The Oval Office was filled with annoyed Democrats. Tom Daschle threw a stack of papers down on the desk and shook his finger at the man sitting there.

"What on earth do you think you’re doing?" he shouted.

President Obama looked genuinely surprised. "I thought you would welcome an audit," he said. "I should think if you owed over $100,000 in back taxes, you would want to know it. You didn‘t know you weren‘t paying all you needed to pay in taxes, did you?"

"Who let this neophyte in the White House?" Daschle cried. "Who let him near the magic lamp?"

"Everybody gets a turn," Barney Frank said. "We just didn’t think one so inexperienced would wish to be president."

"I wished to be a good president," President Obama said.

"It’s your fault too, Tom. We all thought you’d wish to be president," Hillary Clinton said. "Did you? No. You wished for another Michael Moore movie."

This will be my last note to you and the last chance to tell you how I feel.



I wish I could relive that sunny spring day three years ago. You thought I had stood you up for your birthday dinner only to see me land in an antique hot air balloon at the edge of the restaurant balcony. We floated through the clouds that night and when you said yes it was the best day of my life.



I wish I could have been a better man and somehow more sensitive when you were in need. Maybe if we had had more time there would have been a child. In time there will be others. You deserve a family. You deserve someone to lay with at night in the dark and someone who can be there to protect you from the evil things in life. Your life should be a complete journey, not a trip derailed by an encounter with a sick stranger.

Bill Straka leaned back in his chair and sighed. "I'm sorry, Neil, but that's the decision. Here are the layoff orders. The 5600 line goes to 20% production starting Monday. It's our only chance at survival. Hand out the notices tomorrow morning."

"Too bad that it came to this," Neil said. "A lot of families are going to be hurting on Monday. And the 5600 is the best of its class."

"I know," said Bill, "but we can't compete with the big manufacturers. They have long-term contracts set up with all the major distributors. There's just not enough demand to support a new player, even if we do have a better product."

Lawranii imagined buying his most secret wishes including the geyser-fed hot tub, the coffee plant imported from Earth, but most of all the freedom from work after selling the spoils of his find. While he dreamed, the Interstellar Artifact Police blocked his escape route. With illegal fossil bones onboard, Lawranii flipped off his FTL drive.
The government launched an accelerated-neutron bomb.
Sweat fluids made the hand controls slippery as Lawranii lurched into general time.
The bomb followed, looming larger.

When I was a baby, my father left my mother. My mother’s family were observant High Church Episcopalians; they disapproved of disappearing husbands and divorce. However, she wanted a divorce so her parents melted slightly and set her up with a family friend.

When I was four, I understood my mother’s divorce had tainted her in the family. One day, we went to visit my great uncle on a street with overarching maples. I remember mother’s suppressed air of excitement.

I don’t know what happened. A door opened, nasty words were exchanged and the door closed. I know she cried. After this, mother developed a tough exterior and used alcohol to fortify that hardness. She and my stepfather fought; predictably, he left. Then she became even harder. "The people at the office love me," she’d yell as she hit me with whatever implement was handy.

I was terrified of her. Unfortunately, I never learned how to deal with other people like my mother. I spent a lot of time in my room or the basement hiding, hoping she’d forget me.

Ali hated his name. His family had immigrated from Iran four generations ago. At first, they were very traditional. A friend once remarked that walking through their front door was like stepping into one of the 1001 Nights. Four generations later, all that remained of the old country were a few heirlooms and the Arabic name of each firstborn son.
"Why, exactly?" Ali asked once.
"We have to remember where we came from," his father replied. Easy for him to say, his name was Robert. He didn't have to put up with the looks Ali got at school, with people calling him "terrorist" or worse.
"Hey everyone, there goes Chemical Ali." It was Jason. Again. He ran over, threw his arm around Ali's neck and pulled hard, forcing their faces together. "You have any weapons of mass destruction in that backpack, Chemical Ali?" Jason's friends laughed.
Jason dropped his voice to a whisper then, like he always did at the end of these little meetings. "One day you'll slip up, sand worm, and I'll be there waiting." Then he yanked Ali to the ground by his backpack and swaggered back to his friends. They all snickered as Ali lay there on the sidewalk.
It was a daily occurrence, that or something like it.

Harold sat on a pile of smoldering bricks shaking his head in dismay. How could it all go so wrong? New York was under water. Paris was in flames. There wasn't an inch of the Earth that wasn't in tatters and it was all his fault.

"Nice one," the Genie said as it stood gloating over him, "you made short work of that wish."

"Go to Hell," Harold spat at him.

"Don't have to," the Genie sneered back. "We're already there." The eight-foot creature with the blue skin and ridiculous Arabian Night turban strolled around the wreckage. "You have one last wish. What will it be? Don't rush! You don't want to," he began snickering, "screw it up." His laughter rang off the ruined landscape.

"What?" asked Jessi, trying to imagine what her grandmother might have wanted before there were iPods or Bratz dolls.

"I wanted my brother to disappear," said Nan, chuckling like the evil stepmother in Snow White.

Jessi laughed out loud and clapped her hands. "Cool."

"What's cool?" asked Jessi's mother from the door. "Time to go home, Jess."

Nan quickly whispered the magic words for wishing on a star.

"All I wanted was to be successful. It was my dearest wish," he said, a sorrowful note in his voice as he wandered slowly down the hall where portraits of his predecessors lined the walls. Pausing in front of one particularly beetle-browed painting, he looked up at it sadly and said, "And I wanted to be rich. And popular. Is that so bad?"

No, I don't think so. I wanted those same things.

"But if you make one little mistake, those reporters are on you like a pack of dogs."

I know. I had that same problem. But why don't you use a dog to silence them? After my Checkers speech, I didn't have any more trouble out of them...at least for a while.

Welcome to 2009!

Our new contest topic is… A wish gone horribly wrong.

Perhaps your character was a little bit too literal in their wish. Or perhaps they were not specific enough. Of course it would depend on who or what they aimed the wish at, wouldn’t it? What we are after is the difference between what your character actually wanted and what they actually received.

Not everything might be as it seemed, at first glance that is. Perhaps they wished away their pet peeve, forever. What would happen then? What could possibly go wrong when they wished for…

Such as: Mr. Jones, wished for a boat that would impress his neighbors, the Queen Mary landed on top of his house. He never used his last two wishes but his neighbors were very impressed.

As always, have fun!

This contest closes 2/15/2009