Be Careful What You Wish For

© 2006

a/n: This was a short story written as a Halloween challenge. Its intended audience was a bunch of students in a friend’s classroom. I have swapped American spellings for the English versions originally included in the story (the friend’s school is in England). I’m hoping I caught them all. It is very hard to proofread my own work.

Kelly Monroe’s favorite holiday was Halloween. She loved everything about dressing up as something scary and going door-to-door to gather treats, she adored the colorful costumes her friends wore, she was thrilled by carving jack-o-lanterns and bobbing for apples, and she even liked the spooky themes on all of her favorite television programs; but above all that, Kelly had reason to love the thirty-first day of October because it was her birthday. It was Kelly’s opinion that every kid should have their birthday on such a wonderful day.

Kelly had chosen to spend the evening of her tenth birthday dressed as a dragon. The costume was lovely; it was lavender and sparkly with a long tail and glistening pink spikes all along the spine. The hood had a long padded nose which was slightly prohibitive to clear vision, but a noise box made a ferocious growl each time she pinched the sensor in the left sleeve, and she felt the sound-effects more than made up for a little bit of stumbling.

Kelly loved her costume so much that she had insisted on wearing it to school and then her birthday party. This caused a bit of a tussle with her mother, who loved taking photographs, and felt a bit put off by the idea of Kelly, the purple dragon, blowing out candles and opening presents. In the end, Aunt Lila had intervened, reminding Kelly’s mother that the dragon pictures would be very memorable and she would, at least, have a one-of-a-kind photo album out of it. So her mom had acquiesced, and a delighted Kelly had roared her way through a dozen presents and sat to face ten flaming candles before everything started to go wrong.

“What will you wish for?” Jenny Carlson had asked thickly over her plastic vampire fangs. Jenny was Kelly’s best friend and had, at Kelly’s urging, donned her own costume, as had all the children at her party. Jenny’s costume was very scary, though Kelly thought that it wasn’t half as unique as her own.

Kelly knew better than to answer Jenny’s question. Wishes only came true if they were kept secret. If only she had known the damage her birthday wish would cause, she would have voiced it to Jenny to keep it from coming true. Instead, she never answered, merely blowing out her candles as she thought with all her might, “I wish we could look like this every day.”

Shortly after the candles were extinguished, Kelly felt slightly dizzy. All the children at the party seemed to be mumbling strange things. Davey Johnson was the first to tumble from his chair, knocking his pirate hat askew in the process. Kelly might have cried out, though the only thing she heard as she pitched from her own chair was the strangest sound – it was almost like a roar.

When Kelly awoke, she knew something wasn’t right. Jenny’s wig seemed much more authentic. The fake parrot Davey had been wearing on his shoulder was now fluttering around the room and twittering frantically. Her friend Kristen, who had been dressed as a ghost, was not anywhere she could see. But the worst was her brother, James, who had been dressed as a skeleton. Now he was a pile of disconnected bones that still somehow had a voice. He was sobbing hysterically.

Kelly’s mom did not know what to do. She still looked like herself, though the camera seemed to be fused to her face, where it had been perched at the moment Kelly made her wish. Aunt Lila took one look around the room and fainted.

Kelly wanted to take it all back, realizing in an instant that what she was seeing was the result of her wish. She wished again, focusing with all her might to undo it. But nothing happened. Thinking she might need to blow out more birthday candles, Kelly opened her mouth to tell her mother, and a burst of flame erupted, causing the table cloth to catch fire. Davey had just managed to pull himself awkwardly to his chair in time to have to leap clear of the flames. When he landed face down in the carpet, Kelly noticed for the first time that her friend now had a stick for a leg. Kelly guessed with horror that there was probably only an empty socket under his eye patch.

A shrill scream from the other end of the room alerted Kelly to the fact that Kristen was probably still present. There was a large mirror there, and though Kristen was not visible at all, the sound of someone slapping the glass, and the sudden shaking of the large frame, led Kelly to suspect that Kristen was a real ghost now.

Jenny, meanwhile was sniffing at Aunt Lila’s neck in a most alarming manner. Shakily, Kelly tried to lift herself to intervene when she became aware that she was sitting on the floor, not in a chair as she had expected, and that she now walked on four legs rather than two. What she had taken to be her arms stretched and brushed both walls of what she used to consider a large room. But these were not arms. They were wings. Kelly would have to be careful where she stepped or risk squishing one of her friends or family. And while all of these discoveries were made, the pile of bones that was her brother continued to shriek and sob.

Jenny opened her mouth, revealing frighteningly sharp fangs and leaned in as if to bite Aunt Lila. Kelly cried out to stop her and a flash of fire again erupted from her jaws, engulfing her friend. Her mum managed to get the fire extinguisher from the kitchen, despite the fact that she couldn’t use her hands. The red cylinder gripped between her elbows was then shoved at Davey. “Pull the pin and squeeze the handle,” Mum ordered in a surprisingly calm fashion, given the circumstances.

Davey did as he was told and sprayed the thick, white foam over Jenny, who had rolled onto her back away from Aunt Lila. The scent of burnt flesh and singed hair hung in the room and Jenny didn’t move. She looked badly burnt but still appeared to be breathing.

“What has caused this?” Mom demanded over James’ continued hysteria. “How can this be happening?”

Kelly knew she couldn’t answer – not without setting her mother on fire. She tried to point at the cake, but her large, clumsy wings instead knocked pictures from the wall and overturned the sideboard.

It was then that Kelly realized her mother’s seemingly calm reaction to the fire was a quickly disintegrating façade. “This is not natural, it’s impossible,” Mom muttered. “I’m having a nightmare – I must be. It’s a horrible nightmare. I’ll awake and find I’m late for Kelly’s birthday party -- napped right through it.” She was shaking her head violently side to side, her eyes growing ever wider with each denying motion. “The cake is still in the refrigerator and I’m lying on the couch, waiting for the children to arrive from school – asleep – I must be asleep.”

Sadly, Kelly glanced up at the cake that was still on the table. It was not so lovely as it had been earlier; the frosting had been melted by the heat and something had been spilled across one side of it. There were also specks of white extinguisher foam still visible on the surface. But all ten candles remained in place. “I need to light the candles,” Kelly thought desperately, but she had no hands.

Then a thought occurred: Kelly blew very lightly at the cake and the candles ignited. She’d have to wish again and blow the candles out. Considering that she seemed to always blow flame when she opened her mouth, such an action might be easier said than done. But then Kelly realized she was breathing. Maybe fire only came out if she breathed through her mouth. She’d have to blow the candles out by exhaling through her nose.

Tipping her long lavender snout at the cake, Kelly wished with all her might that this horrible accident would never have happened. A puff of dragon snot later and all was back to the way in which it should be: James was whole and seated at the end of the table sticking his tongue out at his older sister, Jenny was unburned and trying to smile around plastic vampire teeth, Davy was scratching his ear where the stuffed parrot brushed him, Kristen was rubbing at the white ghost makeup on her chin, and there was Mom and Aunt Lila, smiling and encouraging her to blow out the candles and make a wish.

Kelly didn’t make a wish again. Kelly would never make another birthday wish as long as she lived.