Written by Janelle Lao

He buys it at a police auction.

The auctioneer hesitates when he raises his hand to place a small bid, but he chalks it up to surprise. What kind of idiot would invest any sort of money on a cheap oil lamp? Not even a decent, normal one, but an old, scratched-up Middle-Eastern type like out of a fairytale.

The answer is: him. He is that kind of idiot.

A rattle wakes him up past midnight. The oil lamp fell on the floor. He picks it up and, for the first time, attempts taking the lid off only to find that it’s been stuck on. Curious, he lines up the spout to one of his eyes and tries peeking inside. Despite angling it towards the light, however, he only sees inky black.

Then, blue smoke steams out of the spout.

“Shit!” He drops the lamp, jumping back as he stares at the rising, billowing fog. It grows and spreads, shaping into – into something.

It could have been human. Maybe it was, once. Hollowed out eye sockets drill into him, a ghastly smile stretched over its skeletal face. Its nose looks melted off and its ribs stick out while the rest of it remains a writhing, self-contained cloud of blue that connects to the fallen lamp’s spout. A beetle crawls in and out the gaps of its misshapen teeth. Then, without moving its jaw or lips, it speaks.

Your wish is my command.

“What the hell are you?”

Your wish is my command.

“Like … a genie?” It leers at him, and he swallows. “Okay, then… How many do I get?”

It looms closer, bobbing unsteadily like a balloon. Three.

He feels his back press against the wall. It’s impossible to look away. Its eyes and smile draw his gaze back in, and he notes with a hint of hysteria that the thing is bald. “And what do you get?”

It throws its head back, its entire body quivering as an unearthly, metallic screech fills his ears and brings him to his knees. He screams and claps his hands over his ears, but the sound is in his mind, raking bony fingers down his spine.

He wakes up on the floor. Dried blood cakes his palms, ears, and neck. The oil lamp stands innocently before him, no longer fallen. It gleams in the sunlight.

He throws it in the trashcan and takes a shower. In the morning light, he wants nothing more than to dismiss the event with the oil lamp as some sort of freakish nightmare. He can’t even remember the face correctly, or its voice, but just trying makes a phantom chill run through his body.

He takes out the trash as soon as he can. There’s a strange sort of satisfaction and relief when he shuts the dumpster’s lid shut over his garbage bag. He makes his way back to the apartment–

–And stares at the oil lamp sitting on his dresser.

You have three wishes.

His heart stutters as he turns and faces … it again.

“I don’t want them.” Genie, djinn, demon – whatever it is, he doesn’t think it’s offering three wishes to be nice.

Skin splits apart as its smile widens. He falls back on his bed and lands on his ass, not realizing until then that he’d been moving. Its face, stretched far away from the rest of its form, follows him without pause.

Your wish is my command.

“Then, I wish – I wish you’d tell me what’ll happen once I’ve used them up.”

In the hollow eye sockets, a pinprick of light gleams red. You shall no longer be my master.

It doesn’t continue.

This close, the writhing things behind its teeth can’t be ignored. He remembers the beetle skittering over its smile last night, and he squeezes his eyes shut. “I wish you’d leave me alone.”

You have two wishes.

“I said I wish you’d fuck off!”

Its screech makes the window glass shake. He throws his hands over his ears again, knowing they’d bleed anyway. The sound makes coherent thought impossible, and he’s about to scream when it stops.

He scrabbles off the mattress. His legs fail, and he ends up crawling backwards on the floor but it’s better than being on the bed. When the ringing in his ears finally stops, he asks, “What happened to the last guy who owned you? I want – I wish to know that.”

A smoke-insect-thing crawls on its skeletal face. His wishes were fulfilled.

Right. Of course. Okay.

He swallows as it moves closer again, that awful grin eating up its sallow face. A skittering sound darts in and out of his hearing.

Fuck it.

“I wish to live.”

Silence. Then–

Your wish is my command.

Its grin parts, jaw unhinging completely. It reaches the floor, a gaping, dark maw looming over him. Lining the inside of its mouth are thousand and thousand of beetles, big and small.

He screams and crawls away, but the mouth follows him, growing larger and larger until his back hits something – the wall, the door, he doesn’t know, he doesn’t see – and then it swallows him whole. Small, skittering bodies bite into his skin. They fill his mouth and nose and ears as he’s pushed further into the darkness. Soon, they are inside, crawling and eating, and he screams and screams and screams until his lungs are gone and his eyes have been gnawed to their sockets.

But he does not die.