Priscilla, Queen of Cats Pt. 01

PART ONE: The Wish

It was one of those cold, windy days where the sky was threatening rain, there was nothing good on TV, and you just weren't in the mood for going anywhere or doing anything. So I decided to clean the house – as you do. And I decided to blackmail my housemates into helping me – as you do. Lenny and Belinda were a little reluctant, but my threat to withhold my semi-famous Cointreau Pancakes – an essential part of every nutritious breakfast – provoked action.

We started in the attic; Blinn said that she sometimes heard the sounds of little scurrying footsteps from up there during the night, which meant there were rats to be dealt with, just in case the task of cleaning a dusky attic wasn't tantalising enough. The mention of rats must have caught Priscilla's ear, because she came up to supervise our efforts – Priscilla, before you ask, is the name of Blinn's green-eyed, black-haired cat. "Priscilla, Queen of the Household," I liked to call her. That cat, like all cats I have ever known, was far more trouble than she was worth: she had a snooty, lording way about her, as though our sole purpose in life was to tend to her every need and sate her every desire. I never really liked cats, though I was not totally averse to sometimes cuddling up with Priscilla in front of the TV and giving her belly a bit of a tickle. Purely for the proven therapeutic effects, of course. Not out of any feelings of fondness, or anything.

Twenty minutes in, and we had done little more than shuffle the junk around, raise enough dust to cause two sneezing fits on my part, and generally grow unhappy with our chosen course of events for the day. No rats had been flushed out either, and Priscilla's impatient, unimpressed movements about the place signalled her imminent departure for zones of greater amusement. It was around this time that Lenny found the lamp.

"Hey," said Lenny. "I've found a lamp."

So he had: it was one of those old-fashioned oil-burning things, brassy and curvy, straight out of a bad 60s sitcom about blonde female genies. "There's gotta be a genie in that," I said.

"Only one way to find out," grinned Lenny, as he set about rubbing the lamp.

"You be careful with that," Blinn warned. "For all you know, it may contain an evil genie."

"An evil genie?" Lenny echoed. "What, like in that 'Aladdin' movie?"

"Yeah," said Blinn. "Knowing your luck, you could be releasing the most vicious force of evil the world has ever known."

"Not evil," said a fourth voice, "but kinda sleepy." We spun around, and beheld a slightly portly man of vaguely middle-eastern appearance, though the pallor of his skin indicated he hadn't seen much sun in a while. He had giant bags under his eyes, and looked as though he'd only got thirty-eight years of a planned forty-year nap.

We regarded him warily. "Let me guess," I ventured. "You're the genie?"

"You must be the brains of the bunch, then," the genie replied, stifling a yawn. He frowned at us as we looked at him with uncertainty. "What, you really think you can rub a lamp that looks like that and NOT end up with a genie in your attic? Gee, this place could do with a clean-up," he added, looking around with a critical eye.

"Alright then," said Lenny, who was always up to any challenge. "How many wishes do we score, Mr Genie? Three each?"

"Three?" the genie echoed. "You must think yourselves pretty special if you reckon you deserve three wishes each."

"Um, correct me if I'm wrong," I offered, "but we did grant you freedom from imprisonment in the lamp, did we not?"

"TEMPORARY freedom," the genie corrected, as he tickled Priscilla under the chin – apparently the cat had seen fit to hang around for a little while longer. "I go right back in the lamp once you've got your wishes. And I wouldn't call it a prison; it's not so bad in there, I'm starting to get the place just how I like it," he said, with a touch of pride. "Once the Jacuzzi's up and running, it'll be quite the pad."

"Yeah yeah," said Lenny. "Never mind that: make with the wishes, man! How many?"

"I will grant one each, to everyone in the room," the genie sighed. "And make it quick, it's chilly out here."

"Yeah, right," said Blinn, who was not looking terribly convinced by the proceedings. "What a pile of bullshit. If you're a real genie, I'll sniff Lenny's underpants."

"Oi," said Lenny, frowning at the unkind implication.

"Who are you," Blinn continued, staring the genie down, "and how did you get into our house?"

The genie looked at Blinn, and then he looked himself up and down; from the expression on his face, it was clear that he thought his silk pyjamas and matching turban, soft shoes with curly toes, neatly trimmed goatee and general Arabian appearance proved her to be quite the idiot. "You want proof, woman?" he said. "Make a wish and see."

"Fine," said Blinn, and we watched as she quickly wracked her brain for the most unlikely wish she could manage. "I wish... I was the Queen of Sheba."

The genie snapped his fingers, there was a popping noise, and Blinn was suddenly no longer in the room. "You'll find her in the history books," said the genie.

Lenny and I shared a glance of growing apprehension. "You gotta be careful what you wish for," the genie grinned, almost maliciously – he clearly hadn't thought much of Blinn.

I groaned. "Great," I said. "Now one of us has got to sacrifice his wish to bring her back."

"Wait, wait," said Lenny, forehead creased in contemplation. "Actually, I've got me an idea." He fixed the genie with a no-nonsense look. "Alright then, genie: listen up and listen good."

"I'm listening," the genie nodded.

"I wish – and no tricks, now," said Lenny, "–I wish for the ability to travel, accurately and safely, to any point in time and space."

The genie's eyebrows raised in surprise. "You wanna be a time traveller?"

"Hell yes," Lenny affirmed. "That way, I can go and deal with Blinn, and also go check out some of history's better talent: Marilyn Munroe, Grace Kelly, Lady Godiver, Queen Liz the First..."

"I thought Liz the First was an ice maiden," I said.

"It's always the ice maidens who prove most wanton in the sack," Lenny confided, with a grin and a wink. "More fun in the pursuit, too. So go on then, genie," he said, addressing our be-turbaned interloper, "can you make it happen or not?"

"See for yourself," said the genie, snapping his fingers. Nothing about Lenny appeared to change on the surface, but a slow smile forming on his face indicated that he could feel new abilities forming within him.

"Well?" I prompted. "Did it work, or not?"

"Hang on a sec..." Lenny said; he closed his eyes in concentration, and with an eye-twisting flash of light he vanished. He returned about three seconds later, bare-chested and deeply tanned; he wore billowing pants that may have been fashioned from some sort of hemp-like material, there was an impressively-sized curved blade tucked into his waistband, and his face bore a slightly bemused expression. "Well, three weeks in Sheba is about three weeks too long," he said.

"What, have you just been to Sheba?" I boggled.

He nodded. "Blinn says hello," he added, as if it were by-the-by. "She says not to worry about her, she's quite happy; apparently her sudden appearance in the throne was deemed some sort of act of the Gods, and her reign of terror quickly became unquestioned and absolute. She also said something about a harem full of well-hung African warriors that I tried not to pay much attention to. And now, if you'll excuse me," he said, with the cheeky grin that has always been so typical of Lenny, "I'm off to Victorian England. Gunna track down Jane Austen and stick my toe up her arse. Heh heh." And with that, he vanished again.

"There he goes," grimaced the genie. "History's greatest menace."

"He'll be alright, won't he?" I said.

"I'm more worried about Jane Austen, truth be told," said the genie; he fixed me with an impatient glare. "So you gunna make a wish, or what?"

"Oh. Aw. Gee. Umm," I said, my mind suddenly blank. "Uhh... alright then, let's just try for a billion dollars in my bank account. Tax free," I hastily added.

The genie snapped his fingers. "Done," he said. "Don't spend it all at once." As I blinked, feeling oddly unfulfilled, the genie turned to an attentive-looking Priscilla, sitting upon a nearby pile of boxes. "And you?"

"What?" I said.

The genie shot a glare at me. "I was talking," he said, "to the cat."

"Oh," I said. "What?" I said again. "You can't grant a wish to a cat, can you?"

"Oh, go and count your money or something," the genie snapped dismissively. "I said one wish, for everyone in the room." He turned back to the cat. She said nothing, of course; but I thought that perhaps I detected a look in her eye, a look slightly different to the usual lazed-out haughty aloofness that Priscilla's unnervingly level gaze usually bore. The genie looked Priscilla in the eye for a moment, and then he made a noise of surprise.

"Really?" he said; he cast a critical glance in my direction. "Ah well, suit yourself." He snapped his fingers, and looked around. "Now where did that dickhead leave my lamp? Ah." He picked up the lamp from among a pile of Lenny's aging collection of skin mags, and blew some dust off it before looking back at me. "Right then: here's how it works," he said. "Don't waste your time rubbing the lamp again, because once I've granted you a wish I can't be called back. And don't get any ideas about selling me on e-bay or anything, because next time you turn your back the lamp will magically remove itself from here and put itself in the vicinity of some other deserving individual. Though quite how you people qualified as 'deserving'," he added, casting a final look of disapproval over the shambles of our attic, "I will never know."

Priscilla yowled, with what may almost be described as impatience.

"Alright, alright, I'm going," the genie said, rolling his eyes. And with that, he snapped his fingers yet again, vanishing in a rankled fashion; the lamp quivered and bumped in the air for a moment, then it clattered to the floor in an unceremonial fashion, leaving Priscilla and I to eye each other across the dusty attic.

"...Okay," I said, as though something thoughtful was expected of me. "Whatever did you wish for, then?"

If a cat could possibly give a look that said "Wouldn't you like to know?", Priscilla surely did just that. I shrugged, and decided that it would perhaps be prudent to check my bank account, to see if the genie's powers had perhaps improved upon my life savings of three dollars and forty-two cents. I made my way down from the attic to my bedroom, where an antique but net-worthy computer held station in a corner. While I dialled-up the net and waited for the modem to sing its song, Priscilla made her presence known by rubbing against my shins.

"Can't scratch your tummy right now, Priscilla," I said. "Gotta check and see if I'm a billionaire." Priscilla seemed to find that situation acceptable, and she moseyed off to set her throne among the unmade sheets of my bed.

Understand, now, that the mere prospect of the faintest possibility of the existence of a billion tax-free dollars in one's bank account tends to narrow one's attentions. This is why I paid scant notice to the odd noises that Priscilla was making behind me; there were meows, and moans, and groans, and the sound of my bed sheets being shifted and rearranged, but my entire being was focused upon the computer screen while it accessed my account details as fast as it could – which was not nearly fast enough. After an apparent eternity, my eyes fixed upon a rather improbable figure:

$1,000,000,003.42

I stared at the figure for quite some time, until a large number of zeroes were burnt into my retina; a course of action finally came to me, and I turned to make a mad dash for the phone. I can't remember if I was planning to call the nearest Ferrari dealership, or the nearest Lamborghini dealership, or the nearest Small and Relatively Inexpensive Pacific Nation dealership, but it is a moot point because I never made it anywhere near the phone: I was struck immobile by the site of a beautiful woman, utterly naked, lying upon my bed and watching me carefully.