Jeremy the Giant

The dog barked. The rooster crowed. Jeremy the Giant took a deep breath and held it. He stared down at Ginny the Genie. Ginny was a wavering blue wisp of an illusion. Her tornado shape had a sharp tail that balanced on the leather toe of Jeremy's right boot. Her squinting eyes were shifting in the swirls of vapor, looking up at him with an undefinable expression, but he felt the look was condescending.

He had flung away the square black glass bottle from which she emerged. It had seemed an ordinary square black glass gin bottle, the top pressed on the blown glass as if by a child. With anticipation and tenacity he had pulled out the dry cork, awkward as he was with his enormous hands. How he had hoped for a drop of spirits, not a spirit.

The few seconds he had been holding his breath was an eternity. The dog kept barking. The rooster was silent. Jeremy took a careful step forward, leading with his right, and balanced himself, arms akimbo, as the quivering fluid genie kept her position.

The sight would be astounding from a distance: the hulking dark haired giant with long black dreadlocks, tattered red cloak sweeping in folds down the enormity of his muscled height and the dainty blue shadow figure, seeming to command him, waving tiny arms up towards his knees.

He exhaled and breathed in. The foul rotten egg smell was still there. It wafted up to his nostrils which each sway of the genie's body. The blues of her smoke shroud pulsed turquoise, deep violet, pale blue sky blue, with streams of black ribbons. Her high pitched sing-song voice mocked him "too tall, too tall, too tall, you did not fit in her bed, too tall, too tall, the roof hit your head, too big, too dumb, she ran to her death."

Jeremy shouted, "No."He kicked violently to send her tumbling, but she maintained her pose. And she laughed. A lovely, beautiful laugh like Trina, followed by Trina's voice calling him her love. The giant stood still and trembled. This was impossible. Trina was gone. Trina was nowhere. Trina had run. This annoying creature knew.

"Wish my love, wish my love, wish my love, for me to come to you," sang Trina's voice up from the genie. Ginny stretched up in a fluid narrow stream, twirling around him as a python. He was paralyzed with the heat, the odor, the pressure of nothing. He gasped for air.

"Wish, wish my stupid fish, wish or I shall choke you."

"I wish, I wish, I wish to be with Trina." The blow was intense as the ground cracked and rose and the boulders around him flew into the air. He stumbled, fell to his knees, and covered his head with his hands. The dirt and leaves and now mud kept blinding him, beating him, wearing him down. "I wish, I wish, I wish to be small," and he was digging out from under the weight of his cloak, and looking for the genie. "I wish, I wish, I wish to be safe."

The blue wisp was dancing on the tangled mass of a downed tree. The fierce wind had stopped. The ground was still. Out of the bruised leaves, across the red remnants of the cloak, a small shell moved. The hermit crab in jerky hesitant, fits and starts, began to crawl. It tumbled over a boot a giant might have worn and withdrew into the safety of its shell. The it began again the crawl. It was in the dirt, the dirt of the graves, the dirt holding Tina. The rooster crowed. The hen scratched in the rubble knowing the uprooted tree would reveal tasty morsels. The dog barked at the dancing genie that teased him - "a bone, a bone, you want a bone?"