It was a small bottle, roughly the size, as well as more or less the shape, of a pear. Made of milky white ceramic, it was covered in a beautiful geometric pattern in deep blue. I never tired of looking at it, of turning it over and over in my palm. I liked the weight of it, how it was heavier than a clay bottle really should be. Maybe the weight came from the lead that stoppered it, but I doubted it. The way the weight moved had almost a liquid feel to it.
I'd wanted to open it up and look inside for years, ever since I inherited it from my grandparents along with a bunch of other souvenirs from their youthful travels. There were times when I wished I'd inherited a journel of some kind as well, something to tell me the origins of my various odd treasures. Some were obviously cheap tourist junk, but some, like the bottle, were harder to classify. If I had to guess, based on the type of artwork, I'd say it was of middle eastern origin, and either very old, or, more likely, based on the vivid color, a copy of something very old. Though hardly an expert opinion, it wasn't a shot in the dark, either. I'd been majoring in art history for the past four years, and was about to enter a graduate program.
In honor of my acceptance into the graduate program, I was planning on finally opening the bottle. I'd borrowed oxygen-acetaline torch from a professor who liked to mold lead, as well as a metal bowl, goggles, and heat resistant gloves. If I heated the ceramic slowly, and then allowed it to cool slowly afterwards, it hopefully wouldn't be too damaged.
Half an hour later, I was pouring the lead into the bowl. Then I set the bottle down on a heat pad. Now, if I didn't get too close, I should be able to peer into the bottle and get my first look at what was inside...
I jerked back in shock as I saw the crackling glow inside. The contents of the bottle were on fire! Then the flames began to swirl up and out of the bottle in a strange tornado. I tried to run, but found myself unable to move my feet. I tried to scream, but couldn't seem to find my voice
The column of swirling flame grew and grew, until it was touching the ceiling. Then it fell back in on itself, and, suddenly, there was a man sitting on the counter in my kitchen where the bottle had been. He was tall, and dark skinned, with long dark hair and piercing orange eyes. He wore nothing but loose green shorts, a green vest, and a large amount of jewelry. And I mean a large amount of jewelry. It was mostly in the form of golden rings and earrings, though he did have two thick, golden bracelets covered in intricate carvings I automatically identified as middle eastern, probably arabic, and a golden pectoral that looked very ancient egyptian. Oddly, most of his earring were on one ear, his left, in a great golden arc from his earlobe to his slightly pointed ear tips. His right ear only had one earring, a tiny golden loop with a miniscule blue bead.
"W-Who... What?" I gasped, my voice having returned to me.
"My name is Algave, and I am a djinn," said the man. If man was the right word. "You have freed me from my prison of over a millennium. I thank you for this."
He had a deep, soft voice, very pleasant to listen to. I wasn't sure I liked how he was looking at me, though. "A djinn? Like in One Thousand and One Nights?" I had started reading an english translation of it last night.
"Funny you should mention that particular book," Algave murmured. He gestured, and I flew backwards to slam against the opposite wall. "There is a story in it, I believe, about a djinn in a predicament similar to mine. In the story, he swears that, if someone liberates him in the first hundred years, he will enrich him greatly with gold." I knew this story. I had read it last night. I did not like where this was going.
"No one frees him for a hundred years, so he swears that, if someone were to free him during the second hundred years of his imprisonment, he would heap him with silver." I was trying to sidle slowly away now. Algave must have noticed, because he gestured again, and arms grew out of the walls to grip me.
"Again, no one frees him, so he swears that, if someone lets him out during the third hundred years, he will give them three wishes." I struggled, but was unable to move very much. I couldn't even scream; there was a hand over my mouth. What made me nervous, though, was the way the arm sprouting from the wall between my legs gripped my inner thigh.
"He is not freed in this hundred years. It has been three hundred years by now, so he swears that he will give his liberator nothing but the power to choose the manner of his death."
Algave smiled dangerously. "A millennium ago, I swore a similar oath. I swore that, if a man freed me, I would kill him in the most painful manner I could concoct."