Djinn: - The First Encounter

The smoke from the burning fire silently rose up in the air. Without the touch of a breeze there was nothing to make the flames move like they normally did, and as I stood there watching, I couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to the evening breeze that normally blew at that time of the day. It was a strange tale to begin with, something that was almost impossible to believe if it wasn’t for the sequence of events that transpired.

He said that he’d gone into a public washroom, he was nowhere close to being sober at the time, and as soon as he stepped in, he swore that he saw a woman there. He blinked and she was gone. He didn’t give it much thought after that, and dismissed it for a trick of the mind, and I was inclined to agree with him, initially anyway. About a year later, he met a woman, and he couldn’t help being taken in by her. He described her to me one day, and I remembered what he’d said. She was about 5’ 6’ in height, dressed in somber black, with long waist-length, raven-black hair, her lips soft and pouty, highlighted by glossy red lipstick. He didn’t really quite specify how they’d met; it was like they just bumped into each other somewhere and at that time he didn’t really mention it to anyone because there wasn’t any need to. He told me about it in passing, months later, over coffee, and as the conversation progressed, I could see that he wasn’t really his usual self. Life, I later learned, wasn’t really going the way he’d planned.

My friend was a bit of a looker, and was somewhat successful at what he did, however he wasn’t the type to catch a woman’s eye. But from what I could gather, that appeared to have changed in recent times and there was an unusually high number of women that were taking an interest in him. “That’s not really a bad thing”, I said to him, and he looked like he was inclined to disagree. “I’d rather be with just one woman”, he said. I agreed with a nod of the head. Something about his state of affairs though was baffling. He was a decent person, successful at what he did, and it only stood to reason that he would be attached, but that was something that had never happened. I didn’t push the matter, and I thought that it was best to let things be. It was to some extent the story of his life.

We met again a month or so later, and the tale took a twist. “This woman keeps appearing in my dreams”, he said. “Who?”, I asked, without giving it a second thought, a man dreaming about a woman wasn’t really something that was out of the norm, and he replied, “this woman I stumbled across”. I had to admit that that was somewhat odd. He’d only met her that one time, and that too was something that just happened, and to dream about her, well that wasn’t exactly normal. Despite that, I didn’t make much of it, and I was about to change the subject when he said, “and what’s worse is I can’t remember what she looks like”. “However, I’m quite sure it’s her”.

It was at about this time that I started taking a keener interest in the story. “How do you know it’s her, if you can’t remember what she looks like?”, I asked. “I’m not sure”, he said. I paused for a minute, before I took a deep breath, and asked, in a much softer voice, I could see that something had changed in him, and there was a melancholy air about him “are you certain?”, and he nodded his head. “The dreams are vivid, but I can’t see her face, there is a soft shiny glow that masks her features” he added. “What about the time you saw her in person?”. “Well, I remembered what she looked like then”, he replied, but “I can’t remember what she looks like now”. I remained silent, waiting for him to speak, and about ten or so seconds later he continued. “The dreams are so vivid that I can feel her touch”. “You can feel her touch?”, I asked somewhat taken aback. “Yes’, he replied. “She grabbed my hand once”, he paused before he continued. “Her palm was smooth, unlike the palm of a normal person, which is usually grooved and creased”. “It was abnormally smooth”. I wasn’t sure what to say to him, he looked somewhat out of sorts, as I sat there and watched him sip his coffee.

In the months that followed, things never really got any better for him, but it didn’t particularly get any worse either, and he seemed to be trapped in a routine, and appeared more and more withdrawn each time I saw him. Finally, I decided that it was time to do something about it, so I asked around, and I found someone who was willing to assist us, a holy-man of sorts, who conducted some prayers that culminated in the fire that we were standing around, being lit fueled by firewood, on an isolated beach. “Ready?”, asked the man. My friend murmured a feeble “yes”, while I merely nodded my head. The man started chanting and moments later, the smoke that billowed from the fire stopped briefly, and as soon as it did, I saw something in the corner of my eye. A woman dressed in black, her face hidden by a shiny glow.