Wishes

Back when I was a kid I spent months working out how to best make wishes come true. I kept a diary and tried all kinds of methods: hunting four-leafed clovers, flipping coins into dark wells, snapping wishbones, rubbing lamps, even praying. I was methodical. I didn’t have much else to do, I suppose.

What seemed to work best for me was blowing out candles on birthday cakes then closing my eyes. The first wish I remember coming true was back when my parents had been separated. They’d bought me a cake and we spent the afternoon like we were a family again. Late that afternoon, not wanting it to end, I blew out the candles and wished. A few weeks later they were back together. I opened my diary, found the entry that read BIRTHDAY CAKE and circled it.

Now I’ll admit it’s easy to get greedy with wishes. I guess that’s why genies have a rule about not wishing for more — because that’s what we’d all do. As good as one wish might be, you always think of something else you need. Or at least, that you want.

In my twenties my apartment was a permanent miasma of baked sugar and flour and eggs. Sometimes of melted chocolate, too. I’d long since figured out that if cakes were the best way to make wishes come true, then I should bake myself one each day and make a wish for the next. I’d stick candles in it — little white skyscrapers sticking out of the sponge city. It didn’t seem to matter how many candles — they didn’t have to match my age or anything. Then I’d set fire to the skyscrapers as if declaring war on the sponge city. Finally, I’d close my eyes and wish.

By that point in my life, the wishes had gotten me a decent apartment in an okay part of town. I worked nights as a cleaner, which doesn’t sound like a dream job, sure, but I didn’t want any stresses. And that job held no real responsibilities — no one was going to die if I forgot to clean the office’s interior windows on a particular day of the week. And best of all, the job was only a street away from my apartment. I‘d get back quickly, bake a cake and make a wish, then either play some games or get some sleep.

I had a girlfriend and although it was only casual and we didn’t spend that much time together, it was right for me at the time. We’d been together a while but we didn’t feel the need to talk of marriage or kids or any of the big questions. We just enjoyed every day as they came.

Then one day I made a wish that I couldn’t even remember making. Usually I’m careful with my wishes — or at least I’m routine, wishing for tomorrow to be just as good as today — but I guess at that point I was tired. I’d worked all night, baked, inserted the candles, then closed my eyes. I remember feeling so worn out, so tired, that I was on a sort of autopilot. I’d just wanted to crawl into bed and not get out for a very long time. Making a wish had become so routine that this particular wish, it was made almost subconsciously.

I remember blowing out the candles and that thick black smoke hazing over the sponge and into my eyes, the sting of it drawing me back. What had I wished for? I had no clue. Absolutely no memory. But it didn’t feel like it mattered so I gave up trying to remember and hit the hay instead.

The thing with wishes is that you can’t make more than one at a time. So if one wish hasn’t come true yet, you can’t leapfrog over it no matter how high you jump. And wishes can be slow. My parents getting back together, for example, came in the form of therapy, of trial separation and reunions, and on and on it went.

So whatever I’d wished for on that day, the wish I couldn’t remember, I’d have to wait patiently for it to come true before I could make another.

*****

I woke then next day to the shrill ringing of my phone.

“Hello?”

“We need to talk,” said my girlfriend.

“It‘s too early for dirty talk,” I said.

”I’m serious. This is serious.”

I knew then before we went any further that it was over. She explained but I barely listened. Instead I thought back to the with I couldn’t remember. Had I asked for this? For her to leave me? Or had I just forgotten to wish for things to remain the same and this had happened as a result?

Fine. No problem. It was all good. It’d been casual anyway and we’d never discussed a future together so there was nothing much to be upset about. It was a shame only because I liked spending time with her. But I’d find someone else. Or maybe I wouldn’t for a while — I’d spend more time alone and enjoy it.

I baked another cake that day and made a wish for my girlfriend to call me again. I think I made it as a test — not that I wanted her to call. I just wanted to see if my wishes were functioning normally.

She didn’t ring me. And the next day I was struck with more bad news: the company I provided my cleaning services to were going under. I‘d lost my job.

It’d been so sudden and unexpected and I was unprepared.

I looked around my apartment drinking everything in. How comfortable I’d been here, but now how could I pay the rent? I hadn’t been a good saver as was did I need to save for?

I baked a dozen cakes over the next three days. A dozen wishes that lay stagnant in the air.

*****

Three weeks passed and I’d not yet acquired another job. My ex hadn’t called. No wishes were coming true for me.

I stared at my stubbled face in the mirror one morning and barely recognised the hungover person staring back. I rinsed up a lather and began to shave, cutting the short hairs clean off my skin.

Then a sudden sickening panic hit me. A feeling like I was being watched. I looked up into the mirror and it seemed to me that I’d scraped off all the skin from the left half of my face. And that beneath the skin wasn’t red and bloodied muscle, but instead another person. A stranger who looked like me. Even that left eye was this other person’s. He stared at me with something I can only describe as malice.

Then it was gone. I splashed my face with water and it was gone.

*****

A year passed and still no more wishes came true. I’d moved back in with Mom, then out again into a new place. I worked an office job with some prospects and I took classes at night. I wanted, one day, to be a teacher. I’d always liked the idea of teaching but had never pursued it.

I stopped baking eventually. The wishes never came true anymore, and even if they did, and I didn’t think I wanted them. The cakes never tasted much good anyway. Always too sweet — sickly so.

Here’s what I’ve learned: wishes aren’t a good way to live a life. They are slippery eels of hope that you think you have hold of and then they jump out of your hand. Sometimes they snap their fangs at your fingers before they leave and you stand there shocked and bloodied. Like when I wished my parents back together: I knew they’d only gotten back together because of my wish — because of me. And whatever magnetism of love had once drawn them together before I’d been around had become to weak by itself. Their reconciliation lasted three years and they were both deeply unhappy during it.

As was I, looking back.

I still think about what I wished for that day it all fell apart. The day the ornament of my life shattered before being glued back together into very a different shape.

I think my subconscious wished for something. For what it knew i needed. It understood a part of me was dying, was wilting like a flower without water.

That’s as close as I‘ll ever get to understanding it, I think.

*****

THE END.