“Wow, are you a genie?” asked Sonja, dropping the lamp she was holding in surprise.

The genie glanced meaningfully down at her own 10-foot frame, glowing a soft neon-purple in the gloom of the attic and tapering off into a wisp of smoke emerging from the lamp, but decided to be polite.

“Yes,” she said, “I am indeed a genie.”

“Wow,” Sonja said again. She wasn’t being particularly eloquent but then again, genies were a bit outside her comfort zone. Up to this point, her short life had been pretty normal. The usual stuff - breakfast cereals, motorways, ITV2, pedalos - that sort of thing.

“Wow, indeed,” said the genie, pretending to brush dust from her clothes. She’d learned thousands of years ago that small, mundane gestures like that tended to put mortals at ease.

“I wish for ice cream,” Sonja had recovered enough to grasp the situation intellectually and had decided to act immediately. Sonja prided herself on being a dynamic person of action.

In truth, the genie was a little taken aback. Historically, there would normally be more exposition before the first wish but she understood the context - kids today, social media, shorter attention spans etc etc.

“Very well,” she said with a flourish, clapping her hands three times, the sound echoing around Sonja’s mum’s girlfriends’s attic like a thunderstorm. “It shall be done.”

“AHHHHHHHHHHHH!” said Sonja, “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

She went on like this for quite some time. Eventually, the genie clapped her hands a second time.

“AHHHHHHHH— what the hell was that?” inquired Sonja, getting to the point as soon as she was returned the power of speech and borrowing a phrase wholesale from her Uncle Ashara.

“That was me granting your wish,” said the genie, demurely. She studied the perfect nails on her right hand and waited for the penny to drop. This was definitely her favourite moment in these wish interactions.

“But I asked for ice cream not … I … scream,” from the look on Sonja’s face, the genie could see that the girl had worked it out much quicker than most mortals, “Oh no, you’re not one of those genies are you?”

“Whatever do you mean?” asked the genie innocently, feigning ignorance to delay the pleasure.

“You know exactly what I mean. You’re one of those bad genies, aren’t you? The whats-it-called — the monkey paw ones. You twist the wish so it always ends badly for the human.” Sonja was having none of this. Here she was talking to a genie for the first time ever and she’d got a rubbish one. Talk about bad luck.

The genie couldn’t keep it in any longer, “Oh, alright then, yes. Yes! I am one of those genies. We’re evil but we’re also more fun.” She flashed Sonja a devilish smile to prove her credentials.

“But it doesn’t even make grammatical sense.”

“What do you mean?”

“’I wish for I scream.’ If I’d really wanted that then I’d have said something like ‘I wish to scream constantly.’ I’m twelve years old, I talk in full sentences.”

“Well, how would I know that? I’ve only just met you,” sniffed the genie, her professional pride hurt.