrant whose
face transformed into a sight of fear and dread once again.
“No don’t
leave”, said the first plump vagrant.
“Stay, we
want our desires granted, please!” Said the second anorexic vagrant.
“Yes stay,
please, I am sorry for insulting you, I am a true believer in the power of the
underworld, please stay”, said the third grimy vagrant who had finally capitulated
in his own emotional stance and his belief, that he now wanted the genie to
stay very desperately.
“Oh all
right I will stay, because I must, but as penalty for you’re ignorance, I will
only grant one desire per man, so you better make it good and you better make
it the greatest desire that you’re swelling heart can contain, otherwise you
will have wasted the well of want within you and you’re spirit shall be
tarnished and torn forever”, said the genie vehemently as he floated all before
the three kneeling vagrants that had crawled forward before the presence of the
genie.
“Well”,
said the first vagrant that plump, balding man with the khaki and grey
fisherman’s hat. “I know what I want, I want a marriage, a good wife is what I
have always wanted, a fine shapely, finely curved woman, with a fine pair of
bosoms and with such stunning beauty that could kill a man with a single
drunken glare, That’s the woman I want, because I have never known what it is
like to be with a woman, since I am the plainest, most unattractive man you
could ever see.”
“Well”,
said the genie, if that is you’re hearts greatest desire for life, then it
shall be granted on the first thread of dawn tomorrow”, said the genie smiling
to the little content man that squatted by the very presence of the genie.
“What does
that mean?”
“It means
that when the sun rises, first thing tomorrow, you’re desire shall be granted
and the power of the unseen world shall come into force.”
“What about
you?” Said the genie as he turned his attention to the second vagrant that sat
to the immediate right of the genie’s great and powerful presence. “What desire
sets itself over the whole of you’re heart?”
“Well I
have always wanted my own mountain of gold, where I could just climb up and
gaze out onto the whole length and breadth of our great city, and I could laugh
at the beggars below and I could sit and dream and sell my gold when I wanted
to. I have always been a poor man, stingy and mean with what crumbs I have had,
feckless, meagre and a man paltry ambitions and goals and with my mountain I
would set things straight, make things anew in the power that I would exert
over the people that once made fun of me for my pettiness in life and with this
new found prosperity I would buy each and every share in all the major
companies and businesses within the city. This is my desire”, said the skinny,
anorexic, ragged, bandy legged man whose face look swollen from the lack of
food and his high alcohol intake, consumed on a daily basis.
“You’re
desire shall be granted, at the first fibre of the setting sun, when twilight
has consumed the sky, you shall find you’re mountain of gold, under the setting
sun and it shall appear before you’re own very eyes under the veils of the
neighbouring allotments beside these very slums”, said the genie whose command
resonated like a role of thunder before the watchful gaze of the three eager
and hungry vagrants.
When the
time had come for the third vagrant to make a wish, there was nothing but an
empty solitary silence to be found in the presence of the genie, as the third
surly faced vagrant merely sat slouched, in a self made distraction from the
very awe and power of the genie. The third vagrant now began to lie on his
side, as if in preparation for his bedtime ritual of sleeping under the roof of
an old car park, with his blanket carefully tucked in under his flimsy foam
mattress that he had found in a nearby rubbish dump.
“Hey what desire fills
you’re heart and makes you want to become a new man, born completely anew?”
Asked the genie as he bellowed out his voice across to the third vagrant that
lay resting with his eyes completely shut and when he did this the other two
vagrants turned round from their spots and moved and paced forward towards the
car park where the third vagrant slept.
“I’m not
sleeping, I’m merely resting”, said the copper skinned vagrant with the scars
that ran across his jaw line. “I heard you’re proposition, but I haven’t heard
what you want exactly from all these desires which you are delivering for me
and the boys over there.”
“I receive
my long awaited freedom, after many millennia of slavery within the confines of
the crockery and that is worth anything to me, with my freedom, I will be able
to move beyond this realm unto the immortal dimensions themselves. But first I
must deliver three desires for three kings of the under world and I must see
which one shall be true to his own desires and shall not squander nor make a
wish in the lust of want and the vanity of pride and power. I must do this in
order to counteract the spell and the curse put on me by an old evil sorcerer
of the ancient Milesians long ago”, said the genie standing before the third
vagrant who now gave him his undivided attention and sat squatting before the
genie that floated and hovered above all three tramps.
“Well I
have one desire which has never been fulfilled, I wish for the simple and yet
the great desire of happiness, which can make a man an immortal in a day or
make a man devil of depravity in an hour. I have always wanted to find an
immense source of joy in life and when I had such joy I would let my spirit
lift me off my feet and I would go and search for my one and only daughter
Nora, who lives somewhere in the city, off far, far away beyond the meeting points
of this cities’ twisting labyrinth and I would apologise and I would give her
the last remains of my fathers’ old possessions, his diary, his clothes and the
key to his old bedroom locker which he kept all his precious gemstones and
belongings away from the hands of the world to steal”, said the third vagrant
that now began to look quite different when his eyes beamed with a sense of
enraptured joy and his face lit up like the sun shinning on the darkened
rooftops of the cities skyline.
“Well I can
do that, but why do you need happiness in the here and now, so to search for
you’re estranged daughter, when you can just go and search for her anytime,
with the power and resilience of human motivation?” Said the genie smiling with
a golden contentment from the more uplifting desire revealed to him from all
the three desires made from each vagrant.
“Well I
haven’t the will to live any longer, my body is bruised and broken from all the
hard drugs that I have done throughout my days and I haven’t the heart and the
energy to even go and look for her, because I know that she would never want to
speak with me again not since I left her mother when she was four”, said the
tramp in lament.
“Well
you’re desire is granted, but it will take time, when the doves feathers are
flowing in the bosom of the Western wind, so you shall find you’re great hungry
desire fulfilled and it will come upon you like the coming of the light of
life, it has take you by surprise!” Said the genie that smiled and waved
goodbye to the three men, as he lifted himself up into the stars and the
carpets of the earth’s spheres above.
“Well boys
I wonder whether we’ll ever see him again or not, perhaps this is all some big
drink induced delusion or an epic hallucination, who knows”, said the third vagrant
who returned to his mattress and waited for the veils of sleep to come dropping
down ever so slowly, in the heated recess of the night and its vibrant
activities.
The next
day, the sun shone radiantly though the slums of the cities back streets and as
the third vagrant was just beginning to wake up from his long slumbering
hibernation at the back of the cark park he spotted the first vagrant, the
balding plump man with the khaki and grey fisherman’s hat, coming towards him
in full flight with a face of sheer delight and wonder on him and he was
shouting to the third vagrant to try and wake him up.
“Seamus,
Seamus, would you ever believe it! That damn genie is as good as his word. I
got up early this morning, at the first fibre of dawn and waited by my sleeping
bag and you will never believe want fell into my wheelbarrow? Go on guess”,
said the plump, little, man.
“No I don’t
know Mick, what did you find a chicken in you’re wheelbarrow”, said Seamus
sarcastically.
“No, I
found a woman, she fell from the heavens and she landed in my wheelbarrow.
She’s got pigtails, a fine pair of bosoms, looks to die for and she sounds
French, what more could a man want? A French busty babe, that comes from the
heavens sounds good enough to me and guess what happened next.”
“What
happened next?”
“She’s
agreed to marry me, would you believe it, I the plainest man in the city asked
her the golden idol of sultriness if she’d marry me and she said yes
instantaneously on the spot. By the way were getting married next week at the
local home and I want you to be my best man”, said the Mick feeling rather
pleased with himself.
“That’s
good, Mick, but I just want to get some sleep”, said Seamus rather wearily,
without even thinking twice on what Mick had said to him.
“Hey don’t
you have any interest in me at all?” Said Mick with a sullen look of
disappointment.
“I do, I
just think that maybe you might have drank to much last night, that’s all, just
check that you’re not dreaming or that she’s not some bloody immigrant that’s
been running and hiding from the authorities and has landed in you’re old rusty
wheelbarrow by accident”, said Seamus in a sarcastic tone that seemed to
belittle Mick’s discovery.
“Well come
and see for you’re self”, said Mick who led Seamus to this mysterious woman and
when Mick saw her, he knew all too well that she was the great desire of Mick’s
heart and that she was given by the genie and was certainly no illusion, but
all too real and all too beautiful and when Seamus had realised this as he fell
down on the ground, praised God, cursed his ex-wife and made a vow not to give
up on the new inconsolable search he had made for his long lost estranged
daughter, whom he had not seen for more than fifteen years.
When the
second vagrant had seen exactly what had happened he was filled with awe and
wonder, with great immeasurable feelings of excitement and also anxiety for the
great bounty he had longed for in his ultimate desire and request made to the
genie. He longed ever more for his mountain of gold.
When
the sun began to sink in the west behind the deep enamoured image of a salmon
tinged sky, the second vagrant came running back to the silver horse bridge
where he found Seamus, the third vagrant lying completely obsolete and
motionless, as he begged on the bridge, with his hand out for petty cash off
tourists and Chinamen that passed him by.
“Seamus,
Seamus, you’ll never guess what has happened? It’s like a dream come true; my
very mountain itself has come to me, my mountain of gold. I found it concealed
behind the hill at the far wall of the field opposite Mackerel Street, that is
were I envisioned in my own lucid dream last that I saw the entire
circumference of the sun sinking down over Mackerel Street and how right it
was! Eyrie, enough as it is, it is still quite phenomenally brilliant, how man
knows little of this immortal world of magic, genies, mountains of gold,
beautiful busty Frenchies and of course dreams that are portals to our human,
perhaps even super-human desires, now that’s shows what cold, sterile science
while do for you, its all worthless for the great undesirables such as
ourselves, it is reserved for the rich and the elite of society. But now
finally I have my long desired mountain and I am going to guard it night and
day, going to hire a team of the guards to watch it and with the gold I sell, I
will invest, I will expand, I will buy and I will create my own memorandum of
assets for my new company, once I have bought the one that sits me perfectly”,
so said the second vagrant who laughed and hopped his way through the alleyway
and out onto the main street so he could take a short cut back to his own
precious mountain of gold.
Throughout each entire
day, from dawn until dusk, Seamus waited patiently at his usual spot, he slept,
he begged, he drank and he wept himself to sleep at night, because he had now
started to believe that his simply almost petty consolation, wish and desire
had not been granted but denied on account of his own feckless nature and his
past failures as a father and a husband. It is true that this miscreant felt
particularly bitter during the following week that commenced after the genie
had appeared and he felt even worse when saw how the other two tramps were
coming and going through the streets bearing great and prosperous news to
Seamus. The first vagrant, Mick, that plump little man with the khaki and grey
hat came laughing, to tell Seamus that he was moving into his own apartment
with his darling new French wife, whom he had married only the day before, in a
wonderful drunken ceremony which nobody could remember and he had placed an
advance on a cheap council flat somewhere on the northside of the city and Mick
seemed to be the happiest he had ever been in his whole life.
“Oh Seamus
you need a woman, she’ll give you everything you desire, this French woman that
dropped from the sky has helped me find employment, helped me find an apartment
and she has made me, the plainest man in the city the happiest of all alcoholic
tramps in this part of town. It’s a pity that you wasted you’re one and only
desire on that petty idea of meeting up and reconciling you’re self with you’re
long lost daughter”, said Mick standing over Seamus who sat begging at his
usual spot at the corner of Fintan’s alley off the main street.
“You go on
off and leave me alone, you’re disturbing my peace now. You’re not making
things any easier for me. I trusted that genie and he let me down, he broke his
promise, I have waited several weeks, just to see some sign or signal that I
might meet my daughter, but nothing has appeared, nothing whatsoever. I am a
simple man, with a simple life, I have never had it easy, I have lost a lot
from my own accord, but this one simple, yet massive desire of mine is more
important to me that you’re feckin French tart or Paddy’s mountain of gold. I
actually am trying to do the selfless thing here and I am hoping to have a word
with my daughter just to tell her that I love her”, said Seamus as he pulled
and tugged at his sleeping bag trying to adjust the zip and the pockets while
he took out a small paper cup to count his daily scrounges.
“Well I
wish you well”, said Mick as he hopped and skipped his way off into the main
street in a spell of ecstasy and sheer excitement and nearly knocked down an
old woman while passing by and he was surprised to see that the old woman came
after him with her black leather handbag and began to belt him with it.
Right about the time when they hose down the tramps on Myers Lane- and
this is new policy by the police so to keep prohibit and reprimand beggars and
to prevent any more begging occurring within the epicentre of the great
financial district of the city- the second vagrant, Paddy, the long, gangly
anorexic companion of Seamus and Mick, came running round to Seamus at the
corner of Fintans Alley where Seamus was begging and he came calling out to
Seamus and he waved his arms frantically as he tried desperately to get
Seamus’s attention.
“Hey
Seamus, things have been going well these days, things have been going so good
in fact that I have my investments have doubled and my companies annual intakes
have made a profit already and that says something about the kind of luck I
have had these days. My mountain has sunk in its original bulk but that was
only in a couple of inches for the costs of the factories, the company, the
staff, shares, shareholders and of course the equipment, the goods and the
textiles compulsory for the job at hand and of course I have had to pay the
full wages for my full team of guards to watch my mountain both day and night.
Who would have thought that a genie could exist in this big bold rational world
and who could have thought that he was imprisoned within that old worthless
piece of crockery that we found by the dump that night!” Said Paddy who was
clothed in a finely trim and tailored suit, with a dickey bow firmly at the
collar, a pear of leather moccasin shoes and with his right hand he gripped a
fine ivory cane and he was now crowned with a panama hat.
He seemed
to walk with a swagger and there was a certain air of pomposity about him, for
he had lost his old inner city accent and now he spoke in a certain dignified,
high class, almost eloquent manner about himself.
“Oh I
nearly forgot to inform you that there are certain job vacancies at the factory
for specific manual labour work on the shop floor and I would like you to work
for me. Have a think about it, while you’re just lying there scrounging for
change and sleeping rough each evening, think about the basic wage you could
earn and you might have the possibility of saving up enough of these earnings
for you own flat. What do you think, Seamus? Would you be interested with my
proposition?” Said Paddy before he swaggered off, occasionally tapping his
finely constructed ivory cane against the pavement stones. “I am an important
industrialist, I don’t have time for petty chitchat with you, time is money”,
shouted Paddy back at a rather glum looking Seamus who just sunk beneath the
cover of his sleeping bag and he waited, and drifted off into a drunken sleep with
the cold winter air pressing its fists against him.
Months had
passed in sequence and Seamus waited, biding his time begging, scrounging,
making short trips to the local homeless centre and he would on occasion search
through the rubble and the rubbish of the old scrap yard where he had laid his
weary eyes on the genie that lost night of illusory desire, which he sought
wholeheartedly to recapture. He called out to the genie.
“Genie,
save me, genie help me, genie my problems are too much, everything is too much,
genie the world doesn’t care, genie I cant get through another day like this,
genie where are you, why do you never hear my cries, genie where is my
daughter?”
He would
sit and sob to himself while he reminisced on old memories and tomfoolery acted
out jointly with his two companions who now at this stage rarely visited him
and had become so attached to their own desires that they had practically in
every sense of the word abandoned him. Seamus would shuffle up the centre of
the high street through the moving mass of peoples, the tide, the bulging,
swelling ranks of apathetic characters that filled up the growing numbers of
what we call the “public”.
Seamus
would search for some respite in his own life’s heart but could never
resuscitate a day of happiness, hope or even desire worth living for.
One day as
Seamus was resting on a park bench while inhaling the last stinking drags of a
cigarette, he was surprised to see the first vagrant, Mick approach him and in
an altered state of mood and demeanour. Mick the first vagrant, that plump,
little, tomato red man in colour and tone, came wearing his stained work
clothes from an office an he was bearing a heavy load as he frowned when he
started to address Seamus.
“Ah Seamus,
I have made the greatest mistake of my life, I have never known my own desires,
I have only known the cheap pleasures of life and I regret having made the
desire known to the genie. I am the plainest man, the blandest, most insipid
man in appearance, quantity of leisure, interests, tastes and talent. I haven’t
the ability to manage a marriage with an extremely attractive, devious,
sumptuous, sensual, siren like her, I don’t know where she came from, but I
have to state that we have fought and bemoaned our case to each other for far
too long”, said Mick wearily as he crouched down beside Seamus and glared into
his deep set eyes in a moment of absolute comprehension and regret.
“Well I
could never have seen you with a woman and you have to realise that the
differences in the sexes makes the passage to marriage a potentially fatal one
and men can never see the future and we can never see whether it will work out,
because all the responsibilities, the mature decision making, the constant
kinship, the courtship, the financial grievances, the emotional upkeep of our
relationship, the dedication, the selfless perfection of mutual understandings,
these are all components in the ideal marriage and it rarely ever works out. I
can vouch for that, not just on account of my own past experiences but because
I see the queues of former lovers simply expanding by the year out of the
family law courts, every one these days files for divorce under section 7 of
the act and they all wrestle and tussle for ownership of every asset, chattel,
possession and piece of property tied up in the couples name. All become
divorcees in this dystopian society of ours and many will return to marriage
only to become a divorcee once again. I am afraid the sexless one of our age,
the dedicated man of plutonic love and simplicity, he remains completely
unscathed from the wreak of easy virtue and madness. Very few relationships
last and few are filled with true love that is the unalterable, timeless nature
of man. Don’t chase the temptresses down the street for you will become the broken
man you’re father once became, don’t succumb to the voices in you’re head,
close you’re eyes to the beauties on the mainstreet, and you will remain the
happiest man for miles. Leave fantasy to the imagination and fulfil reality by
another means”, said Seamus smiling warmly and amiably to Mick who wept bitter
tears of sorrow beside Seamus.
“Be careful
with you’re desires, measure the wealth of human aspirations and see whether
they really offer us as individuals any real hope or luxury at all, that is
what I could have warned you about. I think you always wanted a woman’s love,
simply because society never gave you a tupence of attention and so you wanted
to just feel normal, to feel appreciated and to feel accepted amongst society’s
beauty and glamour, but you forgot once again, that you are a different
specimen of man than the kind that woes and flirts with the glamorous
congregations of ladies we see on the high streets”, said Seamus as he offered
a smoke to Mick who gratefully declined the offer and smiled as he sat and
slouched beside the wall of the local car park, next to Seamus.
“Ah you are
right Seamus, how I feel cheated and robbed of my dignity!”
“Oh you’re
dreams must be attainable, they must more earthly than heavenly in their design
and why set you’re self up for great expectations when you can have you’re
favourite base desires and comforts here on earth, with what you gave and with
what is going for you, even if it is almost miniscule in its size. We great men
have seen the sun set on our civilisation and we are the only ones that have
realised how perfectly human it is to know our own weaknesses, to be humble,
even if we scrounge on the scraps of society and they are the one’s that think
they are all important, and they are the one’s who think they have luxury,
power, confidence, health and happiness, they know nothing of luxury, nor joy
nor even life itself, because they take every crumb and morsel of life for
granted, so we see the sun set while the deluge falls on the heads of the rich
who walk above us by the beggars corner”, said Seamus smiling in a rather
philosophical mood, since he was once a professor in philosophy at the old
antiquated college up the very centre of the city.
“Well you
are right, at least I have a good friend to turn to”, said Mick as he bent his
knees, squatted and sat beside Seamus and produced a small bottle of scotch,
which the two men preceded to drink together in large measures.
“Lets
demolish the scotch together, get drunk, whistle, hoot and growl at beautiful
young college girls and tell some stories”, said Mick rather wide eyed with a
smile of gratitude on his face.
“All in
good time, and well sing as well, for as long as the night can hold us”, said
Seamus with a quick wink of devilry in his eye.
Then the scene
of devilry, drunken folly, camaraderie and banter came to an end as confession
time had emerged once more with the arrival of the broken, empty faced
appearance of the second vagrant, Paddy, that anorexic industrialist with the
desire for a great mountain of gold, who wept at the feet of Seamus and begged
him to listen to his confession of disgrace and failure.
“Oh Seamus,
you’ll never guess what has happened! My mountain of gold has gone, it sunk and
sunk over the past month, until it was a bloody molehill, by thieves from the
knackers yard, they came with wheelbarrows, trucks, cranes and bloody armed
riffles and they stole from me, both day and night and night and day. My poor
exhausted security men were working 12-hour shifts, and while my stock went
down, my business work plummeted. My gold reserves were drained because every
criminal and crook within the radius of the south city centre was informed on
the whereabouts of my secret golden mountain”, said Paddy who sat down and
knelt down beside the feet of the other two vagrants.
“Oh Paddy,
poor men can never possess the soul of a rich man, we were not born to be like
them, we have more integrity than those miscreants ever could have in a
thousand lifetimes. Don’t you know that you only lusted after money and power
because you have never known what it is like to have a wealth of happiness and
an abundance of securable possessions, but the truth is that any man with a
mountain of gold would lose his mountain, when the chasm of the heart is empty
and no man can maintain control or manage the security over such a mythology,
because every thief and morally reprehensible man within the city comes forward
to steal everything he can take. You only desired what others wanted, because
that is what society typically wants and I know you better than you know you’re
self Paddy, because I know that you are a man of petty desires, not a
financier, no entrepreneur of any sorts, not a affluent banker, tradesman or
stockbroker, you are no man with a worldly position or power, with no great
prestige from you’re peers and contemporaries. You’re heart did not truly
desire a mountain of gold nor did it seek all the responsibilities that were
apportioned to it, just to keep the mountain safe from the hands of thieving
rogues. You wanted happiness, the state of mind, the feeling, the sense of
security, the future sense of aspiration and the feeling of renewal you never
wanted the attention that came from the discovery of the mountain, you wanted
happiness for that is the end product and the goal of the human seeker. You
stated that you wanted to laugh at the beggars below, but how could you smirk
at the needy, when you are needy too, and you don’t even know you’re true
desire, and you know that such accumulation does not bring you joy bur weighs
you down and ties you down with great duties and jobs to fulfil”, said Seamus
who offered the second vagrant, Paddy a cigarette while the three men slouched
down and took long, deep breathes of air out of the brown and yellow body of
the whiskey bottle, so to drown their sorrows, once again.
“Well I
have lost the factory, the workers went on strike, they picketed the premises
and the interlocutory injunction which I sought under equity was refused partly
because it violated the rights of the workers”, said Paddy rather glumly.
“How so”,
said Mick inquiring.
“Well, I
hadn’t paid them for a couple of weeks, because of funding cut backs and I owed
them several weeks of back pay. In the end I couldn’t even pay the workers the
simple work wage and so I had breached the basic fundamental rights of the
work, wage contract”, said paddy that sat lamenting with intensity for every
moment that passed.
The three
vagrants sat in their own grime by the wreak of civilisation, lamenting over
their own fallen desires and dreams, expecting as if by some miracle’s chance
to catch a glimpse of the genie that once offered to change their lives
forever.
One day
when Seamus went walking up the side of Harrows Lane, he wandered through the
dark cobbled tunnel of the laneway and while he walked through unto the sign of
the bleeding summer sun, he found himself surprised and comforted by the simple
yet, naturally graceful apparition of a pair of doves flapping their wings as
they lifted up their bodies and landed on the tiled edge of the city’s main
cathedral and in their trace they dispersed their feathers from their fan like
tails into the hands of the western wind. Seamus at that moment felt himself
enlightened, comforted and intrigued at whether or not this could be the answer
to the genies riddle, perhaps this was the summoning answer he had wanted to
find as to whether his simple desire would be fulfilled or not. The feathers
fell down and landed very carefully into his hands and this seemed to
specifically speak to Seamus as an indication that his dreams and his greatest
desire would be fulfilled, as if some silent, long lost, forgotten prophecy or
abstract dream were to be fulfilled by the mercies of the unseen immortal
dimension of the genie. Seamus wandered further into the unkempt heart of the
city and he suddenly realised that he had been sidetracked from his original
planned destination and had strayed further out from the shore of his refuge.
He stood
without flinching beside the canal bank and watched so quietly to see that only
the distant sound of the moving winds that whistled ever so faintly and the
afternoon rancour of the traffic could be heard buzzing off in the foreground
of the canal banks. Then Seamus caught sight of the genie that hovered above his
head as if he were some drunken apparition from another dissolute night in his
dissolute existence, he simultaneously felt stunned and joyful and he had only
one thought and one desire to inquire on his own part to the genie.
“Why have
you come so far into the heart of the metropolis, when all you’re searching has
proved to be fruitless and aimless, with regards to you’re desire.
You’re
request out of the three desires made, has to be without a doubt to be the
purest, most selfless of all the desires given to me and that is essential for
any
consideration
made from an immortal to a mere mortal man that sucks on pleasure for his daily
living and thrives on the giving of others. You had to wait so that I could
measure you’re level of patience, you virtuosity with regards to your own true
desires,
For you
have searched you’re heart and wandered through the furthest enclaves of the
city streets and have proved you’re dedication to the hours of work and want
which you have given and so you shall find you’re long lost daughter as you
desired, she works in the city’s central bank behind one of the cashier’s desks
on the first floor, but she will probably not remember you, nor will she want
to see you, since you have never been in her life in the first place. You have
worked hard for you’re desires, now watch them fly before you’re eyes, for I am
not the genie that grants life to petty men, but the genie that takes happiness
and want from all those who make their frivolous requests known to me and
you’re general lust in life has cost you everything and so let you’re desire
take you’re heart, for I now own you, and you shall return to you’re squatters
rest by the side of society, the streets of civilisation and the eyes of the
indignant apathetic people and that is why the high king of this land
imprisoned me under the enchanted songs of his druid, it was because I forbad
him the great desire of Britannia to his own measly kingdom that he cursed me
and I in turn curse men, through offering them false hopes, I may grant them
their desires but I foreknow and I foresee which hopeless desire perfectly
suits a hopeless man, so likewise I have given you the doves feathers of hope,
just to come bearing the bad news that will set you down to rot. Now you can
see why you’re two other companions were so foolish because their desires were
not in check with their own situations. So I have seen many a man’s hope fly,
like the ash and flame of a burnt out life, turn to cinder and destruction.”
The genie’s
mask of mercy, his false offerings of commiseration and kindness, the offerings
of desire and hope had been a trick from the underworld’s mightiest artificer,
the Jinn or genies that had come upon the modern earth so to ruin the man of mighty hopes and desires and
Seamus’s heart had sunk even further beneath the glass weight of his brown
opaque bottle when he saw the genie’s tears of laughter and the sight of his
two beloved companions being attacked by a host of cheeky marauding crows that
swooped and scourged the men that rummaged for food in a couple of grimy
wheelie bins, by the side of civilisation and the squalor of the times.
Labels: short story
