The Wishing Well

It all started with a walk in the park. I was walking with my friend, Sarah, and she saw a path that led into the woods. She ran off into it, having never seen it before. Being more cautious, I hesitated and called after her. When she didn’t respond (of course), I went in after her, but I wasn’t as reckless as she was. I walked into the woods carefully and was fully aware of my surroundings the whole time. The path was overgrown and winding, and I could’ve sworn that there were at least 10 owls whooooooing at me as I went along. 

When I got to the end of the path, I saw Sarah looking down the lip of a huge well. It was so big that to look at the water at the bottom, we had to climb a tree adjacent to the well and jump onto the ginormous lip of it. When we got our first clear look at the bottom of the well, we saw a strange-looking man floating on the water, asleep. He had orange skin and a ridiculously large purple beard, and he looked around 35 years old. 

Sarah tried to wake him up by yelling “Hello down there!” a couple of times, but he just groaned and turned the other way. 

I thought for a little bit, jumped off the well, and I heard a loud and sudden snap coming from my ankle. I looked down, and my foot was completely rotated to the side like I had rolled my ankle and it stayed. Then the pain began. It felt like something was stabbing knives that had been covered in gasoline and lit on fire into my ankle relentlessly. I had broken my ankle before, and it did not hurt nearly as much as it did now. Something else was in play here. After a bout of swearing, yelling, and even crying, I managed to calm down. 

Just as I did, Sarah said, “He’s awake!” I got up the tree agonizingly slowly and crawled off of it onto the well, and when I looked down, all I could see was the man’s face, but gigantic and projected onto the water. His eyes were a pure dark blue, and he was staring at me intently. When I stood up and asked him what his name was, he replied, “I AM THE GREAT GENIE OF THE WELL. YOU MAY CALL ME GERALD FOR SHORT.”
I said, “Hi Gerald!”

“I SEE THAT YOUR ANKLE HAS BEEN SNAPPED. IF YOU WOULD LIKE ME TO FIX IT, ALL YOU NEED TO DO IS TOSS A COIN IN HERE AND WISH FOR IT.”

I thought about it for a bit, and I fished a penny out of my pocket, and then I tossed it into the water. When the coin hit the water, Gerald’s face rippled right along with the water, as if it was the water. I said under my breath, “I wish that my ankle was fully healed”. All of a sudden, my ankle felt like it had been dipped into a vat of warm water, taken out, and dried off with velvet. All I could say was a feeble “Thank you,” and then I went back to thinking about how thankful I was that my ankle was better. Sarah always had money on her, so she tossed a coin down there and said, “I wish for a mountain bike!” 

Gerald, however, responded by saying, “YOU CANNOT WISH FOR MATERIAL OBJECTS. YOU CN ONLY WISH FOR A HEALING PURPOSE OR TO WISH WELL-BEING ONTO ANOTHER. NOW THAT YOU HAVE BROKEN THE RULES, YOU MUST FORGET THIS ENCOUNTER EVER HAPPENED.” 

There was a large flash of pure darkness, and I’m glad that I looked away because Sarah screamed a scream so blood-curdling, it actually curdled my blood. When I thought that it was over, I looked at Sarah, but she wasn’t there. I was in my bed, looking at my wall. I looked at the clock, only to see that it had been a full 2 days since the incident with Gerald. I yelled, “Mom! How long was I out??” She said, 

“Only since last night, Betty, like every other day.” Now, this is where people start to realize the experience was only a dream, a hallucination, or whatever. But I knew otherwise because my ankle had started hurting again, but not nearly as much as before. I even talked to Sarah about it, but she had zero recollection of the event. I made it my goal to find the answer to this harrowing mystery and find the well again so that I could talk to Gerald.