Afreet

Afreet

I’d never encountered a living coffee cup before. I mean – if a bulbous, blinking eyeball stares up at you from the porcelain’s concave bottom, doesn’t that qualify as alive?

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My life has taken many strange and unexpected turns. As a boy dreaming of walking on the moon, little could I have foreseen my current profession. And how, this morning, just twenty minutes ago, I was running for my life, pursued by my would-be assassin.

Imagine darting in and out of train cars, dashing down crowded corridors, bounding up escalators and beyond the subway station, into a wall of ice-cold, pouring rain. It numbed me to the bone but offered concealment. A way out.

I hurried across the cobblestones, toward a warmly glowing set of shop windows. Time to melt back in – as I casually opened the door, stepped inside, removed my hat. While my heart hammered in my chest, I appeared cool and collected. The shop was noisy, boisterous, and I quickly joined a line of five other people. As always, I blended in, as though I lived just down the block and came here every morning.

There was a hissing sound, like pressurized steam, and the rich, overpowering aroma of roasted coffee. Out of habit, I reached deep into my left pocket (for the hundredth time) and fingered two diminutive, plastic thumb drives. Drives that half the world’s governments would kill for. They contained comprehensive plans, test procedures, and engineering schematics for a new generation of nuclear weapon. Something that my handlers told me was unlike anything the world had ever seen. Something they had to have

Now, if I could just reach that deserted warehouse near the docks and pass on the information. Before someone put a bullet in my head. Or a blade through my heart.

I was next in line by the time I noticed the shop’s sign – Grave Grounds – and knew these folks took their coffee seriously. After ordering a mocha latte and a strawberry scone, I waited for my order, all the while keeping an eye on the front door. Someone else finally entered, the little bell above the door tinkling musically as a middle-aged woman and a young girl stepped inside from the rain.

At least she wasn’t Tirpitz – code name for a Belarusian agent who dreamt most nights of sticking my head on a pole.

With my order in hand, I sauntered over to the farthest, darkest corner. Sat down at a wobbly table with a clear view of the entrance. I re-checked the thumb drives, then brushed my fingers over the PPK, loaded and holstered beneath my shirt on my left side. Ah, the security Lucius provided. That’s my PPK's name, by the way.

The latte was incredible. Served in a twice-too-large version of a fancy British tea cup, its fine bone china stenciled in dozens of small Egyptian eye runes. Eye of Ra, or Eye of Horus – I wasn’t sure which. Haven’t been in Cairo for years. The scone was buttery, crumbly – just what I needed to refuel myself for the last leg of my mission.

Checked my watch – forty-seven minutes. Bide my time here, then walk the quick 1.3 miles to our rendezvous. I’d thoroughly studied maps and satellite imagery of the area and knew the nearest dumpsters and abandoned structures all along my route. You lose count in my line of work – how many times a dumpster saves your life.

After polishing off the rich, fruity scone, I drained my cup. Then did a double take. At the bottom was an incredibly realistic painted eye. I could swear I knew it. It wasn’t the person I recognized, but the mentality behind it.

My blood ran cold as the eye took on dimensionality – the pupil, iris, and flesh rising slowly upward from the fine bone china, gaining texture. Gaining… reality. The eye shot open, as if awakened from a deep, dark sleep. It looked ancient. Perhaps older than civilization, itself. Then it narrowed, gleamed with malice. The bloodshot orb swiveled, stared me straight in the eye, bored through my flesh, bone, and into my mind. Probing...

The air around me grew sharply colder. My fingers tingled with a burning, freezing sensation, so I set the cup on its saucer.

Who are you? And how dare you disturb my rest. My imprisonment.

His words were hissed, as if spoken by a cobra. If cobras could speak, that is. I glanced about, wondered if others heard him, but everyone seemed unperturbed.

“How are you imprisoned? I have no idea who you are,” I thought in reply. High stress situations were nothing unusual for me, but this was different. Dread filled my mind as I realized this was something far beyond my understanding. What dangers did it represent?

A magician, jealous of my power, deceived me and imprisoned my being inside the simple vessel before you. My enemies were cowards. They have all perished from this world, yet I remain.

“Have you ever encountered anyone like me before? Others who used this cup and awakened you?”

Never! You are the first. It requires a special soul – one with a shard of pure darkness – to summon me.

Admittedly – I’ve stolen things. Injured many of my enemies. Killed a few. And yes, there is darkness in me, though I work hard to repress it. I justify my actions by imagining myself a patriot who risks life and limb for his country, to preserve freedom in the world. But how unique am I? Most in my line of work probably rationalize their deeds as I do.

A new thought sprang to mind. It felt like my own idea, but I wondered if it were his.

“Can I help to free you? And if so, how?”

The eye swelled inside the cup, the pupil dilating until the iris, then the white of the eye, were subsumed in blackness. The polished onyx orb struck renewed fear in me. I felt intense longing from him – a mortal desperation.

I trembled in my seat. The dread building inside me crested like a towering black wave that came crashing down. Don’t panic, I told myself. What had I gotten myself into? Each time the entity spoke, more than darkness rattled my brain, my bones, my viscera. No, this being was pure evil.

A glass smashed somewhere nearby, tearing me back to reality. Time for a sanity check. Was I hallucinating? Was my barista in league with Tirpitz? Had she spiked my latte with acid?

Chant these words – Afreet Ana b’hareerak – then shatter this cursed cup, and I will be free. As reward, I will grant you anything and everything you desire. It is my bond of trust, as an Afreet, to whoever liberates me!

Dear God, I’d found a genie, or something like it! He described himself as an Afreet, and from what I knew of Arab mythology, I was in way over my head. An Afreet imprisoned inside a… coffee cup? It seemed impossible, or at least highly improbable. But as an international spy and espionage agent, I was used to surprises.

Like the time, in downtown Brussels, when a little old lady walking beside me suddenly went full-on ninja and nearly killed me. She was a little over four feet tall, and I fell for her slow, hobbling gait, the outdated winter coat and hat.

Or that incident in St. Petersburg, when an ex-KGB agent dropped a grenade on me as he hang-glided fifty feet overhead. Fortunately, I was able to dive behind a monument to Catherine the Great before the thing exploded, but two bystanders were seriously injured.

And what of the Afreet’s promise to grant me anything I desired? From all the legends and fairy tales I’d read over the years, genies and leprechauns were infamous for their deception and cunning. Typically, they turned what you thought was your fondest wish into a curse.

Just then, the door to Grave Grounds swung open, and a tall, solidly built man in a raincoat and low-brimmed hat stepped inside. He looked about the room, dark eyes glittering, and my heart seized. Tirpitz.

Perhaps this Afreet could help me after all…

While the agent walked to the far end of the shop, closely eyeing each of the seated men and showing them a photo of me, I grabbed the coffee cup, left my chair, and hurried into the shop’s employee backroom. It was vacant at the moment, but I heard rain beating on glass, and there it was – a back door leading outside. To freedom.

In under two minutes, I was tramping through puddles and along sidewalks, already back on my originally planned path to the rendezvous point. I knew it was only a matter of time until Tirpitz appeared behind me. The thumb drives were still secure in my left coat pocket, the cursed coffee cup in my right. The Afreet was still inside my head, and he spoke again.

This nemesis of yours – this Tirpitz – I can eliminate your mortal foe. Just free me from my prison and I will do so!

“I have only two wishes for when I free you. First, I want you to grant them as I want them to be granted – with no deception or malice. Once you have granted both, you are free of all further obligations to me.”

Your wish is my command.

“My first wish is for you to eliminate Tirpitz forever. My second wish is that you never harm me or anyone I care about.”

Just then, from behind a large, graffiti-covered trash bin just ahead and to my right, Tirpitz stepped out into my path. He held his weapon, tipped with a silencer, steady in his right hand and, with his other, motioned at me. I knew what he wanted. The thumb drives. And then he would kill me.

My life flashed before my eyes as I reached slowly, gently into my right pocket and removed the coffee cup. I raised my hand level with my shoulder and said “Afreet Ana b’hareerak!”

Everything happened in slow motion. Tirpitz glared at me, his finger tensing on the trigger of his weapon, as I hurled the cup toward the bare pavement below. It struck the ground, exploding into countless shards of fine bone china.

I felt it – the Afreet withdrawing his mental tentacles from my mind. As he left, I sensed his joy at finding freedom. How long he’d been imprisoned, I had no idea. Nor did it matter. The air beside Tirpitz begin to shimmer, and a blazing column of yellow fire materialized three feet to his side. For the first time ever, I saw panic on Tirpitz’s face, as he squeezed off several shots that had no effect on the materializing Afreet.

The fire expanded, took on the form of a hideous, dragon-like creature, its jaws craned open as it rushed at Tirpitz, quickly engulfing him in searing heat and light. I shielded my eyes from the Afreet’s brilliance, heard shrieks of agony and terror from Tirpitz, and then he and it were gone. The scent of burning sulfur lingered in the air as the rain intensified. My mortal foe was no more...

On the way to my rendezvous point, I vacillated back and forth on whether I would fully disclose what had happened. In the end, as I placed the thumb drives into Achilles’ large, outstretched palm, I told him only that I had “dealt with Tirpitz.” And that he would no longer be a problem.

That evening, as I sat in the upscale restaurant at my hotel, I asked for a large cup of coffee, spiked liberally with brandy. As I neared the bottom of the cup, I was gripped by a rising tension. I tipped it back, drained it. Then I stared down into its depths.

Plain, white porcelain stared back at me...