The Silent Wish

Some Thoughts Were Never Meant to Be Heard

The brass lamp didn’t belong.

Elena noticed it the moment the vendor stepped into her path at the flea market, his stall smelling of dust and damp wool. Wedged between yellowed paperbacks and a cracked porcelain doll, the lamp gleamed dully, its surface etched with symbols that seemed to shift if she stared too long.

"Curious things, these," the vendor rasped. His fingers—too long, too knobby—traced the carvings with unsettling familiarity. "They find those who need them."

Elena scoffed. "I don’t collect junk."

The old man smiled, revealing teeth like stained parchment. "No? Then tell me… do you lie awake at night, wondering what they really think of you?"

A cold finger traced her spine.

That night, the lamp burned in her hands, its metal unnaturally warm. "Probably some cheap tourist trinket," she muttered. But her mind betrayed her—her boss’s empty praise, her friends’ stilted laughter, the way every compliment from a lover dissolved into silence.

When the smoke poured out, it didn’t just coil—it crawled, forming something that was almost human.

"One wish," it whispered, its voice like dry leaves skittering across pavement. "No revisions."

Elena’s lips moved before she could stop them.

"I want to hear what people really think."

The genie’s grin split wide. "Oh, little liar… you already do."

Pain exploded behind her eyes—then silence.

At brunch the next morning, Lila air-kissed her cheeks. "Sorry I’m late! Traffic was awful."

"Ugh, this fucking café again? Her kale obsession is so pathetic."

Elena dropped her menu. The voice was razor-sharp—but Lila’s lips hadn’t moved.

"You okay?" Lila tilted her head, her face a perfect mask of concern.

"Christ, now she’s doing that weird blinking thing. So awkward."

The unraveling came fast.

Her boss’s praise hid contempt: "Excellent presentation." Did she steal this from HBR?

Her dates’ sweet nothings curdled: "You’re special." Just another desperate thirty-something.

Even her mother’s pride carried barbs: "I’m proud of you." Your sister gave me grandchildren.

She bought noise-canceling headphones. They didn’t help.

Elena tried changing—quieter, thinner, paler—but the voices only grew crueler. "Why is she so needy?" "That vacant stare creeps me out." Sleep became impossible. The chorus swelled each night until she started answering aloud, which only made the real conversations stop.

Her reflection grew unfamiliar—sunken eyes, cracked lips, hair brittle as straw. The woman in the mirror mouthed words Elena couldn’t hear. She stopped looking.

When she found the lamp again, buried under dust and rotting clothes, she sobbed: "Take it back!"

Smoke curled lazily. "No refunds."

"Then make it STOP!"

"You asked for truth." The voice oozed from the walls, the floor, the hollows of her own bones. "Not our fault what you found."

Elena clawed at her ears. "What good is truth when it’s all hate?"

The genie’s laughter slithered around her. "Oh, my dear… that’s not our doing."

When they found her body, the coroner noted strange details: journals filled with "liar, fake, worthless," shattered mirrors, headphones still hissing static. Most curious—how she’d curled around the lamp, fingers jammed deep into its spout, as if trying to claw her way inside.

Her final message, scrawled in lipstick across the bathroom tiles:

THE MONSTER WASN’T IN THEIR THOUGHTS.

IT WAS ALWAYS IN ME.

At another market, another vendor smiles as a new victim examines the lamp. "My ex would hate this," they chuckle.

Somewhere, smoke stirs.

Moral: The cruelest voices were never the ones outside. They were the ones you fed yourself