HTB Chronicills - The Golden Lamp

One day Harold was stumbling down by the river when he came across a golden lamp. He thought it could be recycled for a fair price or traded for a small bag. He preferred the former, but would be content with the latter. He polished his new encrusted treasure with a dollop of spit and a few buffs of his grease, mud, and sweat stained shirt which had been a six week veteran of his wardrobe.

With a deafening roar and gust of wind that nearly blew him over a genie popped out of the lamp and hovered ominously within a cloud of thick, dark smoke over Harold's head. Before the genie could fully materialize, Harold had already pulled his trusty tooter from his pocket and began inhaling the cloud deeply into his lungs.

"You have released me from 1,000 years of imprisonment within the lamp. I am obligated to grant you three wishes before my freedom is complete.” the genie's voice boomed.  

Harold continued to inhale the tar colored smoke with long satisfying puffs. 

After a few minutes, or maybe hours... who knows, the genie became impatient with the delay and exhorted, “Come on, dude, gimme' your three wishes!”

Pleasantly inebriated by this point, Harold gazed up at the floating figure and slurred, "I'd like another hit, if that's alright with you?”

The genie acquiesced to his temporary master’s wish, taking one off the tally, he asked, "What will you have for your other two wishes?” 

Harold was now off in a world of his own where fictional things like genies, jinn, and Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes winners were real. The only oddity, aside from all the rest, was that they were all used as breakfast cereals (Don't ask, you have to be really high to understand). 

Harold faded, and for a moment imagined he was someone else. He wasn't a bum at all, but a respected member of the community. A doctor or lawyer, or a lawyer for doctors! Yeah, that's what he was. He would answer the phone two or three times a week and say some words in Latin and have his secretary bill the doctors $10,000 per word. He also had a beautiful wife who looked like Christina Applegate, when she was really hot. She would walk around the house in lingerie all day and satisfy his most outrageous sexual demands instantly. His children, a boy and a girl, were honor students who exchanged emails with that super genius guy in the wheelchair, just to correct his formulas and stuff. He had his own genie who…

"Please, master, what will you have for your other two wishes?" The words from the genie's booming baritone voice shocked Harold back to his half-hallucinatory reality.

Harold hadn’t been the best at planning for the future. It was never a required job skill in the bum industry. He wasn’t much good at remembering the past either. Being a bum is a lot like living in a series of self-induced lobotomies, everything happened in a constant now without regard for things four minutes in either direction on the timeline. 

His toes grew like little furry tentacles into the warm water as the Winnebagos did back flips, breaching the surface of the sloggy mist. They moaned the most beautiful song Harold had the pleasure of hearing an aquatic recreational vehicle perform. It was…

"What shall be your second wish master?" the genie interrupted the camper crooning much to Harold's dismay. 

"I wish you would shut the fuck up!" Harold snarled trying to refocus on the Winnebagos once more. But the genie tapped his shoulder and pointed down at the words scrawled in the sand, which read, "Your final wish?"

"Fucking leave me alone!" Harold shouted as he turned back to the Winnebago serenade without noticing the flash of light into which the genie disappeared. Harold fell into a deep sleep, he was as comfortable as a Mongolian horseman wrapped in the blubbery embrace of a walrus' flippers. Yes, a walrus’ flippers, until he was jarred from his ‎Odobenus rosmarus cocoon by that intolerable shrieking, "Harold!"

It was Warren, fucking Warren, every syllable from Warren's face hole sounded like a cat being raped with a garden weasel. Yes, a garden weasel, until the creature howled once more,

"Harold! I need you to... blah blah blah!" like the violated feline he is.

It was always "blah blah blah" with Warren.  How Harold hated him now... but that genie guy was pretty cool and those Winnebagos, too.