The Desi Writers Lounge (DWL) is holding a short story contest. I submitted an entry that is almost 2k words long. The results will be announced in October, so I will wait until then to share it on the blog.

Until then, I will be sharing the shortest of shorts that I wrote for the Booksy subscription. It was included in the boxes with the other goodies. Here it is:

“Not into a bulb! Anything but that…”, the Ifrit begged but it was to no avail. What her hellions wanted, they almost always got. Fawj smiled as her daughter, Sid, morphed into a golem as big as a house. She looked down at the trembling Ifrit and lifted her behemoth foot, threatening to squash him. The Ifrit shook his head and vowed to murder his boss who had sent him into this madhouse in the first place. “It will be easy, they had said. They’re just a bunch of kids and their mother. You will be out of the house before they even realize you were in”, the Ifrit muttered as he transformed into a bulb in a room full of an octet of kids and their mom.

Ifrit

The golem bent down and picked up the bulb with surprisingly nimble bamboo-sized fingers. She hung him on an overhead beam and clapped like a little girl. She was a little girl, no older than five, realized the Ifrit as it gave her the evil eye, even as a bulb.

Girl Golem

The Thief of Thieves, he had been apprehended by a five-year-old as he sneaked inside her house to rob her! It did not matter that she had morphed into his personal nightmare at that time. Which was why, his guise had slipped, and the girl had snared him with a tentacle of an arm. It was too painful for him to remember what happened afterwards. He had been forced to turn into everything, from a cat’s chew toy to this last humiliation, a light bulb.

My Kinda Ifrit

“Brighter!” Sid growled now and he shined as bright as he could.  “Is that bright enough, mommy?” The girl asked, snuggling against her mother. Fawj nodded, watching her other children get started on their homework.

As if!