Ramage in a Bottle-Final Draft

As a forewarning, I was on cold medicane for some of this. I apologize for any grammtical /spelling errors I missed. And my half-ass ending. My bad.
~~~

It was cold and rainy again. I couldn’t believe my luck, or rather my lack thereof. I held my folder over my head and quickened my pace as the heavy sheet of rain fell fast and furious below dark clouds. Puddles filled the potholes of Main Street as I desperately sought a way to end this miserable day with some cheer.
Another disheartening class in Advanced Composition left me weary, frustrated and really pissed off. Or to be more precise, the subject of Rhetoric was pissing me off. I grumbled and mumbled a few, choice swear words as I passed some of the shops. Nothing was catching my attention so that I may rectify this already horrible day. The storm was beginning to turn brutal as the wind began to pick up, chilling my bones. Giving up my sulking binge, I made a dash for the next open store.
I found myself in one of Kutztown’s many antique shops, shivering in the doorway. A few wizened patrons glanced over at me, perhaps surprised to see a person under fifty in the store. I gave the storekeeper a shaky smile and with nothing better to do, I decided to glance around.
The aisles were cramped with all sorts of mish-mash dating back to who knows when. A faint odor that reminded me of my grandma’s sofa wafted up into my nose. I sniffed a little, the thin layer of dust of the shelves making my eyes water and my throat tickle. I felt the sneeze coming but I wasn’t prepared for it. With a loud “ACHOO” I stumbled backwards and bumped hard into a wooden table cluttered with strange looking lamps. My hand accidentally brushed up against an odd, large, purple desk lamp. And that’s when my hopes of this day turning for the better were immediately vanquished.
Instantly, my surroundings vanished in the mist of an annoyingly bright light emitted from the bulb of the purple lamp. From the glow, a figure emerged slowly forming the body of a purple, balding, pot-bellied man. He wore silver bands on his wrists and a where his torso ended, a long trail of violet remained attached to the bulb of the lamp.
I studied him in awe. He yawned, stretched his back lazily and glanced around until his black beady eyes rested on me. He suddenly grinned toothily at me and sucked in his beer belly.
In a loud, somewhat nasally voice he exclaimed, “I am Ramage, the great Rhetoric Genie! I know all there is to know about Rhetoric! Which could very well mean I know nothing at all! I shall grant you three wishes concerning rhetoric! My only rule is that you cannot wish to know EVERYTHING about rhetoric at once. So my dear, your wish is my command! Muhahaha!”
As he floated there, grinning at me, the only thing I could do was just blink a few times and step a few inches back. “I, um, don’t uh, know…” I trailed off, desperately looking around for any of the other customers in the store. I saw no one. The genie remained, awaiting my answer. I sighed.
“I suppose it couldn’t hurt since I’m pretty confused about it anyway.” I managed a small smile.
“That’s the spirit!” The violet apparition slapped me heartily on the back. “What shall be your first wish my dear?”
I thought about it for a moment, trying to recall the murky memories of this morning’s class. I made my decision and took a deep breath. I said, “I wish I knew what rhetoric is.”
“Your wish is my command.”
With a mischievous look in his eye, the genie snapped his fingers at once and the store room became a gray haze. I heard a sinister laugh echo in my confusion. I fumbled around in a panic and fell flat on my ass. Son of a bitch, I thought as I rubbed a hand over my butt. Then I looked around. Fuck. I was so not in Kutztown anymore.
A deserted wasteland would have been a perfect definition for where I was, except it wasn’t completely empty; not in the least. Strewn about on the endless dry earth were bits and pieces of what looked like motorcycle parts, rusty and covered in grime. Elastic fat-burning belts that I had seen on the late night TV commercials were mixed in, some still faintly buzzing. I looked up and saw the sky was a frightening shade of dark gray. In the midst of the badlands, a lonely toll booth stood. The bright white of the small shack contrasted sharply to bleakness around it.
Sifting my way through the endless amounts of garbage, I made my way over toward the tollbooth. The moment I got to the window, a flash of bright purple emerged from it. Startled, I nearly fell again.
“Welcome to the wonderful, wacky, weird world of Rhetoric!” my smoky guide announced in his nasally voice. I raised my eyebrows around at the dump around me.
“This isn’t exactly what I wished for, or expected.” I said skeptically.
“Well of course, that’s the way it works!”
“What works?”
“Rhetoric! Nothing is as it seems. Finding out is half the fun!”
“What are you, Gandhi or something? I distinctly remember asking you WHAT rhetoric IS. And where’s the gatekeeper for this tollbooth anyway? You can’t possibly be it.”
The genie laughed, making his massive beer belly jiggle. “Silly, there is no gatekeeper in Rhetoric World!”
“Well if there is no gatekeeper, who regulates any traffic that might come? Although it looks like a few motorcycles already tried…” I said, grimacing slightly at the broken bikes.
Ramage the Rhetoric Genie just simply laughed again and tapped me on the nose as if I was a child. I rubbed my nose and glared at him. “This is not what I wished for you idiot. I wanted to know what Rhetoric is, not what it isn’t!”
“Sorry, no refunds. All righty then, would you like to try and make another wish?”
“I don’t suppose I have choice,” I replied, annoyed at ridiculousness of the situation. I thought about a way to get around this but since he was simply a Rhetoric Genie and not my childhood Robin Williams blue god of humor and magic, I had to make due with another wish about Rhetoric.
“All right fine. I wish that I could meet a rhetorical person and a serious person so I’d know the difference.”
Once again that ominous gleam came into his eyes as he said, “Your wish is my command.”
The haze came upon me again, blinding and suffocating. I groped my way as the ringing of the genie’s evil laughter filled my head. I shut my eyes tight, hoping it would be over soon.
When I finally opened my eyes again, I realized I was lying down on my back. I sat up quickly and brushed off some of the dust from the wasteland that had clung to my clothes. I took a look at my surroundings.
I was in a completely different environment. Lush, green plants hovered close to one another has trees loomed up tall and straight, covering the sky with their leafy branches. The soil beneath me was rich and dark with bright green grass growing over it. Feel a bit more comfortable in this area than then previous one, I stood up and began to walk around.
As I walked, I noticed not one sound, making the forest seem eerie and oddly empty. Further on, I came upon a crystal clear river. Realizing I was extremely thirsty, I started to dip my hands in the river when I heard a loud clang! from behind me. I made some sort of a pathetic squeal as I toppled over into the cold water. Resurfacing, I saw two men with swords dueling. You’ve got to freaking be kidding me. Did I just land in some bad version of The Count of Monte Cristo? As I watched the fight progress, they began shouting various spurts that I vaguely sound familiar. Like I had read the in a book or something…
“Nothing can exist you fool!” the man wearing a red garment bellowed, lunging forward with his sword. The other man, dressed in blue, parried him perfectly and in a calmer, more sedated tone said, “I find that hard to believe while we in the midst of existence as we speak, or rather, duel.”
A bit bemused by their antics I cleared my throat at this moment of silence to make my presence known. Startled, they blinked when they saw me floating quietly in the slow current of the river. Forgetting their disagreement, they swiftly helped me out of the water. I thanked them, and then inquired as to why they were dueling over such a thing as existence.
“Well,” the man in red said, “I don’t really know.”
“Neither do I really,” said the man in blue.
“Well that’s silly. Man that river was cold, a lot colder than then one I used to swim in all the time when my family went camping.”
“What do you mean?” the main in red inquired, raising an eyebrow. “When you step in a river, you step in them all.”
“That’s ridiculous,” the main in blue snorted. “You can never step in the same river twice. It’s always changing always moving, shifting.”
“You want to take this outside?” the other man dared.
“We ARE outside, you fool!”
“You both sound ridiculous. You should be arguing over something that is more important like the pollution that’s going into the rivers, and global warming or…” I trailed off as they weren’t even paying attention. They had started fighting again and this time I didn’t want to be in the way of their anger. So I took off and left them to their idiotic ways.
No sooner then I was a few yards away from the two men did my old friend Ramage the Rhetoric Genie appear. Smiling toothily at me again he asked how I enjoyed my second wish.
“You are a complete madman! None of this is helping me learn anything about rhetoric!”
“Maybe you should wish me free with your last one, and then you’ll be done with all this nonsense,” he replied slyly.
“And let someone else be forced to deal with you? You’re making my life miserable just chained to that lamp. I’d hate to think what you could do to a person when you’re free. The answer is no.”
“Fine then my dear, what will your last and final wish be?”
I was afraid to even think about my last wish, considering how frustrating and painfully ridiculous the other ones had turned out to be. I contemplated, shifting my weight from one foot to the other. The genie yawned lazily.
“I’ve got it.”
“Okay, what is it?”
“I wish for a world that has no rhetoric,” I smiled smugly, thinking I had him beat now.
“Your wish,” he said, his grin wider than ever, “is my command”. And he snapped his fingers.
And with that, another haze came and took me again. This time the pressure squeezed my insides until there felt like there was nothing left. My head felt like it was going to explode and my lungs seemed to fold into themselves. All the while the maniacal laughter of the purple demon was raised to a deafening volume that I shut my eyes and covered my ears with my hands.
When the horrible ordeal was all over, I was afraid to open my eyes. I swear to God if I am in a loony bin after all of this, I will hunt that violet devil down and kick his sorry, fat ass. I peeked through my eyelashes. I saw the ceiling of the antique store above me. I stood up shaking myself a little and laughing. I turned around quickly, thinking it all to be just a sleep-deprived nightmare. Realizing I had turned around fast I braced myself for the fall of some random ancient artifact. But there was no clang, or slash, or crash. There was nothing.
I looked around. There was nothing in the shop. In fact, it could hardly be called a shop. It was just a room. I ran outside and opened the…there was no door? What is the point of a room if there is no door?
Outside there should have been cars, streetlamps a sky, anything. But there was nothing. Nothing, but a colorless void of doom.
And then I heard the laughter and the nasally voice: “Who’s the idiot now? Nothing can exist without rhetoric! Nothing would have ever existed without it. Don’t you wish you would have set me free now?”
And with that, I blankly just looked at the emptiness around me.
“Fuck.”