First Wish
My father had just passed away. He was a very healthy man who still had many years before him. There was something that happened to him. He was living in India and would write every day about what’s happening there. Then one month before he died, he just stopped writing. That’s when I decided to move my family to India and find out what happened. As I was looking through my father’s belongings, I found a black little box with my name written on it. I gasped at the sight of it. It was a shrivelled paw with three fingers sticking up. Beside it was a note written for me.
“Clint, if you’re reading this that probably means I’m dead. What you see inside is the Monkeys Paw, which was given to me by a fakir. It can grant three wishes, but it has consequences. You cannot get rid of it because it will always return. I want you to keep it and forget about it. Never wish for anything”.
Then at the very bottom, he writes best wishes, Dad. I was confused at first. I wondered if he was just pulling a joke or is this actually real? I quickly disregarded the thought of the magical paw, but I still wanted to respect my dad’s wishes. Aside from the paw, he left behind his house. I thought it would be a good idea to move my family to India since we had no more relatives in Britain. Soon enough, I joined the army for the British East Indian Company and I eventually forgot the paw. Then one day my daughter was looking through my stuff when she came across the paw. I quickly grabbed it from her and said,
“ I told you to not touch my stuff! I just wish you’d stop putting your hands where they don’t belong”.
The moment I said that one of the fingers curled down. I was terrified of what happened. Was I imagining things?
As I came back from work the next day, I find my daughter lying on her bed. Her hands were gone and all that was left was the strips of gauze holding the blood inside. My wife came in and said,
“ She fell from a tree, but as she was falling her hands got pierced by some branches. Her veins had been affected, so the only thing to do was amputate it to stop it from getting infections”.
I felt a lump in my throat. I was responsible for what happened. I went and grabbed the Monkey’s Paw and tossed it in the river. The next morning, there it was. The paw had reappeared in front of my house. I put it back in my house knowing that I was cursed to keep it.
