[ WP ] You are the world 's sole wish granter . A massive bureaucracy has evolved around you , filtering through which requests you should see and acting as ambassadors to world leaders . You sit at your desk one day staring at the one wish request you get every day . Its your own . `` I wish I was normal . ''

He toyed with a piece of glass in his left hand, staring out at the waves softly lapping up at the sand. They ebbed in and out in a rhythmic motion that almost lulled him to sleep. 
 
 His forefinger rubbed against a groove in the glass, the edges made round so many years ago. He often worried that it would disappear entirely. 
 
 Two guards strode down the beach, weapons at the ready as always. Seawater lapped hungrily at their boots but they did n't seem to take notice of it. Until one of them stomped a boot and sent a spray halfway up the black pants of the other guard. 
 
 He could hear the muffled cursing and soft laughter before they disappeared into the night again. 
 
 There were dozens of them roaming the property, protecting what had been deemed an `` essential global asset''. He could hear the news reports, they almost constantly played in the back of his mind. 
 
 `` Wonder child'' they had called him. At first people marveled the mysterious boy with the power. 
 
 Marvel became fear as they realized what he was. 
 
 Where there is fear, men will seek the power behind it. The people may have feared the boy that could bring about their every wish but the government saw something else. 
 
 They saw value. 
 
 In the first years there was blood, so much blood. He closed his eyes and forced those memories away, all the death and destruction his words had wrought. 
 
 He remembered refusing their demands. 
 
 They brought a woman and child into his cell and placed a pistol against the child's head. He still refused through the tears and pleading. 
 
 They shot the boy. 
 
 When he brought the boy back they shot him again. 
 
 Then again. And again. 
 
 He watched on the news as a city burned for a treaty. Blood for paper. 
 
 It was shortly after that the world discovered the horrible truth and demanded that it stop. A committee was formed that would control him. It grew by leaps and bounds until a small country's worth of people were vetting requests and handling paperwork. The world had to run without his interference to some degree, so they began to categorize the requests. They established `` red zone'' requests that were immediately denied. 
 
 It was too much for him now, too much pressure from the world. 
 
 He looked at the piece of glass, it's smooth lines that had once been so jagged. 
 
 He remembered the rain pounding down against pavement and steel and fire and glass. He remembered the blood pouring from his father, a steady stream flooding out of the cut in his neck. He remembered the last gasping breaths of a man staring into his son's eyes. 
 
 He remembered his body going limp in his small arms, a giant of a man brought down by a wet road and one bad turn. 
 
 He had held that piece of glass in one hand, the piece that had been buried in flesh not long before. 
 
 As paramedics and police officers and firefighters told him he would be okay. They tried to explain to him that his father was gone, that he was n't going to come back. 
 
 `` I wish he was here,'' a little boy had said, clutching a piece of glass. 
 
 There was only stunned silence as his father sat up, gasping for air and clutching at his neck. Just like that everything was different. 
 
 He rubbed the groove in the glass and thought about that day. His reflection was graying and old now, his father was long gone and he understood now the curse of this gift. When you can have anything you are left with nothing. 
 
 He sighed and let the glass fall into his pocket, sitting at his desk and gently picking up the top sheet of paper. One of the guards would always come set it on his desk without a word, every day they carried the tradition on. 
 
 He walked to the fireplace and placed the paper against the logs, watching the flames lick at the edges of the paper. It blackened and curled, disappearing into the flickering light. 
 
 He read the words one last time, as he always did. He knew them well, he'd been repeating it for years. 
 
 `` I wish I was normal''
