Jared pondered as he held his own skull in his hands. At that moment all he could focus on was that he had a much larger forehead than he had expected. Then again maybe it wasn't that big. Maybe it just seemed big because it didn't have skin and muscle padding it out. He held it up and stared into the sockets, comparing it to his own head. Despite his attempts to make light of the situation, he couldn't shake a horrible feeling of vertigo as two forms of himself crossed the time stream. His guide was understandably quite anxious.
'There, you've seen your own skull, are we done now?' groaned the Djinn 'I should never have brought you here, this shouldn’t have been possible' he floated in a corner of the crypt moored to his lantern prison. He wasn’t a stereotypical Djinn, or genie to use the more mainstream pseudonym. He had no intonation of Arabian heritage, being only a ghostly wisp of pale green that flickered ever so slightly. in fact at times it was so consistent that one could mistake him for solid. He had no hair and his face was marked only by a thin mouth that never moved, even when he spoke. His eyes did not shine like a mortal's but were only dark voids that looked everywhere and nowhere at once. His moorings were similarly unconventional. Instead of the typical oil lamp prison that litter fairy tales and folk stories he inhabited quite a Victorian candle lantern. It was an ornate thing made of brass and copper with six sides, each with a window to let the light out. The candle like the spirit burned with a light green glow that seemed almost calm in nature. It perfectly contrasted the dark and grubby browns and reds of the old brass lamp. 'That's one wish wasted, are you happy now? My wick's almost out. unless you have a spare candle on you we should get going or you're going to be stuck here' he paused for a moment and pondered that thought 'Stuck in your own crypt in the future, God only knows what kind of paradox that would create'.
'Relax, the fact that we're even in here means we get out in time. For an eternal spirit you sure are high strung' Jared grinned at the lamenting genie. Sure enough it was within his future self's will that his past self and the unnamed genie were to be allowed into the crypt, a crypt that only really existed for this point in time. Having lived through the event, accommodating his past self was the least he could do. A point that unsettled Jared. ‘So this is pretty much inevitable, I go back, I die eventually and leave my skull for my past self to manhandle’ he accidentally dropped his displaced cranium, it fell to the cold stone floor and now sported an unsightly crack. Suffice it to say this made him wince quite a bit.
‘That’s the short of it yes. Be thankful, not many people get to see their own corpses while they’re alive.’ The genie grinned having reluctantly calmed down.
‘Not many people have a genie as a family heirloom’ he replied.
‘You should be so lucky’ came a sarcastic retort from the spirit ‘Two left, wishing us back counts as one, I warned you time travel isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Your family never listens.’
‘Oh? Someone else travelled in time?’ He asked, only recently becoming aware of their precious heirloom. Though it should probably have come as no surprise. His family was extraordinarily wealthy and held influence within the government. All that money and power had to come from somewhere.
‘Oh yes, your great uncle back in the eighteen hundreds wished to go back to ancient Egypt. He had just about finished wishing us back before a spear severed his spine.’ He had a nostalgic look in his dark eyes that made Jared uncomfortable, swiftly he changed the subject.
‘I could wish myself to be immortal and stop this from happening’ Jared said defiantly. He had placed his skull back on the shelf with the other relics of the twenty-first century. He was surprised that tombs weren’t that much different in the future than they were of his time. They were still the monolithic and drab granite temples to the reaper that they had always been.
