Facedown Genie Shakedown
May 23rd, 2008 by Jeff Simmermon
The cops arrested an actual genie on the subway this morning. They knocked him right out his Adidas, face-down on pavement wet with rain from a million dirty feet. His skin was dark, black like an event horizon with bulging swirly yellow eyes like two eggs from another planet. He roared, rhyming:
Let me go, let me go!
Why SHOULD you?
‘Cause I said it was so!
I can grant you three wishes,
or I can eat your soul!
Everyone just sort of walked around him to get on the train, only staring a little bit. I stepped over him, wishing the train would stop being all slow on the way to Manhattan all the time.
Really, if you were undercaffeinated and a little late to work, what would you wish for if you were on the spot like that?
May 23rd, 2008 at 5:07 pm
A latte and an hour of peace at work.
That is just… an amazing story, heh.
May 24th, 2008 at 9:03 am
haha, I love that even face down, that man rocked out some sinister lyrics while also giving the cops an exit strategy… what a great town you live in!
May 25th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
More sleep. I’m always underslept but I know better than to wish for something like that. Every time I think I’d like more time to read, I end up on the metro all day, shuttling back and forth between meetings.
The Monkey’s Paw. Even if you get what you ask, it doesn’t come in the way you expect, right?