CW:
comphet, betrayal
“All right,” Dan said, looking aside from the genie toward his friend Jack, “for my last wish, I wish for my ideal woman to appear facing me, and not in a mirror.” Jack had a sudden panicked look on his face.
“Presto,” the genie said, and waved his hands. A stunningly beautiful woman with long black hair appeared between Dan and Jack. She sighed and said, “I guess this was inevitable,” while Jack just sighed in relief.
“Let me guess,” the woman continued, putting her hands on her hips. “You figured the genie couldn’t create life, so he would have to turn your backstabbing buddy Jack into your ideal woman, and you could claim it was an accident, you hadn’t meant the wish that way.”
“How did you know?” Dan blurted out, then saw Jack’s glare and realized his mistake.
“You’ll find out in, oh, about ten years,” the genie said, and vanished, leaving a smirk behind that slowly faded. (No one but Jack noticed; Dan and the woman were totally focused on each other.)
“I can hardly believe the things I want to do to you,” she murmured, putting her arms around him, “but I know it’s inevitable, so let’s get on with it.” She pulled him into a kiss.
Jack tiptoed out of the room, though he probably could have stomped out and the lovers wouldn’t have noticed.
* * *
Dan stepped out of the limo and went inside. As had happened every day for the last week, his wife greeted him in a negligee and practically tore him out of his suit.
They’d spent almost all their time together for their first year or so. But then Dan started getting more hands-on with managing the wealth he’d acquired with his second wish, and she had developed more of her own interests. Neither of them had aged a day in the last ten years, thanks to his first wish, and both still had a healthy sex drive, but the last few weeks were a little unusual even for them.
But something was different this time. Despite her eager ministrations, he wasn’t getting hard. After a few minutes, she looked horror-stricken, and reached up a hand to brush gently against his cheek.
“Oh, no,” she said. “It’s already started... I couldn’t remember for sure, I thought we had a few more days.”
“What do you mean?” He loved it when she was cryptic and mysterious, how she would occasionally hint that she knew something and then, in most cases, refuse to say any more. The genie had known what his ideal woman would be like better than he did.
“You haven’t grown any stubble since this morning,” she pointed out. He hadn’t noticed, but he put a confirming hand to his face: smooth as it had been right after he shaved. “And... it’s not just limp, it’s smaller than normal.”
“What?” He looked carefully. Maybe it was. “This... this kind of thing shouldn’t happen. My first wish —”
“I know. It’s your third wish that caused this.”
He floundered for a few moments before asking, “How?”
“You’re starting to change into me. It will take about a month... and by the end, you’ll be as deeply in love with the old you as I am. Only you’ll get to go back in time and be with him, and I,” she choked back a sob, “— I’ll be alone.”
for those who don't know comphet stands for "compulsory heterosexuality.".
It is the theory that heterosexuality is assumed and enforced upon women by a patriarchal and heteronormative society.
If I had to guess, the reason why this term appears in the spoiler tab is because the mc (Dan) is force by "fate" to have a relainsongship with his past self. Despite the fact that he/she is attracted to women.
This, and more specifically, in the context of gender-bender fiction, it refers to the trope that when a person is magically transformed to the opposite gender, their orientation flips so they're still heterosexual. It's pervasive in older gender-bender-fiction, including a lot of my own earlier work, such as this story. I try not to use that trope in my newer stories, and I've started using CWs when I repost older stories using the trope.
@TrismegistusShandy It makes sense in the context of the story, Genies are known to make people regret their wishes in fiction (by granting them in an unexpected way). It is also hard to feel sorry for Dan, since he was planning to turn Jack into a women.
Why is Jack a backstaber? Did I miss a chapter?
This was an exercise in writing super-concisely to a tight word count limit, so I tried to imply a lot more than I said. (The first draft was even shorter and none of my beta readers could figure out what was going on.
)
It's been long enough since I wrote it (late 2017) that I don't remember exactly what betrayal I had in mind, but the story is basically a riff on a number of old gender-bender stories I read back in the day where two friends find a genie and one of them betrays the other by wishing for the other to turn into his wife/girlfriend. I should probably rewrite this to be less opaque at some point, but on the other hand pressing forward and finishing new stories would be even better.
@TrismegistusShandy I get it, but the phare "your backstabbing buddy Jack", implies that Jack is the backstabber. But the truth is that Dan is the real backstabber.
I think that you were panning for Dan to be the backstabber, but you forgot.
If you are planning for a rewrite, I recommend fixing that. Also I would like to get more information of what happened to Jack afterwards (does not need to be much, you can just say that Jack stopped talking to Dan and eventually went to another city). Or you can't ignore my advice entirely, I have no experience in writing.
@Hollow_Man The intent was that Dan was using a wish to get back at Jack, who had betrayed him in some unspecified way before the story began. But I guess it doesn't come across. I'd probably have to expand the story a good deal to improve it much, and I'd rather focus on writing new stories. Actually, it might be best to just cut Jack out of the story entirely, if I'm not going to expand the story to flesh out his character.
@TrismegistusShandy It was pretty clear to me on my read.