The Change - Prologue

February 12th, 2009 - Anbar Province, Iraq

The newly rich woman picked herself up off of the sand, navigating herself around the strewn clothing, carefully stepping over the refuse of her former life, and finally reacher her destination. She bent down and picked up the tarnished brass lamp, so stereotypical is was initially hilarious to the woman. She payed it over in her hands, thinking of what she was about to do. She already had her dream body, and sustainable wealth beyond her wildest dreams, which is why she had waited until just now to complete her third and final wish.

With a purposed rub of the lamp, a purple smoke streamed out and began to form into the now familiar shape of the djinn. Before the spirit could coalesce, the woman shouted at it, "Genie!"

The djinn rolled its eyes even before they were fully formed. "Yes Mistress?" he asked, his words dripping with sarcasm of contempt, both of which were lost on the nude woman before him.

"I don't want to be a freak," blurted out the woman. She then looked down, as she pawed the sand with her hooves.

"Mistress," expressed the djinn dryly, "as I explained before, I cannot change your body any more. Once a wish is made, it cannot be unmade. That shall be your body for the rest of your life, and perhaps even beyond."

The woman irritatingly twitched her tail and shook her head, "No, no. You mis-understands me Genie." She held the lamp with one hand as she slid the other from just below her breast, down her taut and lean waist, and onto her firm and supple hips, "I love me body. From tip to tail, every inch of it is divine."

"Than what is it, Mistress?" asked the djinn again, the edge to his voice severe enough for even the woman to notice.

"No need to be rude," she quipped. "But, as I was saying. I love my new body, but it reminds me of something my father used to tell me." She took a step and then another, beginning a slow walk around her make-shift camp. "He told me that I was special, just like everybody else." She chuckled, "Of course, even then he didn't know how special I was, and how special I would now be."

"Are you going somewhere with this?" asked the djinn under her voice, "You are special. A unique and un-replicated beauty the world has never seen before, and likely, unless you have children, never see again."

"Exactly," shouted the woman, stamping her hoof into the sand. "I am unique. But," she said, drawing it out to make her point, "I'm unique unlike anybody else. I am a freak, a monster. For the rest of my life people will look and me with looks of shock and horror. I don't want that. But, like you said, I am you I am, and that cannot change again."

Intrigued, the djinn pressured for more, "And what would you have me do?"

"As I once heard in a song, 'Don't you wish your girlfriend was a freak like me?', I intend to make everyone a freak like me."

The djinn looked surprised, "But Mistress, that I cannot do, you are, as you said in your wish, a unique beauty."

"Ah, but why limit the freakishness to just this?" she said, gesturing to her body. "No, but I have a few ideas about some other kinds of freaks that could be made of people."

The djinn smiled. His new mistress was different. How she worded her first two wishes, made almost rote from memory, was unique enough in their own right, but this plan, this vision. The djinn almost wished he didn't have to pervert his mistress' meaning. But, then, an idea came to him. "Mistress, I cannot change the world all at once, even that power is beyond me. But, perhaps, you would be happy if it happened over time?"