Sir Reginald Has a Thirst So Manly It's Wearing Hob-Nailed Boots

[benchilada]

Sir Reginald has always had a difficult time making a cup of tea, but only because he has seventeen favorite kinds. Chinese black tea, the kind with bits of dried lychee in it, was his choice for relaxing after a very hard day’s work. It was not the most difficult day that Sir Reginald ever had, but his knuckles were bloody and raw, the result of punching a gorilla in the head a dozen times.

            As he picked at one of his wounds, he felt a brief pang of guilt. Then he remembered that the gorilla had—by means as yet undetermined—been tearing the aura off of every small child that smooshed its face against the glass to stare in innocent wonder.
            Sir Reginald rummaged in his cabinets as he waited for the kettle whistle. It’s curious, he mused, how many foods we forget we own when we don’t poke around very often. Behind a box of French Funyun soup and next to a can of tuna-friendly dolphin, he found a small pink bottle that he did not remember ever having seen before. It was about three inches high, with a glass cork and a curious heft, as though it desperately wanted to be lighter than it was.
            “Nothing good ever comes from things like this,” Sir Reginald said to himself, “but I suppose I had best get it over with.” He unceremoniously popped the top and set it on the counter. A cloud of pink smoke began to fire out of the opening and with a pyrotechnics display that would have shamed Industrial Light and Magic, there hovered possibly the most offensive caricature of a Middle Eastern man in a turban that Sir Reginald had ever seen.
            “HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA! MORTAL, YOU HAVE AT LAST FREED ME FROM MY PRISON, AND…and…could you not turn around while I’m doing this bit?”
            Sir Reginald, his face buried in the refrigerator, his hands rummaging for the last of the boursin, chuckled.
            “Oh, do please go on. I'm listening. I’m just peckish.”
            “It’s just that…well, you see, this is rather an important part.”
            “Three wishes?” asked Sir Reginald.
            “Yes, but—“
            “Be careful what I wish for?”
            “Of course, and then—“
            “When you’ve granted my wishes you are at last free, to unleash your power and fury upon an unsuspecting world?”
            “Um, well, I wouldn’t have put it like that…”
            Sir Reginald, now out of the fridge, opened a package of Sesame Thins. He began to spread cheese on one as he spoke.
            “Brief summation: make my three wishes so you can be freed, and you’ll twist all of them into such a parody of what I truly asked for that I’ll suffer for all eternity? No, not in this house.”
            “You have to make wishes. Otherwise I have to kill you.”
            “Really?”
            “I don’t have to. But I probably will.”
            “Well, you’ve twisted my arm,” Sir Reginald grinned, and munched on a cracker. He said nothing, just stared at the genie and prepared another mouthful.
            “Do you—“
            “Ah-ah, let me think!” Sir Reginald interrupted.
            The room was relatively quiet, the silence only broken by the kettle, hot steam creating a keening wail. A wave of the genie’s hand and it fell silent. Sir Reginald turned red and that vein in his forehead—you know the one—popped out a bit.
            “Did you just muck about with my tea?”
            “That wasn’t tea. It was boiling water. I’ve made it cold and turned off the gas, so we won’t be interrupted.”
            “Won’t…won’t be interrupted?” he fumed, lifting the lid on his teapot and spraying bits of cracker and cheese with every word. “I really wanted that tea!”
            “Perhaps, if you wish for wealth and fame, you can have a servant that—“
            “You mind your mouth! Right, first wish is ready.”
            “Very well, master, I—"
            “I wish for you to have, for the next five minutes, a degree of telepathy including-but-not-limited-to the ability to read my mind and discern the proper meaning of each of my wishes, and the appropriate desire to follow them.”
            The genie looked aghast. Nobody had ever been so terribly succinct, nor had they ever wished for something for the genie, unless it was somehow to trap him back in the bloody bottle.
            “It is done!” boomed the pink cloud.
            “Right, next! I wish to grant you a conscience inasmuch as you having the ability and desire to understand my feelings, thereby instilling in you a desire to do right by me and not allow harm to come to my person.”
            “I…”
            “Get on with it!”
            “DONE!” boomed the genie again.
            “Now…” said Sir Reginald, giving the genie a look for the ages and summoning the bit of Scotsman in his blood to pull off a magnificent trill…
            “Brrrrew!”
           
            Two minutes later and Sir Reginald was sitting in his breakfast nook, marveling at the little stories that played out in the pink steam above his teacup. He took another sip and closed his eyes in bliss, ignoring the screaming face that floated on the surface of the liquid.
            “Genie tea,” he grinned. “Simply amazing. I’m certain I’d make another fortune, if I could figure out a way to bottle it…”

benjamin
"The Great Below" - Nine Inch Nails