[Patreon Exclusive] THREE WISHES: Chapter 1 (Patreon)

Seth was pretty sure he had reached the end of his life after narrowly surviving a helicopter crash in the middle of the Iraqi desert, in enemy territory. And his life probably would have been over had he not stumbled upon an old bottle containing a beautiful genie who had been trapped away for centuries.

His genie only grants him three wishes, and his first wish is for a disguise, though he doesn’t expect the disguise to be so realistic, and so feminine. And if he wants to shed the disguise, that’s going to cost him one of his remaining wishes. Is it worth it, when he could have anything in the world?

Chapter One

It was a miracle Seth was alive at all. Sure, he had a broken arm and a sprained ankle, but that was nothing, seeing as he’d fallen out of a helicopter. Had he fallen on cement rather than desert sand, he probably wouldn’t have been so lucky. Had he not jumped out from the crashing helicopter, he definitely wouldn’t have been so lucky. When he hit the ground, he blacked out, so he didn’t see the helicopter go up in flames as it hit the ground one-hundred yards away.

Now, he could see the black smoke rising up from the wreckage. As he brought himself up to his feet, he considered hobbling over to see if there were any survivors, and then he saw the jeep in the distance, filled with armed Taliban fighters, also interested in finding survivors for their own purposes. So Seth decided to run the other direction, taking cover behind a steep dune, praying he wasn’t seen by the deadly terrorists, and praying they wouldn’t see the trail of blood he’d left behind from where he hit the ground.

He checked his body to find the source of the bleeding. His calf had a chunk of metal sticking out from it. He closed his eyes and tugged the shrapnel out, doing his best not to scream out in pain as he finally got the thing out from his flesh. War’s a real dirty bitch, he thought. He put pressure on the bleeding. It was a nasty cut, but it wasn’t going to kill him, and the last thing he wanted to do was start whining about it, seeing as three other men had just been killed in the helicopter crash. He was fairly certain they would have been happy to have a cut on their shins over the unfortunate fate they were dealt.

Seth didn’t know any of the victims personally. They were soldiers with the Iraqi Army, the good guys. None of them spoke a word of English and Seth didn’t speak a word of Arabic. They seemed nice enough though. Before their bird was hit by that RPG, they were laughing about something and seemed like they were all buddies. At least they died together, Seth thought. He hoped that was some sort of consolation.

Seth peeked over the sand dune. The bad guys were driving away from the wreckage, headed off in the direction from which they came: another tick in the incredible fortune box for Seth.

But now what was he going to do? He had no idea how far he was from the nearest town, he had no idea if the nearest town would be friendly to an American soldier, and he had no idea which direction to even start walking in order to find the nearest town. As far as he was concerned, he was completely fucked. He was probably better off crashing with the helicopter, or getting hit dead-on by that RPG. He had no food, no water, nothing warm to wear once the sun crept bellow the sandy horizon. It was high noon, and the sun was no indication of which direction was which.

After a moment of deliberating his options, of which there weren’t many to deliberate, he started walking, in the opposite direction of where the jeep filled with Taliban fighters headed off to. The walk was painful; walking in deep sand is hard enough without a sprained ankle. After about an hour, the pain had gone away, his ankle was totally numb. He wasn’t sure whether that was a godsend or a sign of permanent damage. He enjoyed being a fully mobile human being, and that was the way he wanted to stay. But he couldn’t exactly sit down and wait for his ankle to heal, so it wasn’t like he had many options. He kept on walking.

As far as he knew, he was walking right into enemy territory, or possibly just further out into the middle of nowhere.

He wondered if the Iraqi soldiers who died in the helicopter crash had friends or family that would miss them. Probably—just about everyone has someone. Seth tried to think if he had anyone who would care… He couldn’t think of anyone. His parents had passed away years before, he hadn’t heard from his sister in nearly a decade, and the few friends he had were killed in combat. It seemed unfortunate that those poor Iraqi soldiers died instead of Seth. Seth had nothing notable to contribute to the world—so why him? Why did fate spare his life?

He looked up. Finally, the sun was starting towards the horizon, letting him know which direction he’d been walking: east. “Fuck,” he muttered under his breath. Of all the possible directions, east was the worst, east was enemy territory. He looked back. He’d already committed two hours to walking east. So with a heavy sigh, he turned around and started walking the other way. He felt like a fool. He should have just sat around and waited for the sun to point him in the right direction. The extra couple hours of walking wasn’t worth the risk.

Seth had always been an impatient man. The only reason he’d gotten into that helicopter to begin with was because he didn’t feel like waiting the extra hour for an American helicopter to take him to basecamp. The Iraqi one was going that way anyway—so what if the Iraqi pilots aren’t quite as good as the American ones? They can still take off, fly, and land the things, what else do you need? Well, the ability to navigate around danger zones would have been nice…

Seth continued walking west. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been walking west already—maybe one hour, maybe five. The sun moved so slowly through those desert landscapes, and when you were least expecting it, the sun would sink down to the horizon in a matter of minutes, and slip away without warning. It was during those few minutes of desert twilight that Seth came upon some ancient ruins: about a half acre of crumbled walls and smashed pots. The first time he’d seen one of these ruined towns, he was fascinated. But after four years in Iraq, he came to realize that they were pretty much everywhere. Apparently some of them were pretty cool before the terrorists started blowing them up. “Why do they blow them up?” Seth had asked his lieutenant once.

“Because they were built buy ancient Yazidis, and the radical Islamists are trying to destroy everything that isn’t Islam here in Iraq.” Seth still laughed when he remembered that response. He couldn’t help but picture some girl’s jealous boyfriend, going through his girlfriend’s house and destroying absolutely everything that had anything to do with her exes.

Exhausted from a long day of hobbling through the desert, Seth found himself a crumbled nook and he lay down. He closed his eyes and the next thing he knew, it was morning, the sun blasting ruthlessly down on the hot sand.

Seth pulled himself to his feet, his ankle throbbing in pain. The horrible pain in his ankle gave him a strange sense of relief. He could still feel it and it still worked, pain be damned.

As he began to leave his little ruined settlement, he noticed something poking out from the sand. It was long and purple with gold embellishments. He picked it up curiously and inspected it. It was a bottle. It looked a lot like a stereotypical genie bottle, like you’d see in old movies. He opened it up and looked inside. It was empty. He gave it a rub. Of course he didn’t actually think rubbing the bottle would release a genie, but how could he not at least give it a try? Nothing happened.

He wasn’t quite sure why, but he liked the bottle. He decided to keep it. Maybe he liked it because it was a nice reminder that he’d defied the odds and survived a deadly helicopter crash. One day he could show his kids and say, “I found this while escaping enemy territory.” Or maybe he just liked it because it was colourful and probably worth quite a bit of money (he did find it amidst ancient ruins, after all). Unfortunately, none of his pockets were big enough to hold the bottle, so he had to carry by hand. Given his broken arm, his sprained ankle, and his painful thirst, carrying a bottle was the least of his problems. He started to walk, continuing west.

Despite sleeping for what was probably close to ten hours, he was exhausted and his body was sore. The lack of food and water didn’t help at all. He was starting to think he was losing his mind—hallucinating. Every so often, he could hear footsteps behind him, following closely. He would stop and spin around, but there was no one there. He was in that desert alone, slowly dying all by himself. If he collapsed from lack of energy, it would only take a few days before his body was covered in sand.

He thought he was hallucinating at first when he heard the revving of an engine. He crawled up a sand dune and there was a town on the other side. He was about to run towards it and scream for help when he noticed a familiar green jeep driving around the perimeter: the town was Taliban occupied. He was better off dying of thirst in the desert than going into that death trap.

“God damnit,” he said under his breath.

“You just can’t catch a break, can you?” a female voice said behind him. He rolled over in a snap and reached for his sidearm out of instinct. But he was unarmed—all of his gear had gone down with the crashed helicopter. All he had with him was a pack of matches and a spare condom he’d gotten at a brothel a couple of weeks before.

But the girl appeared to be harmless enough, and she spoke perfect English, so Seth relaxed. “Who are you?” he asked.

“I’m Idri. What’s your name?” the girl said with a smile. She was dressed peculiarly, like a belly dancer, with her big tits being held by a sheer lace top. It was the raciest outfit Seth had seen on a woman in Iraq, the brothel included. He wondered if she was possibly from a nearby brothel.

“I’m Seth. Do you think you can sneak me into that town? I was in a helicopter crash, and…” He cut himself off as her original words finally computed in his brain: ‘You just can’t catch a break, can you?’ she’d asked. What did she mean by that? How did she know what he’d been through? Was she the footsteps he’d heard following him? If so, did that make her a hallucination? “Are you in my mind?” he asked.

She laughed. “No, but I was in your hand,” she said.