Another Wish

I was given one wish and one hour to decide. As if I needed even a second. It had been a very long journey to get to this moment and I knew exactly what I wanted. What I needed.

I had been here before and, of course, I knew the rules very well: no resurrections, no forced love and no time travel. Pretty standard stuff. Also, the wish had to be clear and specific. No mumbo jumbo abstractions like wishing for world peace or everyone's happiness. Those were no concerns of mine, anyway. What I wanted was very simple and concrete: I just wanted to die.

Immortality came with its own set of drawbacks. What fun was to live forever if I couldn't relate to anyone? What good came from watching humankind running in circles in a hamster wheel? After everything I had lived and witnessed, immortality looked like a very foolish thing. Yet, it was what had wished for all those millennia ago.

I was barren, as I found out eventually. So, no family of my own. Yet, as generations went by, my family tree grew and branched out so far that my relatives became complete strangers to me. At this point, I reckon that I am related to at least half of the world's population. However, I have no real family. Even my closest friends, the ones who were lucky enough to reach an old age, were all gone eventually. That, of course, was when our friendship didn't end before their lives did. It's quite easy to make friends when you have experienced so much and have so many stories to share. Keeping those friendships is a different story. All their greatest moments and discoveries felt like old news to me. I had witnessed it all a thousand times before. It was like watching the same play with different actors. Always the same script. People had midlife crises while I was having an eternal life crisis.

But then, there was Anna. She was truly unique. One in a billion. We met at the coronation ball of The Sun King, at the palace of Versailles. It was a beautiful ceremony, but the real sun was Anna herself. Beautiful, generous and incredibly intelligent, she could keep up with any idea or concept I threw at her. As she spoke six different languages, it was really fun and freeing mixing all of them to express myself. By the end, we had created our own dialect. With her, I felt truly alive, like I hadn't felt in a thousand years. But of course, her lifetime passed and she reached her expiration date too. And, once again, I found myself miserably alone. That was when I decided that I had enough. I would find the lamp and put an end to my curse.

The issue was that the first time I had found the lamp had been completely by chance. Unmarried and past my prime at the old age of 20, I started working for one of the biggest merchants in all of Mesopotamia. One scorching hot summer afternoon, I was polishing a bunch of old lamps when the little sprite just came out of one of them. The lamp itself was nothing special, it had just a small flame mark. The symbol of the fire sprites. After I made my wish, the lamp vanished and I passed out. When I came to, I figured it had just been a heat-induced hallucination and carried on with my life as usual. Only years later, as people kept remarking that I didn't seem to age, was that I started considering it more seriously. It was like time had stopped for me.

Now, at last, I was once again before the genie. When I first begin my quest for the lamp, I was not even sure if I could ever find it again or have my wish granted. The sprite did say "one wish only". Nevertheless, the challenge gave me a renewed sense of purpose. It was my only hope, after all. For over three centuries, I roamed the globe searching and waiting until I finally discovered its exact location: a museum in the UK. Of course, all pillages ended up there eventually.

The entity didn't seem to recognize or remember me at all. I took it was a promising sign.

— I wish to die, I declared.

There was a moment of silence. I could tell the creature was probing me.

— That cannot be granted, it finally said. Choose another wish.

— What? What are you talking about? It's a very simple wish that respect all your rules.

— Your immortality, fruit of a lamp wish cannot be undone.

— Are you messing with me right now? Do you know what I have been through to find your bloody lamp?!

— I have spoken. Choose another wish. You have as long as the sand runs through the hourglass.

— I already told you what I want: grant me death!

— As much pleasure as killing a filthy human again would give me, I cannot grant your wish. I am bound to the laws of the lamp to the end of times.

My mind went blank as I stared at the despicable, but hypnotic demon. What was I to do? "Focus on the solution, not on the problem", a voice inside of me kept repeating like a mantra. And then, it came to me. I had seen people dead even when they bodies were still alive and well. Forgetting was a kind of death. Throughout the ages, I had lost uncountable friends, lovers and acquaintances to oblivion. They were gone the moment they forgot who they were. Their living bodies left behind.

And so, my wish was granted. When the last grain of sand falls through the hourglass, I'll forget everything, forever. But before that, I leave you my tale as a warning: choose wisely, should you ever find the lamp.