The Last Wish

"Three wishes, eh?" Melanie smiled. "First one's obvious—I want to be rich."

The genie nodded. "Granted."

"Next, I want to live a very long, healthy life."

"Granted."

"Finally, I want that life to be as long as," Melanie took Doug's hand, "my husband and only love, Douglas Smith. I don't want to live a minute longer than him."

The genie smirked. "Granted."

The next five years were great. They climbed Everest, visited Machu Picchu, and started a scholarship called "City to College" to help low income kids get into Ivy League schools.

But Doug soon grew bored. "I want to do something worthwhile," he told her.

So she put him in charge of their charity. After a couple years, his twenty-hour work week became forty, then sixty, then overnights as he traveled around the country, soliciting more donations and drumming up support for the organization.

She missed him, at first. But when the phone calls to her started to taper, when he came home after weeks-long absences smelling of Joy Parfum, they fought.

"I'm doing a lot of good," he told her. "You don't resent me for that, do you?"

After a pause, Melanie finally admitted, "Yes, I do. Why am I not enough for you?"

He ran his hand through his hair. "You’ve changed," he said quietly.

But she realized it was he who had changed, not her. For some reason, she couldn't seem to adapt, to be the same person Doug had become. They had grown apart.

The fights wound down to silence, to longer business trips, to a cold and empty bed. Melanie turned a deliberate blind eye to his extracurriculars, hoping to entice him back.

But of course, he always came back. The money was in her name, after all. But the spark that held them together had died.

She never found someone else to love, and so she never worked up the energy to ask for a divorce. On paper, they remained the power couple, and Doug never switched his permanent address.

The decades wound around the clock, twisting her life tighter and tighter. Her money swelled, her home receded.

On her eightieth birthday, she woke up in the middle of the night, realizing for the first time in many years that she wasn't alone.

It was the genie. "Your last wish has ended," he told her.

She could feel her heart begin to slow, as it was held in tandem with Doug's. She would not live a minute longer than her husband, even though she hadn't seen him in years. And she had never loved another, since her wish had made that impossible.

"Is anyone ever happy?" she asked the genie wistfully, her eyes turned back on her bleak and empty life.

The genie shook his head slowly. "They never ask for it." Rachael blinked slowly, the genie's bearded face growing fuzzy as her heart stuttered. "In a millennia of wishes," he told her gently as she drew in her last breath, "not once."