Danny recovered first. He crawled over a chair and stared at the lamp with horror. Connie sat up in the corner, face white, eyes huge, hands over her ears. Danny stood up and looked down at the seemingly innocuous lamp.
“Knock off that noise! You want to lose us the lease?”
CERTAINLY, OFFSPRING OF A WORM!
“I said: stop that goddam bellowing!”
THIS WHISPER? THIS IS AS NAUGHT TO THE HURRICANE I SHALL LOOSE, SPAWN OF PARAMECIUM!
“That’s it,” Danny yelled. “I’m not getting kicked out of the only apartment in the city of New York I can afford just because of some loudmouthed genie in a jug...”
He stopped. He looked at Connie. Connie looked back at him.
“Oh, my god,” she said.
“It’s real,” he said.
They got to their knees and crawled over. The lamp lay on its side on the floor at the foot of the daybed.
“Are you really in there?” Connie asked.
WHERE ELSE WOULD I BE, SLUT!
“Hey, you can’t talk to my wife that way-”
Connie shushed him. “If he’s a genie, he can talk any way he likes. Sticks and stones; namecalling is better than poverty.”
“Yeah? Well, nobody talks to my-”
“Put a lid on it, Squires. I can take care of myself. If what’s in this lamp is even half the size of the genie in that movie you took me to the Thalia to see...”
“The Thief of Bagdad... 1939 version... but Rex Ingram was just an actor, they only made him look big.”
“Even so. As big as he was, if this genie is only half that big, playing macho overprotective chauvinist hubby-”
SO HUMANS CONTINUE TO PRATTLE LIKE MONKEYS EVEN AFTER TEN THOUSAND YEARS! WILL NOTHING CLEANSE THE EARTH OF THIS RAUCOUS PLAGUE OF INSECTS?
“We’re going to get thrown right out of here,” Danny said. His face screwed up in a horrible expression of discomfort.
“If the cops don’t beat the other tenants to it.”
“Please, genie,” Danny said, leaning down almost to the lamp. “Just tone it down a little, willya?”
OFFSPRING OF A MILLION STINKS! SUFFER!
“You’re no genie,” Connie said smugly. Danny looked at her with disbelief.
“He’s no genie? Then what the hell do you think he is?”
She swatted him. Then put her finger to her lips.
THAT IS WHAT I AM, WHORE OF DEGENERACY!
“No you’re not.”
I AM.
“Am not.”
AM.
“Am not.”
AM SO, CHARNEL HOUSE HARLOT! WHY SA Y YOU NAY?
“A genie has a lot of power; a genie doesn’t need to shout like that to make himself heard. You’re no genie, or you’d speak softly. You can’t speak at a decent level, because you’re a fraud.”
CAUTION, TROLLOP!
“Foo, you don’t scare me. If you were as powerful as you make out, you’d tone it way down.”
is this better? are you convinced?
“Yes,” Connie said, “I think that’s more convincing. Can you keep it up, though? That’s the question.”
forever, if need be.
“And you can grant wishes?” Danny was back in the conversation.
naturally, but not to you, disgusting grub of humanity.
“Hey, listen,” Danny replied angrily, “I don’t give a damn what or who you are! You can’t talk to me that way.” Then a thought dawned on him. “After all, I’m your master!”
ah! correction, filth of primordial seas. there are some djinn who are mastered by their owners, but unfortunately for you i am not one of them, for i am not free to leave this metal prison. i was imprisoned in this accursed vessel many ages ago by a besotted sorcerer who knew nothing of molecular compression and even less of the binding forces of the universe. he put me into this thrice-cursed lamp, far too small for me, and i have been wedged within ever since. over the ages my good nature has rotted away. i am powerful. but trapped. those who own me cannot request anything and hope to realize their boon. i am unhappy, and an unhappy djinn is an evil djinn. were i free, i might be your slave; but as i am now, i will visit unhappiness on you in a thousand forms!
Danny chuckled, “The hell you will. I’ll toss you in the incinerator.”
ah! but you cannot. once you have bought the lamp, you cannot lose it, destroy it or give it away, only sell it. i am with you forever. for who would buy such a miserable lamp ?
And thunder rolled in the sky.
“What are you going to do?” Connie asked.
do? just ask me for something, and you shall see! “Not me,” Danny said, “you’re too cranky.” wouldn’t you like a billfold full of money?
There was sincerity in the voice from the lamp.
“Well, sure, I want money, but-”
The djinn’s laughter was gigantic, and suddenly cut off by the rain of frogs that fell from a point one inch below the ceiling, clobbering Danny and Connie with small, reeking, wriggling green bodies. Connie screamed and dove for the clothes closet. She came out a second later, her hair full of them; they were falling in the closet, as well. The rain of frogs continued and when Danny opened the front door to try and escape them, they fell in the hall. He slammed the door-he realized he was still naked-and covered his head with his hands. The frogs fell, writhing, stinking, and then they were knee-deep in them, with little filthy, warty bodies jumping up at their faces.
what a lousy disposition i’ve got! the djinn said, and then he laughed. And he laughed again, a clangorous peal that was silenced only when the frogs stopped, disappeared, and the flood of blood began.
It went on for a week.
They could not get away from him, no matter where they went. They were also slowly starving: they could not go out to buy groceries without the earth opening under their feet, or a herd of elephants chasing them down the street, or hundreds of people getting violently ill and vomiting on them. So they stayed in and ate what canned goods they had stored up in the first four days of their marriage. But who could eat with locusts filling the apartment from top to bottom, or snakes that were intent on gobbling them up like little white rats?
First came the frogs, then the flood of blood, then the whirling dust storm, then the spiders and gnats, then the snakes and then the locusts and then the tiger that had them backed against a wall and ate the chair they used to ward him off. Then came the bats and the leprosy and the hailstones and then the floor dissolved under them and they clung to the wall fixtures while their furniture-which had been quickly delivered (the moving men had brought it during the hailstones)-fell through, nearly killing the little old lady who lived beneath them.
Then the walls turned red hot and melted, and then the lightning burned everything black, and finally Danny had had enough. He cracked, and went gibbering around the room, tripping over the man-eating vines that were growing out of the light sockets and the floorboards. He finally sat down in a huge puddle of monkey urine and cried till his face grew puffy and his eyes flame-red and his nose swelled to three times normal size.
“I’ve got to get away from all this!” he screamed hysterically, drumming his heels, trying to eat his pants’ cuffs.
you can divorce her, and that means you are voided out of the purchase contract: she wanted the lamp, not you, the djinn suggested.
Danny looked up (just in time to get a ripe Black Angus meadow muffin in his face) and yelled, “I won’t! You can’t make me. We’ve only been married a week and four days and I won’t leave her!”