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It all started with a wish. A stupid wish, and one I never thought would be fulfilled. It seemed perfectly harmless at the time, but how was I supposed to know that some glittery-eyed creep would actually be listening? It was a rainy Friday night when it happened. I huddled under my covers with the only light coming from my phone, binging on my favorite show and pretending I was the main character,
wondering what it would be like to have friends, trying to escape into the cyber world just through the black mirror. Depression and ennui tightened in a thick, sticky web around me, like that totally gross white stuff Shelob wrapped around Frodo in The Return of the King. I took a deep breath, forgetting that I was under the covers, and got a gulp of hot, CO2-infused air. I felt like a giant hand was smushing me into the bed, smothering me in a blanket of responsibilities, failures, and fears. "I wish someone would come and make me forget everything for just one night," I gasped into the smelly, rarified atmosphere beneath the blankets.
Nothing happened. The tiny fire of hope within me was quenched like when you throw water on a flaming towel that you left too close to the burner when you were warming up your ramen. I sighed and sat up, flipping the covers away to reveal a guy crouched on my bed, grinning dementedly.
"I am Aki," he whispered. He tipped his head to the side and leaned into my face, totally invading my personal space bubble. His black hair shone in the phone light. "I will grant all your deepest, darkest, dirtiest wishes."
I gave a startled yelp and fell out of bed, jerking my earbuds painfully out of my ears in the process. Laying on the floor, I blinked rapidly, as if that would dispel the apparition (for it must have been one!)
still seated on my bed, smiling and gazing at me intensely. I scuttled like a demented crab into the relative safety of the space underneath my desk to stare at him.
His toothy grin and the perky ears situated on top of his head (not to mention the tail curled up beside him!) suddenly made me think of the catboy anime that my roommate was obsessed with. An unearthly blue glow surrounded him. His voice was like rich, thick honey. Seriously. I tasted honey in my mouth every time he talked.
"What is your wish, my pretty little human?"
"I want to see stars!" I blurted almost instantly.
With feline grace, he lept off the bed and crouched on the floor. His smile changed from catnip-crazed cat to predatory yet flirtatious. "Your wish is my command."
I barely had time to process the ridiculously cheesy line before he was crouching less than a foot from me, otherworldly energy surging within him, ready to burst out at any second.
This close, I could see the bright blue of his eyes. His unfathomable Caribbean gaze bored into my skin like a laser cutting through flimsy paper to make hoity-toity wedding invitations. He slunk closer like his muscles were made of water, closing the few remaining inches between us, his warm breath fanning across my mouth, his face so huge and horribly close like a pretty-boy parody of an Easter Island head.
I panicked a little and shoved him back. He lost his balance and fell ungracefully back onto an old ramen cup. The awkward silence was shattered by the sound of it crunching under his behind.
For an instant, a look of extreme irritation flashed across his face, before it was replaced with the saccharine smile.
"THE stars," I hurriedly continued, hoping I hadn't offended him. "In space."
Realization flitted across his face like junebugs in the beam of a flashlight. "You want to go into space?"
I nodded, grinning widely, my hands clasped in front of my chest. Okay, so I had a thing for space and had wanted to be the first human to visit another world ever since I'd watched Star Trek as a kid. At least now I had a chance to fulfill the dream I thought would be impossible for another 500 years.
Aki sighed dramatically and put his head in his hand--a gesture which, I assume, was meant to be disarmingly attractive. However, all I could think about was the ramen cup underneath him and wondering whether its juices had begun to seep out or not.
"I'm afraid I'll have to consult with the boss on this," he said finally. "I don't really have the authority to grant a wish like that."
"You SAID you'd grant any wish," I said dryly.
He flicked his gaze upward, glaring at me from underneath his long lashes. "Usually, the people I deal with ask for sexual favors."
I curled my lip. "People just want to have random sex with a supernatural thing that looks like an anime catboy?"
He shrugged, pulling the ramen cup out. "They think they're dreaming." The smile came back. "And I look different to everyone based on what they're attracted to."
After dropping that disturbing bit of information like food pellets into a koi pond, he disappeared soundlessly, leaving only a crushed ramen cup and a faint smell of cinnamon to indicate that he had ever been there.
In the five minutes he was gone I flipped between horribly regretting my decision to go anywhere with a genie/anime character/supernatural sex plaything and being overjoyed at the thought of traveling the galaxy. Turning on a lamp made things even worse; the light made any romantic notions about being able to travel the galaxy scuttle away like roaches when you flip over a brick that they've been hiding under. When I thought I'd fallen into a black hole and was experiencing massive time dilation, he reappeared on my bed in the lotus position, the picture of composure, like he just hadn't been sitting on the remains of my dinner. His gaze flitted around the room, pausing for a moment on the burnt towel lying crumpled by the oven, then skipping over: the Mount Vesuvius of books and papers on my desk, the clothes overflowing out of my roommate's dresser in a colorful waterfall, the forgotten, dried apple cores under the bed, and the hideous emoji pillow occupying prime real estate on the windowsill.
"Well?" Though I tried to sound casual, my voice shook with anticipation.
He smiled and the blue glow around him intensified. "Come with me."
I took his hand, and we became like water, shooting up through the roof, into the rain-drenched sky, through the atmosphere, higher and higher until up was no longer up, it was sideways and down and the Earth was a swirling white and blue basketball hurtling through the blackness and we were where no living thing had been before. Out and out we soared, where filaments of stars fluttered, gauzy strips in an ancient galactic dance. We blew like smoke around unknown worlds, coasted past supernovae, feeling immeasurably huge and infintesimally small at the same time. A swirling, trippy mix of colors surrounded us, filled us. We coasted through asteroid fields of frozen rock, glittering boulders that had only ever felt the light of alien suns, mineral monoliths that just might harbor the seeds for another Earth. Just us and the universe, a galactic quilt eons in the making.
I don't know how long we swam among the milky stars and walked along the glittering pathways of the galaxies, but eventually we found ourselves on a mountain in some Earth desert, looking at the shining stretch of sky jewels as the planet turned toward morning.
"Why didn't you want to...?" Though I kept my eyes on the sky, I could feel him watching me intently, as if looking for a certain reaction--what, I don't know.
"Maybe someday," I replied hesitantly. "But so far, I've never been interested in it. And I'm fine that way."
Whether this satisfied him or not, he didn't say anything the rest of the time we were together. As the sun began to rise, he dropped me off in my room with a mysterious smile and a quick touch of a cold hand on my face, then dissolved in the golden sunbeams.