Little Book of Wishes

The sun is starting to rise. The light is starting to pierce through the curtains. There is a woman sleeping ever so deeply and comfortably wrapped up in her blanket on her couch. Her phone starts to vibrate on her glass coffee table. She opens her eyes to being hit with a blinding ray of warm light. She picks up her phone. 

"Oh shit." She says as she kicks off her blanket in a rush. She runs to the bathroom and starts to go pee when she gets a whiff of her armpits. "I have to shower really quick." So she jumps in the shower and for a brief moment thinks about washing her hair. "Should I wash it? I haven't washed it in a few days... No, I don't have time for this.. I am running late." She finishes up in the shower realizes she doesn't have a towel with her. "Fuuucckk.." She gets out of the shower and almost makes it to the door before slipping and starting to fall before she catches herself on the sink safely. She rushes out the door and to her closet and grabs her towel. She starts drying off and starts looking for her clothes for the day on. "Shit.. Where's my bra..." She starts running around looking for her bra from the day before. It takes her a minute before she finds it wrapped in the blanket she kicked off of herself. "Ah-ha! Found it!" She puts her clothes on and starts putting on her slip-on work shoes and the heel folds in on itself as she fights to get her shoe on. Out the door with she locks it with her keys and goes to grab her phone just to realize she left it on the coffee table. She goes back inside and gets her phone and her backpack on the way out "I can't forget these I wanted to drop them off and pick up some new books" and locks the door behind her and runs down to the bus stop just to get there with her bus already down the road. She then calls her boss to let them know she is running late cause she missed the bus. She pulls out her mask and puts it on as people start coming for the next bus and eventually makes it to work. At the end of the day, she gets off work and catches the bus to her favorite local book store. It normally gets there within an hour to 45 minutes before they close and it takes about 10 minutes to walk there so she gets to look around some before going home. About halfway through the bus trip, it stops for 45 minutes. She finally gets to my stop and starts to rush to the book store. She had books to drop off and I wanted to pick up.  She rushes to try and make it on time but she was hitting every don't walk sign. Only minutes left to spare but she made it. "Hello! I have some books to drop off in the free book bin. Oh, you're not the person who normally works the counter at this time." "Yeah I to fill in her him cause he had needed the day off. Do you know we are about to close?" She replied. "Yes sorry about that it's been a day. I will just drop these off and pick up some free books and go. I won't belong." She walks over and empties put her backpack in one bin and grabs a bunch and throws them in her backpack before leave and heading home. "Finally, at home." She says as she puts her backpack down and starts to settle in by taking her bra off. "I'm free! We are free!" She says as she grabs herself massaging and lifting her breast. She makes herself something to drink and something dry to eat. She pulls out her bong and packs the bowl. She turns on some relaxing reading music before sitting down and taking a long hit from her bong. As she exhales she thinks to herself "I am glad I can be home and just slow down. Everything felt just so rushed today." She starts to eat and drink while she is smoking when she realizes "Oh yeah, I got some new books today!" She jumps up and rushes to her backpack and brings it into her room and dumps them all out on the bed. "I just love the thrill of not knowing what amazing story I might read today is, now let's see what we have here..." "I have read that one before.. And that one. That's a classic but not what I am in the mood for tonight.. Hmm.." She thinks to her sitting on her bed looking through the books. She glides her hands across a little black book. The texture felt like pleather. She knew it wasn't real leather by the feel of it. When she picked it up she noticed it didn't have a cover title or anything. "Interesting.. Looks like this will be my first book tonight." She put the book down to the side and started putting away all the other books. She was smiling the whole time. She grabbed the book and went to her favorite reading chair sitting beside one of her windows. When she opened the book on the first page she saw a set of five rules. "That's a strange and strong opening for a mysterious little black book." She saw that the rules talked about making a wish. She finished reading the rules and started to get excited. She flipped through the book and saw that other people wrote their wishes in the book."Wow.. A lot of people wished for immortality and money. I bet this isn't even real. Still, a lot of people wrote in this book for something they wanted. So, many wishes. I wonder if any of them ever came true." She said to herself as she flipped over to the last page."Eeee!" She squealed as she saw the blank space. "Today must be my lucky day. Just enough space left for me to make a wish!" She thought to herself as she rushed over to her desk to find a pen. In that last space, she thinks to herself as she writes "I. wish. I had. a million. dollars. I wish I had a million dollars. If this is real, I am going to be rich!" The smile on her face fades away as she sees the words start to disappear on the page. "What? What happened??... Wait what did the rules say again?" She didn't even realize she didn't finish reading the rules before she made her wish. "What If it would have went bad!" I thought to herself feeling disappointed in her ability for not being able to keep her composure long enough to be cautious about it. So, she decides to read the rules out loud to herself to help her keep them in mind. "1. The one who currently possesses this book is the owner of the book. 2. Anything wished for must come from somewhere. ""So if I wish for something it has to come from somewhere it already existed. Oh and what if the person comes looking for what's theirs." I thought to myself."3. You must write "I wish" before your wish in order for it to come true.4. Your first wish will balance out your karma.""Balance out my Karma? What does that mean? Do I have good karma?" "5. Be careful what you wish for. " She looks at rule 5 annoyed with an annoyed look on her face for not getting rule 4 sooner. She thinks to herself "I get it now" as she flips the page."6. You can't wish for the power to make all your wishes to come true.""Damn""7. You can't wish for Infinite knowledge.""Shit""8. You can't wish to meet the creator of the book.""Okay, I get that""9. You can't wish to destroy this book."She glares at the book with suspicion."10. You can't alter reality or time with your wish. If an event is supposed to happen, is fixed in time, it can't happen sooner than that fixed point in time." "So I can't wish to go back in time to kill Hitler sooner, damn." She says as she flips the page. "11. You can not bring the dead back to life.12. You can't wish to kill anyone.13. You can't wish to control a person's free will. 14. You can't force love.15. You can't wish for the power to create life or wish for anything to come to life.""Those all seem like toxic things to do but, I can understand and see why someone would wish for them." She says as she flips the page again. "16. Every wish must end with 3 exclamation points.17. Any wish that can't be completed will vanish from this book.""That explains that." "18. Once a wish has been granted it cannot be removed from the book. 19. In order to cancel a passive wish you have to put a single straight line through it. Only the person who makes a wish can cancel their wish. 20. Once this book is lost from your position it is pointless to look for it as you will never be able to find it again." "Hmm... I wonder what that means exactly.." She sits and takes in what she just read. "Okay so, I know how to make a wish, what I can't do, and how to cancel a wish. Now I feel like there is real weight to what I wish for." She thinks to herself as she chews on the end of her pen. "I have to be careful about how I word my wish. I don't need a lot of money and a lot of people wish for money. I feel like I am not being original, but I need the money, so, who wouldn't need or care about it? Richest people in the world." She goes to the back of the book and starts to think. "I wish for $20,000.00 from the richest people in the world who wouldn't care about losing money or some money going accounted for. That sounds good right?" hesitant to write anything. "Or make $200,000.00 in lost or loose change?...nevermind that sounds like a bad and a heavy one. Might kill my neighbors below... $20,000.00?.... I am going to look this up." She takes a moment to look up the weight of $20k in coins. "Okay, so, Needless to say, that it would kill my neighbors if that much weight just landed in my apartment..""Okay, I got it! How about." She starts writing in the book. "There it's done. I wish for $20,000.00 in lost, no longer owned, United States Dollar bills to appear on my bed in a clean manila envelope!!!" And in that moment she hears nothing. She thought she would hear a noise or see a magical light anything. "Nothing? that was very anti-climatic honestly." She thought to herself. She goes to look at her bed and nothing. "That's very disappointing." She decided to go sit on her couch and watch something that actually felt magical. She walks into her living room to approach the couch. She moves her pillow to the end of the couch and lifts her blanket to find a Manila Envelope. She looks inside and sure enough "$20,000.00 in lost unowned United States dollar bills..."She rushes back to her bedroom and picks up the book "holy shit, it's real! I didn't think about it like that. I sleep best on the couch and it's where I woke up this morning. I also tend to sleep there a lot more than on my bed too. So my couch is my bed. Okay, I think I actually understand this more now. If I wish for anything else I.. I have to be really careful cause that just balanced out my karma... Fuck.. Okay, I got this. I just have to think.." So, she sits with the book on her bed with a pen to her side. Carefully reading each page of wishes. When she thinks "if only I had a way to know how these wishes went..." She pauses for a few seconds before she realizes she is holding a book that grants wishes and starts feeling stupid... "I can wish for me to know the story of each wish duh!" She opens the back of the book to find a new page. She begins to write "I wish I would get to know the story of any wish I point to in this book!!!" She thinks to herself "I don't feel different.."So, she decided to go back to that first wish she saw that she was curious about "I wish everything I touched turned to gold!!! I want to know the true story of King Midas." And points to the wish. At that moment it was like a movie being played in her head. Everyone knows the story of King Midas and his warning about being careful what you wish for, but what they don't know is that this book is how he made his wish. King Midas writes his wish in the book and then puts it down, turns around, and touches something. "It worked. It really worked! I got to touch more things. I am going to be rich!" starts running around touching all kinds of things turning them into gold. After he gets done and tries to get something to eat and realizes the curse of his wish. He goes to go get the book but in his excitement forgets where he puts the book down at. He desperately tries to find the book again but couldn't. So, he puts out a reward that "whoever finds a little black book that grants wishes and brings it to me will be greatly rewarded as I soon don't have much longer to live. "One day someone did bring him the book and near death. "Here is the boy and the book my king." One of the guards says as the boy kneels in front of him. "I see no book," he says as he realizes what the book meant by once this leaves your possession as everyone in the room could see the book but him."You boy, I thank you for bringing me this book. But I can no longer see it. I give to you my city of gold as promised. You are king now. Be kind, be good, and be careful of what you wish for." As he clothes his eyes. She snaps back to reality with tears coming down her eyes as I could feel all of his pain and sorrow. "In the end, he was full of regret for every act he has ever made." She put the book down and took a deep breath as she was so overwhelmed by what she had just experienced. She was scared to pick the book back up and point to another wish to see the outcome but understand that she couldn't just get rid of the book yet. So, she hesitantly picks up the book again and decided to put it in her desk in the top drawer. "So I know where it is." as she locks the drawer. She checks on the book the next morning just to make sure it's still there to test her theory. It was.2 weeks go by before she decided she could finally work up the nerve to learn about another wish. She was curious and checked on the book. With a deep breath, she opened the drawer. "it's still there." She exhaled. She picks up the book before putting it back down and clocking it again. Then with a quickness, she rushes to her front door and double-checks her locks. Then moves over to cover her windows. She grabs her pillows and blanket to adjust them making her couch as comfortable as possible. Then she starts to make some tea to help with her nerves. She grinds cannabis and gets her bong filled with fresh water and ice. "There now I can be ready for whatever happens.."She goes back to get the book and grabs her pen before sitting down on the couch. "Shit forgot to grab my tea." She says as she gets up and makes her glass of tea. "And now I am ready to see the next wish I point to." She starts to read the wishes again."Wow, a LOT of people wish for immortality. There is at least 8 immortality wish per page. If there are so many immortals in the world then where are they all? Hmm... Okay. So, I will point to one of them.. But which one?.." She thinks to herself as she is flipping through the pages. "I wish for a satisfying and enlightening life of Immortality!!!" It stood out to her and seemed more positive. With a point of a finger, it happens again, like a movie. The sunlight feels warm, there is a slight breeze, and clouds in the sky. A young man is walking along a path "I have been walking for 3 weeks. I haven't had anything to eat in 4 days. I thought I would be at the village by now. It has to be close. I need to eat something." He thinks to himself. After about another hour of walking, he hears a faint noise. "Yes. Yes! That's a beautiful noise I like to hear!" He starts to run as fast as he can as the noise gets louder and louder. "Yes! Thank the heavens! A river!!" With a swiftness, he rushes over to the water and says a prayer thanking the gods for allowing him to find this river.He starts to drink the water. Afterward, he washes himself and his clothes. He starts a fire and sits down waiting for his clothes to dry when he finds the little black book lying in the grass beside him. He picks up the book and starts to read it. "Another blessing." He prays and writes his wish.  After his clothes dried some, he went back to the path he was walking and continued down it with the book in hand.Later he finally makes it to the village. He is walking down the busy night street when he smells something delicious and heads that way to find a tall beautiful, long silky hair, young woman who just got done cooking a hot meal. "Um. Hello. My name is Hsu Kosen, I am a monk on a personal path of enlightenment. I just arrived to the village and couldn't help but to follow my nose. It has lead me to you. If you don't mind me asking, what is that beautiful smell?" He asks as he looks up at her. She starts to blush as she says "Oh, that's the meal I just got done making. You look thin, would you like to have some?" His eyes perk up and he smiles "I would love some. But I don't have a way to pay you.." He says as he starts to frown. "It's okay. You don't need to pay me anything. I would really enjoy some company tonight." She says as she realizes what she said. "Wait! I just mean that I don't have a lot of guests over and I know you're a monk and respect your values." She says embarrassed. He smiles and chuckles "It's okay." The meal was lovely and she allowed him to stay for the night he had nowhere to go. He stayed. The next day he goes with her to the market. When they get back they find her home has been broken into and the little black book stolen. He decides to stay and helps her rebuild her home back up, they grow close, have children, he becomes a teacher and farmer. He outlives his family. Old and lonely he goes back to his original temple of training and asks to meditate with his beloved friends of his youth. They let welcome him back and live the rest of his life at the temple teaching his wisdom to the youth until one day he was meditating. One day he grows so week that he could no longer open his eyes, lift himself, or even speak. Then they very carefully mummified him and put him into his own statue. For 500 years he listened to what was going on around him. Eventually, someone realizes that there is a faint heartbeat in the statue and when they opened it up he was still alive. The fresh air was too much for him and it made his heart stop. He will forever be immortalized. She comes back to reality and puts the book down. She leans back and takes a deep breath. "Wow, I felt every bit of his satisfaction. Even after being trapped, he was satisfied someone found him." She picks up her pipe and takes a long hit from her bong. She exhales and drinks some tea before picking the book back up flipping to a new page. "Let's see, what's next? Umm.... Oh.. I might regret this one. But I want to see it." She says as she points to another wish. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------It was a bright, warm, and lonely day. It was another day just like the rest. Another year without his mom. He was heading to her grave cause she loved days like this and her birthday was coming up. He couldn't visit on her birthday cause of work. So, he is going now to make up for it. He fought with his deep sorrow all day long. The urge to cry, all day. As he was walking up to her grave tears started pouring down his cheeks. He drops to his knees holding his face. Grieving. It was just 7 feet till he made it to her grave. He was crying in that spot for 10 maybe 15 minutes.When he could finally bring his composure back enough he stood up. He walked around to talk to the front of his mom's grave when he noticed someone left her favorite flowers with a little black book in front of them with a sticky note that said "happy birthday" on it. "I didn't even realize it was my birthday today." He picks up the book and opens it up. It had a list of rules all talking about wishes. He was mad, furious, he thought someone was trying to make fun of him or play with his emotions. He threw the book on the ground, screamed, and cried. He eventually got it all out of his system and start telling his mom about all the things going wrong in his life. "Mom, I just can't keep it together. I am always sad. I oversleep. I no longer have friends. I can't even manage to get to work on time And I drive. I stopped cleaning. The house is a mess. You would be so disappointed in me.. I just miss you so much.." He says as he starts tearing up again. "I am so sorry for being such a disappointment." As he starts crying again. He goes to leave and steps on the book. "I am taking this with me so who put this book here can't use this one to prank someone else. It's not funny." And picked it up. Still pissed off he went home and broke down crying again. It started raining. He orders delivery pizza cause he wasn't in the mood to cook. When he opened the door the pizza man asked if he was okay. He looked him in the eyes and said "Honestly, no. The anniversary of my mom's death is coming up in a couple of days and today is my birthday." The pizza man looked heartbroken "hold on bro, my name is Zach and I'll be right back." He went downstairs to his car and brought up some drinks. "These are for you, on me." He pulled out a joint and handed it to me."I will come by after work and we will smoke another one of these and talk about it. I will even bring something extra for you too. This one is yours." And left. He brings everything in and lights up the joint. As he starts feeling better he decided to start looking at the book. "Maybe I might have overreacted.. What if someone was trying to be nice."He opened it up and read through it. He thought "why the hell not?" And wrote, "I wish my mom could help take care of me again!!!". Nothing happened, it seemed. He decided to put the book in his room between his mattress and box frame. *knock knock* he hears at the door. He opens it to see Zach came back with his girlfriend and two of her single girl friends a few hours later. "I hope you don't mind I brought my girl Brooklyn and she brought a could of her friends Jade and Jasmine. Yo, and I brought our girl Mary Jane!" They sit down and start preparing to smoke. "So, I told my girl what you told me. We decided that we were going to hang and chill with you tonight. He will help you clean your place up and make sure you're not alone for the rest of your birthday." Jade seemed to fancy the man and left her number on his fridge. The next day they left and zack told him "bro I'm going to be coming back to check on you on my next day off in a few days. Till then." After they all left he had one more day off and his home was clean for once.. "I didn't know what to do or how to handle this." He cried. For what seemed like hours when all of a sudden feeling of warmth come over him. He heard his mom's voice faintly say "It's going to be okay, you're not alone."A couple of days go by and he wakes up to the sound of his mom's voice. "Wake up sweetie, you don't want to be late for work." But this time it sounded like she was really there. He shot up looking for her. It was 06:00 A.M. he couldn't go back to sleep so he decided to get up make breakfast, shower, and went to work on time. It was her birthday and it was a sunny warm day. After work, I went home and was looking at pictures of her and in the reflection of the glass, I thought I could see her. I turned around and she wasn't there. The next day after work Zach and his girlfriend and the girl that liked me came back over to check on me. They stayed and we all had a good time. Zach and his girlfriend left and their friend wanted to stay with me. I said she could and we really got to know each other. Things went really well. The next morning we both woke up to "good morning you two, if he doesn't get up he will be late for work. If you want to stay here you can." And we both shoot up. I look at her and ask if she heard that too and she did. We were very confused but I asked her if she wanted to stay here today. Surprisingly she said yes. We got out of bed I got in the shower and she made breakfast. I went to work and came back she was still here and she cleaned the house from yesterday too. It felt wonderful. I felt good. So later that night we started smoking and she asked me about that morning and if I have heard something similar before. I told him yeah. She asked if it just started happening and It clicked. So I told her and showed her my wish. This was completely crazy but she was rolling with it. So I told him what has happened and we decided to try and communicate back. But we didn't know where to start exactly. So we decided to make a plan. While I was at work tomorrow she was going to go to the public library and try to do some research on how ghosts and spirits communicate. She said she told the library that her philosophy teacher gave her this assignment. So the next day after work I get back and she is there waiting for me excited. She said she found a lot of information, printed, and checked out a few books. She said that she really believes that my mom is a ghost and taking care of me. She said that while I was gone at work she decided to try a simple twice for yes once for no means of communication and she turned the lights on and off. Watch. Is it true you're his mom? The lights flask twice. I was stunned. I broke down crying again. We all stayed together since. I got my life back in order we made a few more wishes and one day we had the book stolen from us while it was in her purse. We were never able to find her purse. I snap back to reality with tears running down my eyes. I smoke some more and drink my tea to relax my nerves. I curl up in my blanket and cry. It made me have a bigger appreciation for my own mother and to call her. I couldn't call her up now. I am a balling mess. So I take some time to relax about an hour passes and I pick up the book again. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------I come across a wish that was canceled out. "I wish I had the ability to teleport!!!" I point to it. It was a nerdy girl. She came across this book in her comic book store. She picked it up thinking someone left their book and went to see who owns it when she opened it and rushed home. She was so excited she knew just what she would wish for. When she got home she grabbed a pen and wrote her. She picked up her book and pin and tried to focus on somewhere she wanted to be. But when she opened her eye she was in the middle of the woods in the middle of nowhere. So she tried again. And this time she ended up in a drunk tank with everyone in the cell screaming. She popped away and this time she was in a desert. She said nope enough of that and canceled her wish before writing she wished she was back at her home. Then she was. Without the book. When I come back I couldn't help but giggle at her reaction when she realized she could teleport only to random locations. I felt better a lot better at this point and it was starting to get late. I decided just one more story but this one has to be something I know could have a good outcome. As I am reading I see one that looks interesting to me. "I wish to be the best martial artist in the world!!! With a point here we go." There is a little Chinese boy running being chased by other kids. "Look Jun-fan went this way!" As they chased after him. He ran into a dead end was cornered. He turned around. Just starting his martial arts training he tries to fight but there are just too many of them. They beat him up before all running away. He is defeated. He starts to walk home when a book falls off a cart on the busy street. He opens and starts reading. He thinks to himself he wants to make a difference. He wants to never let anyone no matter how many be able to beat him. If no one can beat him in a fight then they would have to listen to what he has to say. So he makes his wish. He was disappointed cause he didn't feel any different. He thought it didn't work. On his way home he was crossing a bridge he ran cross to try and escape the other kids when some of them find him again. They push him down from behind and he drops the book into the river. He gets up and runs again. This time there are fewer of them and tries to fight again. This time he wins. "Hmm.. I think I know him. But it's getting late and I have work tomorrow. I look it up another time." I put the book up and lock it away for another day. Eventually, I make a few more wishes and know all the stories in the book. I had the book with me and one day I was thinking about it and put it down my purse with the book in it and someone came running by. I was disappointed but I knew I wouldn't ever see that book again. I was happy and satisfied with the way my life is now. I just hope the next person needs it. So, I ask you, the one reading this, if you had this little black book that grants wishes, what would you wish for?