"Honey, I'm home!" shouted Harold through the intercom. Her first instinct was to run out of the parlour to the helicopter hangar above the mansion but her feet just wouldn't move. She just sat there, arms crossed, and waited for her husband to come to her.
"Honey I have something for –" he said as he walked through the door, his sentence hovering in mid-sentence after seeing the look on his wife's face. Her eyes were brimming with tears, each tear scalding her with the growing intensity of a hot iron worse than the last. "Where did you go? And why haven't you been back for two weeks?" she sobbed, her words muffled by her own cry. Harold instinctively put a comforting arm behind Sharon, pulling her into an embrace. However, the fiery anger within Sharon consumed her and she deftly pushed her husband with all her might and he fell with a crash.
She fled from the scene and slammed the door of her bedroom with a bang that only a young child can be proud of, and she sat in the corner of her closet, filled with designer clothes, shoes and handbags, and cried. An eternity seemed to go by in that dark corner, the darkness comforting her as it enveloped her, painting even darker silhouettes on the already dark walls.
The closet door opened with a creak. She looked up, eyes red from crying. It was Mr Reilly, the butler. "This is for you, madam" he said. In his white glove, he held a jewellery box and a letter.
The letter ran as thus:
My darling,
I am so sorry that I haven't been home for the last couple of weeks. Business has taken me further from home than I expected. I was sent to the Middle East and the desert storms delayed my flight back home. While there, I found this for you, open it, I'm sure you'll love it.
Love,
Harold.
The letter piqued her imagination. Just what could it be? She lifted the cover of the jewellery box and took a look.
It was a beautiful pendant, with a blood red ruby in the middle of it. She lifted it and saw that it was held on a thin silver chain. It was indeed beautiful.
Her fingers brushed against the intricate patterns of silver woven around the ruby. Definitely middle eastern. She groped around the dark closet to switch on the light and then she put it on, seeing her own reflection in the long mirror conveniently in the closet.
It looked beautiful on her. But wait, something was wrong. Why was there strange red mist swirling around her? She looked at the mirror closely, scrutinising it as carefully as she could. Was there something wrong with the lighting? To her surprise, she saw the pendant suddenly glow brightly and with a loud crack of noise, a mysterious being appeared next to her.
She stared at the person next to her in shock. "Who are you? I wish, no wait, I DEMAND to know who you are!" she shouted in fear.
"I am a jinni. And by the way, you have just used up one wish," the mysterious being said with a yawn.
"You speak English? Wait, you don't exist!" she said, looking at the genie incredulously.
The jinn turned out to be a woman in beautiful long silky red robes. As beautiful as she was, she had the air of boredom about her, as though she had seen this too many times before.
"Just wish for some already. But you can't wish for more wishes," she said cheekily.
Sharon thought long and hard. "I KNOW! I wish I was richer and more successful than my husband! Then he'll know how I feel," she said.
"Are you sure?" the jinn asked. "You can't unwish a wish you know," she said.
"I'm sure."
The scene shifted abruptly and Sharon found herself in a dark room filled with people dancing and speakers blaring loud music. The jinn appeared beside her with a 'poof'.
"Where are we?" she asked.
"We're in the Grammy awards after party! Nice?" the jinn asked.
"Not bad," Sharon replied, surveying her surroundings. "I think I better go home though, I want to see how my husband will be holding up after this wish," she said.
"And that is not a wish!" she said as an after note to the jinn, "I'm taking a cab."
She called up a limousine and hopped onto it. The driver took her straight back home. Her excitement kept growing along the way. Now he'll know how I feel, she thought. The driver dropped her off on the sidewalk so that she would not be heard. "Keep the change," she said.
To her horror, she saw her husband's arms wrapped around another woman in a passionate embrace. Crying tears of shame, she fled the scene and hid again in the closet.
"I WISH EVERYTHING WAS THE WAY IT WAS!" she screamed on the top of her lungs, trying to scream the pain away. The jinn appeared and granted her wish.
The closet door creaked open. "Darling?" he said. Harold wrapped his arms around her. "I'm sorry," he said. She then realised that there was nothing more valuable than the luxuries of being loved.
