Helen carefully unwrapped the golden box she'd purchased earlier that day. She wasn't sure what had made her go into the antique mall today; she'd probably passed it a million times on her walk from the office to the parking garage without ever giving it a second thought. The window displays were drab and she didn't think they'd been changed in years, and it was nothing like the high end boutiques she normally frequented, but something had called her to stop today. She'd entered to the brassy tinkle of a bell over the door, and a plump, dowdy woman had bustled around a corner almost immediately.
"Let me know if I can help you find anything, dearie! The whole floor's open for browsing and everything should be marked, but if you find something we missed that you like, just let me know!" she had a huge ruffled scrunchie holding her wispy hair back above an embroidered turtleneck and a hideous sweater vest sporting kittens and yarn. Helen almost left right then.
But again, something urged her on, further into a place she normally would have gone out of her way to avoid. Wandering slowly past stalls full of knick-knacks and old toys, antique furs and cases full of watches and pins, Helen made sure not to brush up against anything, lest the dust rub off on her new Burberry trench.
Suddenly she stopped, turning to face a tiny chest of drawers practically buried in a stall full of antique wooden toy cars. She wasn't sure why, but she found herself pulling the top drawer open slowly, and she let out a gasp when she saw what it contained:
A radiant, gold-encrusted box twinkled and gleamed back at her! Perhaps the size of a small jewelry box, it was like nothing she'd ever seen before! It seemed to be a perfect cube, and with hinges in the center of the back to open it.
Helen knew she wanted it immediately.
She didn't see a price sticker anywhere though, so she headed back to the front of the warehouse.
"Excuse me," she called out, not seeing the little lady right away.
"Found something, my dear?" the woman trilled, popping out from a stall ten feet down another aisle.
Helen paused and glanced at the box. "Yes, I ... I think I have. I can't find a price on it though."
"No problem, we'll just look up the owner's stall and contents and get that for you!" the woman's giddy voice was beginning to grate on her ears, and Helen itched to get out of there with her find. She gazed at it again, getting lost in the curving etchings, her thumbs tracing the spirals and lines unconsciously.
"What stall did you find it in, dear?" the lady asked. "Dear??"
Jolted out of her trance, Helen mumbled something bout wooden cars and waved her hand in the direction. Luckily this woman knew the entire place like her own hand, and she was soon flipping through a list of stalls and their contents.
"Hmm... I don't see it on the list for John Aberforth's stall. It seems a bit out of place there since he's mostly a car nut. I don't think he'd be selling a brass jewel box!"
Helen was somewhat offended at the woman's condescending appraisal of the box. Couldn't she see how it caught the light? The gleam of true gold?! It had to be worth a fortune! Immediately, Helen's shopping savvy kicked in, and she decided to let the woman think it was brass. Hopefully this would drive the price down significantly.
"Well, it's not on his list, and if someone moved it from another stall it could take all day to locate the record! The owners assume some of the risk of things accidentally being shuffled about by unthinking customers and the like, so I guess, if you'll just let me see it, I can try to come up with an appropriate price." The lady held out her hand expectantly.
Strangely reluctant to let the box go, Helen forced herself to hand it over. What did it matter? She tried to tell herself. The woman would be giving it right back!
The absurdly dressed lady turned the cube in her hands, scratching under her ponytail when she failed to find a sticker. She didn't seem to notice the hinges, and for some reason, Helen didn't point them out. There could be a price-tag inside, but she found she didn't want the lady to open it. Not at all!
"How about $25?" the woman asked. "It must be antique, though I can't for the life of me see what value there is in a solid brass cube beyond perhaps as a paperweight."
Helen quickly pulled out the cash, elated at the price! She said a hasty goodbye after refusing a receipt (why would she ever want to return it?!) and was out the door before she knew it.
Now, finally home, she gazed in awe at her new treasure. Setting it on the coffee table before her, she reached out and slowly opened the lid. It came apart smoothly and easily; she was amazed it hadn't fallen open with the shopkeeper's rough handling!
Suddenly, a thin vapor started to rise from the box, rapidly expanding, becoming thicker and thicker until it seemed to fill the whole room! As Helen waved her hands in front of her face, trying to clear the air to breathe, she heard a deep voice echo out of the smoke.
"Master! What a relief it is to stretch my old bones once more! A thousand thanks for your assistance!"
The smoke was clearing and Helen was shocked to find a large man now seated on the opposite sofa! His bulbous chins and ample stomach barely contained in some sort of Middle-Eastern garb, straight out of a movie!
"Wh-who are you?!" she shouted, "And what are you doing in my house?!!" Helen tried to maintain her calm, regal façade that worked so well for respect in the office.
"Ah, a Mistress, I see." He spoke, not answering her question at all. "You have found my prison, Mistress, and for opening it you have my eternal gratitude! Please tell your humble servant how he may repay you!"
"What do you mean, prison?" her façade dropped a bit at the thought of a dangerous convict. "How did you get in here? And who ARE you?"
He leaned back, getting comfortable on the couch, his huge legs pulled up in front of him. "I am your servant, oh beautiful Mistress! My name was once Jamir al'Abinzari, but it is not important any longer. I have spent years learning humility in my tiny cell, and now I live only to serve the will of my Mistress, the one who has set me free! Please, most radiant one, tell me what I can do, just speak your deepest wish and I will strive to make it so!!"
"A wish?" Helen queried. "You mean, you're like a genie or something? You can grant me three wishes?!" disbelief tinged with hope swam in her eyes as she began to pace the room.
"It is true, my lady! You have only to voice your desire and it will become your reality! It is my deepest wish to please you!" the genie replied with a smile.
Helen pondered for a moment how to test him, to see if magic could actually be real.
"I've always wished I was born with naturally platinum blonde hair. If you are for real, make it so!" Helen challenged.
A tingling at her scalp had her racing to the large mirror beside the fire place, where she was astonished to see her hair, starting at the roots rapidly fading from her yellow bleached-blonde to a gleaming, almost silvery platinum all the way to the tips. Her eyebrows were next, a slightly darker shade so they just stood out from her tan skin, followed by her tiny eyelashes, mascara disappearing as if it'd never been. She highly suspected the changes had continued beneath her clothes, but with a huge magical stranger in the room, she wasn't about to check.
Helen turned back to the couches, her jaw gaping. "You, it... you're really magical?" she gasped.
"Of course, Mistress! I would never lie to you! Are you pleased? Tell your servant what next he can do for you!"
She was still in awe over the first change, and having turned back to the mirror she was running her manicured fingers through her glowing locks and over her brows, amazed that she looked as she'd never dreamed possible. Well, almost, she thought, feeling the slight wrinkles she had been obsessing over for the past month. Smoothing her hands down her face, over her neck (was it beginning to sag?) and lower, Helen pondered her second wish.
"Genie, I wish for you to return my body to the way it was in my early twenties, never to age or change but retaining my now naturally blonde hair."
A simmer raced over her body, starting at her toes and flying to the tip of her head, making her hair raise and fluff. Helen thought it suddenly looked fuller and more bouncy, and the she noticed her face, her forehead smoothing out and the skin around her eyes tightening, her cheeks taking on a natural glow and her lips plumping out to her former killer pout. She felt the skin under her chin becoming tauter as the changes rippled back down her body. Her upper arms, visible in the sleeveless camisole she wore under her suit, suddenly seemed more defined and her wrists and hands smoother. She felt her breasts physically lift, becoming once more their perky, young selves again, and she reveled in the changes as they reached her hips, thighs and no-longer-aching feet!!
"Oh wonderful, genie! Simply amazing!! I haven't felt like this in YEARS!" Helen exclaimed, twisting her new-old body back and forth in the mirror. Helen's eyes sparkled with the luster of youth, and she imagined what her husband would think when he returned.
"You are pleased, my Mistress? The results are to your satisfaction?" the man grinned, knowing the answers to his questions from the look on his lady's face.
Helen reluctantly tore her gaze from herself, her smile reward enough for the djinn.
"It's perfect, genie. I always thought I looked my best during these years, and now I will never age or grow weak and old again! There is only one thing more you could do to make me blissfully happy."
"Only name it, most youthful one, and it is yours. Your wish is my command" the genie bowed low over his folded legs, and she almost thought he floated above the couch.
"I wish never to have to work another day in my eternal life, to be pampered and cared for, fed and groomed by servants who love me and to never again have a care in the world!!"
"As you wish, Mistress." The genie bowed low once more and another tingling flooded Helen's body.
Turning back to the mirror, she was delighted to see her face thinning further, her chin coming to an adorable point, her neck becoming more graceful and her limbs, slenderer still. The changes worked on her mind as well and suddenly Helen was relieved of all worry, unbound from anxiety and concerned only with her wellbeing and relaxation. She wandered away from the mirror as her thoughts drifted and so was unaware of the final changes to her body.
As she walked into the light from the room's bay window, Helen's clothes vanished. The sun's warm rays seemed to wrap around her body, caressing her skin. Her feet, no longer confined by the torturous pumps, stretched and elongated, her heels lifting off the floor as she balanced on the balls of her feet in the sunlight. Scraping her nails up over her hips, she twirled her hands in front of her, marveling at her gorgeous claws, flexing them in and out of their sheaths on the tips of her shortening fingers. A fine platinum fur sprang up, rippling over her body in waves and covering her from her head to the tip of her new tail, darker around her toes, nose and ears, which had become pointed and shifted to the top of her skull. As she turned round and round in the sunlight, Helen's nose pushed out, thicker gray tinged skin covering the cute, upturned tip and gray whiskers sprouting from her puffier upper lip and cheeks. As her neck, shoulders and hips shifted, she grew smaller and smaller, slowly lowering to her paws and moving on all fours as she completed her turn, ever so gracefully settling for a late-afternoon nap in her favorite sunspot.
Life was going to be good.
