Glaxicol the Magnificent

The giant, pulsating head floated above the recently polished linoleum floor, illuminating Eleanor's mango sunrise cabinet/countertop ensemble with flickering tinges of mauve, filling the kitchen with a strong odour of ozone.

"Fantastic!" exclaimed Elanore to herself. The eldritch tome she had purchased from the wandering Gypsy hawking cheap cookware door to door had been worth the milk money she had spent on it. Though but a novice conjuror (this had actually been her first attempt at contacting the denizens of Mid-Sub Limbo) she had managed to summon a Lesser Djinn, who, according to the ancient text (if her rough translation of the Sumerian cuneiform was correct) would be her devoted servant for approximately 6 hours, 47 minutes.

What a pleasant distraction from the seemingly endless chores involved in maintaining the newly renovated split-level home Eleanor's husband and she had purchased in the sprawling suburbs south of the city.

Just then, the entire kitchen started to reverberate with a mighty, droning voice.

YOU HAVE SUMMONED GLAXICOL THE GREAT. WHAT IS YOUR WILL?

The floating head looked something like a gigantic translucent melon. Veins of electrical current pulsed through the quivering jelly of its cranium, and the being's tennis ball sized eyes rolled about in their sockets in apparently random directions.

"Wow! You're the real deal!" Elanore was unaccustomed to conversing with pan-dimensional beings, and didn't know it is best to maintain an air of haughty superiority to avoid post-conjuring hauntings and other crank calls from the Outer Worlds.

REALITY! WHAT WOULD A FOUR-DIMENSIONAL CREATURE LIKE YOURSELF KNOW OF REALITY? AND FURTHERMORE, GLAXICOL MAKES NO DEALS. YET SOMEHOW, YOU, A PUNY MORTAL, HAVE MANAGED TO PLACE ME UNDER GEASE.

SO I WILL ASK YOU AGAIN:

WHAT IS YOUR WILL?

"Errr...OK then." Elanore was beginning to wonder if she shouldn't have started out with some more rudimentary conjuring, like an Arcadian Phase Cat to sweep out the chimney.

"Well, I haven't had a chance to clean the bathroom yet. I guess you could start there."

BATHROOM?! YOU HAVE SUMMONED GLAXICOL TO PERFORM LIGHT DOMESTIC CHORES?! I HAVE FASHIONED PALACES FOR THE CHROMIUM LORDS FROM THE MISTS OF MOLOCH. I HAVE BANISHED LEGIONS OF RAVENOUS HELLDOGS TO THE LAND OF SHADOW AND GRAPPLED WITH THE TWELVE-STOMACHED COW OF CHAOS TO RETRIEVE THE GHETTO BLASTER OF THORZILLA!!

Elanore had to use one arm to shield her face from the strange ozone wind generated from the djinn's prodigious outburst. She was trying her best to act non-chalant about the whole situation.

"Oh. In that case, you can polish the chrome and shower tiles, too. You have no idea how difficult it is to get those to sparkle."

I, GLAXICOL, HAVE SOLVED THE RIDDLE OF THE RIM BARONS AND PLUMBED THE DEPTHS OF THE DARZYDIAN SCONE CLUSTER. LESSER DJINN AND GENII BOW BEFORE THE GRANDEUR OF GLAXICOL AND BRING HIM THEIR TRIBUTES OF FROSTED LOW-FAT FLAKES OF ETERNAL BOOGIE SHRIMP. WHAT YOU ASK OF ME IS AN INSULT AND WILL SURELY BRING DEATH AND DEVASTATION TO YOUR ENTIRE FAMILY AND LOCAL MUNICIPAL ELECTORAL RIDING AS WELL. SEEK, THEN, NO FURTHER TO INCURE THE WRATH OF GLAXICOL AND, FOR THE PENULTIMATE TIME, TELL ME

WHAT

IS

YOUR

WILL?

A pregnant moment passed as Elanore pondered her predicament. This djinn had some kind of pan-dimensional Napoleon complex, but she wasn't going to be cowed by some melon-headed maniac from Planet Limbo. Problem was, young Billy Jenkins had already been by that week to cut the lawn (oh he was good with the lawn), and she had had the rugs shampooed just the other day. The dinner ham was already cooking in the oven, and the potatoes and salad wouldn't take but a minute.

Elanore supposed that she should have worked out some kind of plan before she tried her first summoning, but now it was too late; she had to think of something for this being to do, and fast, or risk having the entire neighbourhood of Picket Glen zoned mixed residential/commercial after the next by-elections...or worse!

"Ok Glaxicol, can you really do anything I want?"

YOUR PUNY PLANE OF EXISTENCE IS LIKE A TINY SOAP BUBBLE BREECHING THE SURFACE OF THE PAN-DIMENSIONAL DEPTHS OF PURE ENERGY IN WHICH I FROLIC. I CAN TWIST THE VERY FABRIC OF THE STUFF YOU CALL "REALITY" TO SUIT YOUR FONDEST WHIM. SIMPLY SPEAK AND IT WILL BE DONE....AND MAKE IT SNAPPY SO I CAN GET BACK TO WATCHING THE PANDORIAN BOXING CHAMPIONSHIPS.

Realizing, at last, the scope of her situation, Eleanor's imagination started to shift out of the workaday domestic mediocrity that years of habitual boredom sprinkled with biannual packaged holidays and occasional romantic flings with the gardener had habituated it to. She felt stirrings in her soul that she hadn't known since childhood, when she had entertained wild imaginings with her best friend in the little grove they would repair to after school behind the playground. She recalled her fantasies of being a faerie princess and living forever in a castle made of daffodils on a hilltop of emeralds while candy floss clouds drifted through a marzipan sky. Lost for an endless moment in that blissful revelry of recollection she was only summoned back to the present by the sudden shifting of the djinn's giant floating head.

AHEM!

She looked upon the hovering pulsating head in her kitchen and realized that these childhood fancies she had all but forgotten could suddenly be brought to stunning reality by the mere voicing of her whim. She felt drunk and giddy with the possibility of it all!

"Ok, mighty Glaxicol. I want to be larger than life, a figure of ravishing beauty."

YES. IS THAT ALL?

"And I would like to live forever in this fabulous house that my husband and I have so painstakingly erected and decorated."

YES YES, ANYTHING MORE?

"And I would like to be like a flower that never wilts, a sparkling, shimmering beacon to the world, a startling figure of beauty to all who behold me. "

ANYTHING ELSE?

"I would like to never have to do dishes ever again."

I SUPPOSE I COULD SWING THAT.

VERY WELL. THE GREAT GLAXICOL SHALL MAKE IT SO!

With that there was a cataclysmic bang and a terrific lightning flash. Elanore suddenly found herself in her lovely, artfully-styled backyard Japanese garden, surrounded by the shimmering waters of their decorative pond. She felt taller, and, peering down at her reflection in the green, still waters of the pond, was astonished to see that her skin shone in the sunlight with the sparkling radiance of 24 karat gold. Strangely though, try as she might she couldn't seem to move a muscle, and the djinn was nowhere in her field of view.



Her immobility was slightly disturbing, but was compensated for by the stunningly beautiful reflection peering up at her from the pond water. Her husband would soon be home, back from a day's work at the accounting firm. And wouldn't he be surprised and delighted to see her there, his darling Elanore, so stunningly poised over the pond, her gold skin casting dazzling reflections off the water to ricochet about the garden like so many flickering phantoms of light!