GRANTED

With a broken streetlamp flickering, a greedy 24 year-old man was walking across the street, He had married a rich wife just for the money, and he was unfaithful.

The light winked out, and a woman appeared in the shadows of the streetlamp. The man was shocked for a moment, but she could have simply stepped out of the shadows.

The man could still see her clearly, even in the dark, for she casted a faint silver glow. She wore a red scarf around her neck. It was no surprise, this time of year was unbearably freezing. She had both hands behind her back, but not in a way that indicated she was holding something. She was beautiful, definitely, but the man found her eyes particularly unnerving. They were a pair of strangely cold and calculating eyes, watching his every move.

The woman with the scarf smiled at the man, and the uncanniness in her eyes disappeared. “What is your wish? If it is within my power, I will grant it.”

The man was absolutely delighted. He thought for a moment, thinking of the best wish he could wish for.

As he thought, the woman turned a bit less beautiful, the eerie eyes returning, and her smile wavered.

“Hurry up,” she hissed. She stopped smiling altogether.

The man got a bit worried, and tried to back away a little, but he was frozen in place, literally, forced to answer the woman.

He quickly decided, “I wish for an infinite amount of wishes.”

Her face twitched like she was having a seizure, “I cannot grant that wish.”

The man was expecting this, and instead said, “I want a mountain of gold and diamonds.”

She smiled with one side of her mouth, and her eyes turned bloodshot. No, not bloodshot, she was crying, crying blood. Then her eyes slowly shrank until they were nothing. He was staring at empty eye sockets that looked so deep, it was as if he were gazing into a pit that went straight to the underworld.

Her scarf drifted away, and her throat was revealed to have been slitted. Her face contorted into pure fury and madness, as if that was all she had been feeding on.

She brought out a kitchen knife from behind her back. The blade gleamed in the moonlight. She raised the knife, “My husband was greedy, just like you!”

The man screamed and tried to run, but he was still frozen in place, unable to move.

She stabbed him in the stomach and dragged him straight through the earth to the underworld, never to be heard of again.

There, the man could not die, could not get rid of the stabbing pain in him. The woman was gone, and he looked up.

Right in front of him was a mountain of gold and diamonds.