(This differs from my other entries so far in that this is a piece of original fiction - copyrighted by me - as opposed to an essay or personal recollection.)
It wasn't an artfully tarnished lamp or an old smoked bottle Neenah's genie appeared from, but, near as she could figure, an old abandoned muffler she'd kicked along her walk home from school that afternoon - to be more accurate, the muffler she'd struck out at with the end of her long umbrella.
"There hasn't been a cloud in the sky all day," said the deathly pale man who fell into step beside her a couple of blocks from where she'd passed the muffler sticking out from the edge of an alley. He pointed at the road, roughly ahead of where the tip of the umbrella would next strike. "Why the umbrella?"
Neenah had gotten very good at not being startled by sudden movement or noises. She had to be; jerking or stumbling inevitably led to falling, and depending on her bad foot to help her get back up was always tricky. She did snap, though, "It's not your business; who're you?"
"Oh, well, that's easy enough. I'm a genie. More to the point, right this moment I am your genie."
She had to give this one credit for a new take on an old topic. "Look, I ain't going to buy anything, and I'm sure not going to go to work for you. I'm not set up to stand around on street corners." She hit the sidewalk hard with the tip of her umbrella as she hurried along.
Instead of defending himself, the man circled around in front of her, momentarily stopping her halting gait. "It's a cane! I say, that's more than half clever," he seemed to marvel, as though he'd never seen one used that way. Then he fixed her with very pale blue eyes and a wintry smile. "Street corners?" Even if his expression didn't register confusion, his tone made up for it.
"I'm not a hooker, and I don't want to BE one," she answered forcefully, jabbing toward his leg with the umbrella. He simply stepped to the side and let her walk, joining her again. Despite his sudden appearance, his crazy talk, and the mystery around him, Neenah didn't feel particularly endangered. "Besides, I'm way too young for you to even solicit. Fifteen's illegal."
"Hook- Oh, I see." He was silent for a few more steps. "No, I have no interest that way. Why would you think I do?"
She glanced over at him and gestured briefly with her umbrella. "Good dresser like you in this area's usually looking for girls or drugs. Or drug runners."
"Actually, I'm only here because you woke me up. I was having a fine nap, and then there was this banging and cursing, and you said 'I wish ...'" He cocked his head and smiled when she drew to a halt and forced herself to stand straight, narrowing her eyes at him. "You wished to be invisible."
"If you're a genie, aren't you supposed to give me what I wish for after you show up?" Neenah demanded. She wasn't too far from home, and could always hurry up the sidewalk and lock herself on the other side of the front door if he tried something now.
"Some do that. My job's to force people into a harder look at what they wish for. If someone wished their mother were dead, I show them what things would be like if she was." He pressed on when she would have interrupted. "Just for a short while. I always put back to rights what I change."
It wasn't too long ago Mr. Jackson had made the English class read Everyman, so the term was still fixed in Neenah's mind. "A morality play? That's what you do to people? What about the wishes? Money? Nice cars? A good job, or a husband, or fixing botched operations?" She pointed to her foot, getting angry at being played with by some stranger clearly far better off than her. "Come on, Clarence - you want to show someone what life would be like some other way? Fix this."
"I'm Ulea. Not Clarence." His tone held no awareness of humor. "You said, 'They'd leave me the fuck alone if they couldn't see me; I wish a lot of days that I was just invisible!'" He mimicked her higher voice perfectly, as though it had been recorded and played back at her. "So, you get to be invisible." He waved his hand airily and stepped back as if he'd made the Statue of Liberty vanish to another continent.
Neenah looked down at her feet, her umbrella, the worn long skirt she'd stubbornly made do with for four years. "Good job, Mindfreak," she muttered. "What did you think was going to happen?" When he looked at her askance, she lifted her skirt hem a couple of inches to gesture, and noticed that he clearly saw her do it. "I'm not invisible?"
"I can see you. You can see yourself. That only makes sense." He looked around, then snapped his fingers and pointed down the street. "Here comes a passerby. Go toward them, see if they react to you. Oh, but don't say anything; you can still be heard. Just not seen."
Clearly Ulea didn't understand this wasn't the kind of neighborhood where people tipped their hats and wished each other good morning and felicitations. When the old woman drew within about thirty feet of Neenah, she sighed at his expectant look and, against her nature, lifted a hand and waved at the oncomer; there was no response, which didn't bother her. Off his look, she waved again, then pointed her umbrella up in the air and twirled it around. Still, nothing. Because Ulea was smirking now, she waved at the woman again, this time with both arms, making funny faces and sticking out her tongue repeatedly.
The old woman walked by with no recognition, fear, start, or exclamation; in fact, Neenah had to scurry back a couple of steps to avoid being shoved by her inexorable path. "What hap-" At that, the woman stopped and looked around, doing a full circle to scan the yard she was passing before setting off once again toward the center of the small town. She didn't even seem to see Ulea, which is what put the cold fissure down Neenah's spine at last.
"I told you, you can still be heard. And you can be seen if you move things. I did take the liberty of making the things you are currently touching and wearing invisible, as well, so you may have modesty and walking assistance," he pointed out kindly, "but anything else you touch is not included.
"You get to experience what life is like with you suddenly out of the picture. Nobody will know you're around unless you can convince them of this condition. I'll be back in one week, at this very spot, to lift this curse. Pay heed to the lessons you learn over the next seven days." Inside of a second, where he had been standing was empty space, giving her no opportunity to ask more - or to protest.
*********
"We've got to talk," Neenah told Ulea when he finally vacuumed into existence one week later in the alley with the discarded muffler. She was sitting on an upended barrel she'd found there, armed with her umbrella and a small piece of paper that anyone passing might have mistaken for simply floating around on an air current.
"Learned a lesson, did you?" he wanted to know.
"Might say that." She grinned terribly; she'd been working on wearing whatever expressions she pleased during her invisibility, and even though she couldn't see a mirror, she plainly felt their shape and imagined effect. "Others have."
"Others?" Ulea's beatific smile slipped a little.
"I think the guy who used to try to trip me in Algebra did, who decided when I wasn't around that he was going to move on to trying to pull up the skirt of the shortest girl in class." Neenah tapped her umbrella on the side of the barrel; it may have been invisible, but it made a clear sound. Had a clear impact too, as she'd found out a few times this week. "I sat in the empty desk next to his and just stood up and poked him down in the balls a few times one day. He was too busy grabbing himself to think about getting grabby with anyone else."
"Ah." Ulea nodded. "Having a bit of fun is always expected with these things. Easy, too, when you know it's not going to last."
"But I want it to." Off his confusion, she nodded. "I like this. I am well and good satisfied with being this way."
"Um." Clearly going off-script wasn't his strong suit. "Uh."
"You didn't say anything that I had to go back to being seen. This last week, I've been ... You know, nobody's picked on me, or tried to trip me or called me names, or looked at me like I'm dying next week of cancer or something. I can move around at my own speed. I can still learn stuff in class. And I can help people." Neenah pressed her lips together. "I never get to help anyone in any way that matters, like to get them out of danger or getting picked on. I'm not fast, and nobody's scared of me when they see me coming." She slid down from the barrel onto her feet, steadying herself with the umbrella tip. "But when they DON'T.
"Do you know I walked around out here a few nights ago, and I scared off a couple of car thieves from stripping Old Man Jack's car? He never did anyone any wrong as long as I've known him, he just goes around fixing things at people's houses for a little grocery money, and he's about nine hundred years old. He NEEDS that Ford like I got to have this." She tilted her umbrella. "So I catch a couple of assholes trying to break in, and just as they get the lock undone, I sneak up behind one and whack him on the head. The I poked the other one hard in the small of his back. I just kept doing it," she added triumphantly, demonstrating with the folded umbrella lancing about like a sword, "until they ran off yelling!"
This, Ulea considered, is what dispossessed genies lying around in mufflers got for being too slow to be assigned to curvy oil lamps and swan-necked bottles in dusty secondhand shops. "I'm really not-"
"Oh, please don't take it away." Neenah hated begging. Dad had begged her mom not to leave a few years back, and it seemed like he'd been begging for things ever since - work, a loan extension for his long-haul rig, second chances at jobs he was clearly not suited for, second jobs. "I'm doing a good thing with it! That's got to mean something, even where you come from. Wherever that is."
"I do not believe you understand what you're asking for," Ulea finally sighed. "You are very young. I can't come back again - if I don't do this now, you'll stay invisible your whole life."
"I figure there's invisible," she answered slowly, trying to put into words what she'd tumbled over in her head for days as vague concepts, "and then there's not being seen. One of those, I get to control."
There was a beauteous justice in what he'd unleashed, Ulea had to admit as he listened to the short list of practical addenda Neenah needed in the course of a lifetime ("I've got to be able to change clothes, and this umbrella's not going to last forever"). He was eyeing his dirty, dented muffler with displeasure when she finished with, "Well?" and thinking of smoke and glass and tarnished copper and silver. Spending eternity in fumes and grease did not suit him.
"First, there's something you must find for me ..."
January 23, 2019