"Finally want to use your third wish?"

The genie's eyes gleamed as it spoke but now letting it's voice drop darkly, "I thought the last two wishes had taught you a lesson?"

I lifted the bound stack of pages toward it, my face held neutral and forced calm as my mind races with fear, anxiety, and a small hope. This could be the moment for either of us. The instant in which it could all change and freedom is revealed. My eyes scan over the top of the papers trying to think of anything I could have forgotten or completely missed as anxiety won.

The contract defined in words, diagrams, and charts so numerous a dictionary would seem small and pathetic in knowledge, the next wish. A tome of linguistic magic that might protect me from the effects of it's outcome once the genie's part was completed.

Could a human match a genie? I thought. Given enough time?

The crushing weight of time has hunched my shoulders. Twisted my body. Taken from me everyone and everything I have valued or loved. Those things I had wished for the genie had taken from me. Burning into my memory just how bad something can be. Twisted into a living nightmare by the will of another to torture me. Hurt me to my soul.

It's eyes slowly shifted down to the contract. For a moment the thick pile of papers in my hands feel like it is withering on them. A hazing sinks in from the edges of it as I look at it like heat ripples on stone in the midday sun. My forearms begin to burn with strain as I realize the pile is suddenly heavier. A mist begins to rise out of it's edges into the air full of rainbow colours.

I don't see the genie looking back and forth from my face to the contract in my hands several times. I miss the something that crossed over it's face like a snake across the desert sands. That makes it's long hair momentarily dance.

It's brow crinkled in that moment.

"So", it's voice is even. "You have thought about this, have you?"