The Magic Ring: Continued

He glanced around the kitchen sneakily, despite the fact that he knew he was alone, and then looked down at the ring and smiled.

Mom hadn’t made anything for dinner and he was still hungry. He cleared his throat and began to speak.

“I wish I had cookies for dinner,” he told the ring, only to see it flash red obligingly.

He looked in front of him on the table and saw that a package of Oreos had mysteriously appeared.

“That’s not enough for dinner,” he scolded the ring. “I wish for more cookies.”

A second pack joined the first, but still he wasn’t satisfied.

“I wish for more,” he said.

Finally, the kitchen table was overloaded with cookies, they littered the table so that no wood was visible and sat neatly stacked on each of the chairs. As he had wished for more, the ring had decided to diversify and now there were chocolate chip cookies and snickerdoodles, white chip macadamia cookies and oatmeal raisin. There were even a few packs of peanut butter cookies.

He looked down at his ring once more and said, “Thank you.”

His eyes grew wide and greedy as he took in the table of treasures before him. Ripping open a bag, he began to chow down. He had plowed his way through a complete package of Oreos, another pack of snickerdoodles and had even managed to shove few of the peanut butter cookies into his mouth before his stomach began to revolt. Slowly, nauseously, he shoved his chair back from the table and waddled out of the kitchen, carefully making his way to the couch. He lay for a while, digesting and attempting the think.

Eventually, the ache in his stomach subsided and he looked at his ring once more.

“I could wish for anything,” he told himself. “What do I want?”

He pulled himself up into a sitting and a sly smile crept over his face.

“I wish for $10,000,” he told the ring. He watched again as it flashed red. Maybe if he hadn’t been looking down he might have noticed it sooner, but the sudden shower caught him by surprise. He had to duck for cover as dollar bills fell from the ceiling in heaps, crashing down around him. The room was flooded by them and he narrowly escaped death by paper cut by crouching in the hallway closet.

When he emerged from the closet, the entire living room was covered in green. He knew he couldn’t clean all of it up, but then again, he didn’t want to try. He didn’t really need all $10,000, he reasoned. He scooped up enough of the money to fill his pockets. Then he grabbed a plastic bag from the kitchen and filled that too, stashing it under his bed for an emergency fund.

Then he sat back on the couch and thought once more. He knew he’d get in trouble. He knew his mother would want to know where the money had come from. But he didn’t think, after all, that he’d be in too much trouble. Who doesn’t like free money? And he didn’t know anyone who didn’t like cookies.

“You know,” he said, to empty living room air. “I’ve never been allowed to have a pet.”

He thought a bit more on the subject before he made his wish, considering all of the different kinds of animals he had wanted. Elephants, without a doubt, were too large. And tigers were too dangerous. He’d never really liked cats anyway. He thought they kept too many secrets. Finally, he made his decision.

“I wish I had a pet monkey,” he said.

Suddenly, the air was rent by a loud screech and he looked up to find he was being stared at by a chimpanzee.

“Hello, little guy,” he said gently, kneeling down and starting to approach it on all fours. “What should I call you?”

The chimp did not respond well to his advances. The quiet speech was met by more screaming and, as the boy got closer, he found things were being flung at him. The chimp chose whatever was closest for ammunition, hurling shoes and antique vases with equal fervor. The already messy living room began to look like the epicenter of an earthquake as boy chased chimp around the room, through the kitchen and up the stairs.

His sister’s room was the first to fall victim to the simian’s rage. In no time at all, he had shattered her mirror and all of the perfume bottled lay broken on the floor, complemented, of course, by the contents of her closet and the remnants of the picture frames that had lined her bureau.

He thought that he might have a chance at trapping the chimp in his sister’s closet, but just when he was about to shut the door, it charged him, knocking him head over heel onto the bed and escaping to the first floor once more.

After a few more rounds through the living room and the kitchen, an exhausted boy finally trapped a still-angry chimp in the downstairs bathroom.

The sounds of glass shattering and fabric tearing were still echoing from the bathroom when he heard the roar of engines in the driveway.

His dad had gotten home and it seemed his mother and sister were right on his heels. He could hear their voices outside the front door, accompanied by the jingle of keys.

He cringed as the door opened.

“It’s ok, sweetheart,” his mother called, dropping her keys in the little caddy that hung on the wall. “It was just a bad case of strep throat. The doctor said he doesn’t know what brought it on so suddenly, but …”

The words died on her lips as she took in the living room.

“WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED HERE?”

His mother started hyperventilating as his father rubbed his temples.

“Honey, it’s ok,” his dad told his mom, laying a comforting arm around her shoulders. “We’ll fix it all up. It’ll be better soon.”

His dad sighed and glared at him.

“We will talk about this later,” he said sternly. “For now, I really need to use the bathroom. I’ve been sitting in traffic for an hour and half.”

The words were halfway out of his mouth as his dad reached for the bathroom door, but it was too late.

The enraged chimp sprang out of the bathroom, gleefully tearing apart whatever had been left intact in the living room.

It took several hours for animal control to come take the chimp away, although they managed to lock him in the closet in the meantime. The man in the white overalls assured him that the chimp would go to a wonderful zoo, where they would take good care of him and he wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone.

Everyone was really happy to see the chimp go.

No one even mentioned the money as they had cleaned up the living room. His parents were still debating a punishment, but he knew he’d be grounded for at least two months and that he wouldn’t be getting an allowance for twice as long as that. He also knew he was in for a lecture on responsibility and that tomorrow they’d want a reason for a monkey being in the house, for the kitchen being covered in cookies and for the living room being covered in money, but at this point, everyone was just too tired to talk. He would think of something to say tomorrow, when the time came.

Resignedly, he dragged himself up the stairs took a shower and brushed his teeth before climbing into bed. The moon was high as he lay down and he watched it thinking. He looked at the ring on his finger, knowing that he should probably stop wishing for a while.

But he couldn’t really help it. As he gazed at the full white moon, he just felt so alone and he made one final wish.

“I wish I had a puppy,” he whispered, half asleep, as he slipped the ring off of his finger and sat it gently on the table by his bed. Almost instantly, he felt a soft, furry form asleep next to him in the bed. He smiled and stroked his new pet as he fell asleep, knowing that, for the first time, he’d made the right wish. Sure, he’d have explain the new puppy in the morning, but for once, he didn’t care.

He awoke in the bright sunshine of his room and sat up just as his new golden retriever puppy yawned.

“I think it’s going to be a good morning, don’t you?” he asked the puppy, who only licked his face in response.

“You need a breath mint,” he told the dog, scratching behind his ears with one hand as he reached for his ring with the other.

But the ring wasn’t there.

He searched the whole bedside table, looking around it and under it and even looking under the bed.

“My ring is gone,” he told the puppy sadly. “Do you know what happened to it?”

And the puppy whined guiltily, feeling the ring roll around in his belly.