Five Finger Stories
by Rick Danforth
Rick Danforth is an author from Yorkshire, England, where he works as a Systems Architect to fund his writing habit.
His short fiction can be found in Hexagon, Translunar Traveller’s Lounge, and many other places. Three of his stories have been shortlisted for BSFA awards.
He one day hopes to introduce himself as an author without feeling awkward about it.
More TTTV Stories by Rick Danforth
David knew he wasn’t meant to deal with the Djinn. Throughout his entire life he had suffered countless pamphlets, television adverts, and abysmal school plays warning about the dangers. When David’s own children bothered to see him, they still hummed the catchy jingles from the radio adverts. ‘Sneaky Djinn, don’t let them in. Promise riches, ends in stitches.’
But David did it anyway. He didn’t have another choice, he was stuck. He hadn’t written a word for weeks. So, he searched desperately to find one, under bridges, around the docks. Eventually, he found a Djinn hanging around the back of a graveyard.
Well, a Djinn coin anyway. A solid gold coin the size of a fist, bearing a pattern of interlinking lines around a chest on both sides. The only reason David knew it was a Djinn coin was because of the posters telling him to avoid them. A fact that raised a giggle even in the fading twilight between the crumbling tombstones.
But he didn’t use it here, not where strangers could see him and laugh. He carefully picked the coin up in an old handkerchief, tucked it into his pocket and ran home.
Home being a battered apartment building four streets away. It was a dilapidated old warehouse that had been converted into flats by inserting cardboard walls and leaky showers. David was fairly confident it was held together mainly by the prayers of the occupants, but it was all he could afford after the divorce.
As soon as David was back in his apartment, he pulled the coin out and carefully placed it onto a battered table that took up a quarter of the open-plan kitchen lounge. That was his furniture collection unless you charitably included a three-legged sofa with no cushions and a mattress so full of life that it occasionally moved sluggishly around the floor.
After a moment of trepidation-filled staring, David rubbed the coin. It was cold enough that he jumped back and swore. He watched as purple vapour curled out of the coin and spiralled upward, thickening and expanding until it filled the room in a dark cloud, swirling internally.
Then it formed a humanesque cloud of smoke that somehow managed a leering expression as it hung in the air.
David stood and stared, meeting the Djinn’s eyes. Two little stars twinkled far away in the black hollows of a smoky skull. The face wore a grin, paler smoke curling out between spectral teeth as lighter smoke still swirled at its feet.
It said nothing, just stared at David until he nervously muttered, “Can you help me? With my book, I mean.”
The spectral form floated around the room, stopping to linger at David’s computer and stare at the page David was currently working on. Or, more accurately, stuck on. It cackled. “What is this?”
“Well, I tried writing the reviews first. And then I thought I would work back, and reconstruct the novel from the reviews,” said David, moving to close the open document that read, ‘David Agnew unleashes a new era in the development of the novel. It’s sophisticated, radical and going to change mankind.’
“So, you haven’t actually written a single word?”
“Not as such. I have all these ideas you see. It’s just words may not be able to do them justice.” David chewed his lip, awkwardly shuffling from side to side. “But the novel is going to be devastating, dynamic, and change the fantasy genre altogether. Or maybe the literary genre.”
“Yes. I read the second review. Do you have a plot? A setting? Or any characters?”
David gazed at the laptop. He didn’t want to face the Djinn’s reasonable questions. “Not yet. I was hoping to feel them out as I went along.”
“Do you want me to write it for you?”
“No, no. I just need a push. It needs to be written by my hand, or I’m not an author. Just a man putting his name on the book.”
“Fair,” said the Djinn. “I have the solution to your problem. You need my help if you want this to be anything other than toilet paper.”
“What’s the cost?” asked David, too desperate to rise to the slight. “There’s always a cost with you isn’t there? Everyone knows that.”
“I just want your wallet. You can take the money and cards out first.”
David pulled his battered, leather wallet out of his pocket. He could get a better one for ten bucks. Whipping his cards and license out, he said, “Deal.”
“Your wish is my command.”
And it was done. The Djinn clicked its fingers which echoed around the room, and David could see the way. The obvious way. Most novels were just padding time from sex scene to sex scene. If he started with the seduction scenes first, he could fill in the rest afterwards.
Before he could even second guess himself, the Djinn had left. David laughed as he stared around his meagre apartment. It shouldn’t be possible to give so little for so much, it felt like winning the lottery on his first attempt. He was the rare case who got exactly what they wanted.
Before he knew it, five pages of the book were written. David couldn’t believe his work. It would be a few more until the lead was fully described and established, of course. Then he could send him to his romantic liaison. He hadn’t even gotten to the collarbones yet. Or his years backpacking. But it was underway.
#
The second visit came a few days later. David knew he shouldn’t, but the first arrangement had just been getting used to how a Djinn worked. Getting a feel for it. Now he had mastered that, he could take real advantage of that Djinn.
The second his finger touched the coin, the Djinn was back in the room, swirling into life near the extractor fan in the kitchen. David had to massively resist turning it on to see what happened.
“Thank you for the love scene idea. I’ve really made some progress,” said David. Progress being actual words, and not just his elaborate reviews.
“I live to serve.”
“I was wondering if you could give me a bit more?” asked David, sweat beading on his palms now he was asking. “It’s great, but I think it just needs a bit more pep. An interesting character to keep the reader going until we get to the juicy bits.”
The Djinn floated for a moment, making David uncomfortable as it didn’t betray a thought or emotion within its swirling form. “Complicated, but it can be done.”
“Does complicated mean it would be more expensive?”
“I would like your hair.”
“My hair,” said David, running a hand through what was left of his thinning hair. “What the hell could you want with that?”
“I don’t need to explain,” said the Djinn in that monotone voice, like he didn’t care either way. “That is the deal, take it or leave it.”
David was curious, but agreed. Immediately a new figure jumped into his mind. A military officer who had retired in disgrace, desperate to prove his innocence. It was exactly what he needed to add more pep to the story.
The only problem was the cost. In his haste, David hadn’t realized he had agreed to all of his hair. Leg hair, body hair, groin hair. David suddenly felt almost childish without it. Worst of all his eyebrows had vanished, leaving David to draw replacements on or run the risk of looking alien.
But he had his quirky character who would be instantly memorable. One his children would be proud of him for.
#
David avoided the Djinn for a while after that. The worst part of the deal was that it wasn’t a one-off payment of hair. He’d wished his hair away for three months. Three months of drawn-on eyebrows, of avoiding his children, of the rest of the payroll staff laughing at his face every time they saw him. It was alright, he told himself, just wait until they read his book. Then they wouldn’t be laughing.
But then David got stuck, again. He had needed the reader to realise the fictional city of Nodnol was a thriving metropolis that had been properly planned out. So, he added three chapters of city descriptions.
That amounted to nine full chapters of the now titled Adam Unparadised, but he didn’t know where to go next. Something important was clearly needed, but David couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Before he knew it, he found himself summoning the Djinn again.
“I need help. It’s missing something.”
“I have what you want,” said the Djinn with a knowing nod. “But I want your bedroom.”
“As in you’ll leave with it?” asked David, his brow furrowing in confusion. “The rest of my flat would be freezing.”
The Djinn smiled, like David was a good puppy who had learned a trick. “I want to live in it. I want the bed, your duvet, your comforts.”
David bit his lip. He knew it was stupid, he knew it was too much. And more importantly, he knew the answer before he asked the question. “For how long?”
“Until you die.”
The Djinn didn’t try to sell him on it, just stated it.
David paused. He weighed the cost of what he needed against what he was giving. He’d sworn that he would never go back to the Djinn, the smirking creature of purple smoke. He was a writer, he knew that. A man who understood that high-level literature called for sacrifice, hard work and isolation.
But the book had stalled. And he was only a writer, not an author. The difference was selling a book. David was horribly aware of how much he needed that. That physical book in a shop he could show his children and finally upstage his ex-wife’s Range Rover. “I just need something to change this chapter from mundane to exciting. It’s vital backstory to truly understand why picking apples affected the main character’s brother so much, but I need to spice it up fast. It has to be good though.”
The Djinn lingered in the air for a moment, as if it could sense David’s mix of desperation and fear. “How about, ‘Suddenly a shot rang out?’ Always a safe bet.”
“I think I require something more complex,” said David proudly, realising he was the one in full control of the transaction.
The Djinn didn’t skip a beat. “’And that,’ said Von Chaddington. ‘Was when we discovered…the truth.’”
“Could you be any more vague?” asked David, chuckling. He stopped when he saw a flicker of movement around the smoke of the Djinn’s face, realising he may have stepped too far. “I was looking for something a bit more plot driven?”
“How about the arrival of a distant and extremely eccentric uncle upsetting the delicate balance of the ordered household?”
“That sounds perfect!”
“The bedroom is my price.”
“Does he come with a complete backstory?” asked David, trying to hide his excitement.
“Of course. Fully fleshed out.”
“Deal,” said David, without a second’s pause. Great-Uncle Arthur appeared on the page in front of him behind a swirling, coloured mist, and then David got back to the important task of writing.
#
Whenever David left his flat, he pictured the Djinn lounging around it. A spectral cloud somehow making itself at home in his bed, on his sofa, and for some reason eating his snacks.
David suspected the Djinn didn’t even need to eat anything, that it was only toying with him. But he couldn’t complain, that was part of the agreement. As was his lower back pain from sleeping on the sofa.
He didn’t want to bring his daughter home. Instead, he met her at a rundown diner just down the road. She sat upright, elbows tight, as if trying to minimize what she had to touch amongst the cheap Formica table and peeling leather benches.
“Dad, this isn’t healthy. We had to watch videos about them at school. They trick you in with gateway wishes. Then there’s less wishes and more price. And then nothing, but you’re paying every day. They end up taking everything.”
“Probably the same videos I watched at school,” said David, forcing a smile. “Ends in stitches and all that.”
“Then you should know better,” said Mina, fixing a colder glare than the Djinn could dream of. “I don’t think I’ve heard of anyone dumb enough to use a Djinn outside of trashy news articles like, ‘My husband traded a kidney to clean the garage’.”
“You will have done, just nobody admits to it,” said David, on autopilot. Parroting what he told himself every night before bed. “It’s how everyone gets ahead nowadays.”
“Of course, it is,” said Mina patiently. “Which is why I’m studying so hard for my master’s degree. No-one needs degrees when you can have Djinns.”
“I’m sure plenty got their master’s via Djinn,” said David, after a long pause.
Mina’s only reply was a frown, but David wasn’t sure if that meant she accepted his argument, or just couldn’t be bothered to argue with him. “I need to go, Dad.”
“So soon?” asked David, trying to keep the desperation from his voice. She only visited once a month, more dutiful than loving.
But at least she came. Unlike her younger brother who never had time. Or any of David’s friends who had all turned out to be his ex-wife’s friends after the divorce came through.
“Yes. I have to read the latest Abercrombie for my book club.” Mina paused. “Just take care of yourself, Father. Have a bit of fun, but make sure you keep your job, pay the bills, do the bare essentials.”
“I will,” said David. He watched her leave the diner and sighed loudly enough that another patron glared at him. If he was successful, Mina would have stayed. Would have respected him instead of treating him like a charity case.
He held that thought until he got home to the Djinn watching Judge Judy reruns on the sofa.
“I need more.”
“A missing consignment of Nazi gold?” offered the Djinn, its eyes not moving from the television.
“What the hell would nazi gold be doing in my urban fantasy novel set in London?” demanded David. “I mean Nodnol.”
“A corrupt local chief of police and an escaped homicidal lunatic?”
“That could work.”
“All I need is your tolerance to shellfish.”
“Fine.” David didn’t even spare it a second thought before he lost the ability to eat shellfish. It’s not like he had the money to eat such things, unless McDonald’s brought lobster rolls out. He hadn’t eaten shellfish since Mina’s twenty-first birthday. After the book sold, he’d buy her lobster to impress her. She’d love that. He’d just order steak instead now, which was nearly as good.
#
David quit his job. Forty hours a week was taking far too much time away from his masterpiece, ‘I Couldn’t Become a Hero, so I Reluctantly Decided to Get a Job’. Instead, he picked up fifteen hours a week in the diner. Just enough to pay his rent and bills for the month.
Unfortunately, he’d forgotten to budget for anything else, literally anything else. And by an interesting twist of fate, his computer chose that month to die. He rubbed the coin.
“I need a computer.”
“A good one?” asked the Djinn.
“No. Just the same as I had.” David paused for a minute, before adding quickly. “Except brand new, and it works. If you can guarantee it will work for three years that would be best.”
“I want your degree.”
“What?” David frowned. “Like the certificate?”
“No. I want it. Its existence will be removed forever.”
David paused. At one point he had worked very hard for that degree, well between skipping classes and the movie marathons. But some work had been done at some point. Probably.
But at forty, who cared about degrees? He had twenty years of work history. And once the book came out, he would never need a bit of paper saying he scraped a pass in a module on 14th-century agrarian studies.
And it wouldn’t hurt to have a bit of a treat with it. “Fine. But I also want the full set meal for two from Raj Pavilion, and three…no four large bottles of Cobra lager.”
“It is done.”
For the next four hours, David only tore his eyes away from the computer to tear off bits of naan bread and dip them in jalfrezi sauce. He didn’t even taste it. He only had eyes for the forty-ninth chapter of what was now called, The Ruination of Dreams.
#
The problem, David realised, was that he didn’t have any financial runway. How could he be expected to write the best novel in the world, merging four separate genres, when he kept having to leave the house, and the book, to work at the diner for money?
“Can you buy the house outright for me?” asked David.
“For an arm.”
“I need that,” said David, after a full-body shudder. “How much for me to win the lottery?”
“Your legs.”
“Definitely not.” David looked down at his legs, he was probably more attached to them than his arm. “What can you offer me?”
“I’ll tell you for your microwave?”
David sighed, but nodded. Sending a mournful look to the absent area in the kitchen which had provided most of his meals for the past year.
“I can sort you for a year’s rent and bills paid. If you give me a little finger.”
“Will it hurt?”
“No.”
“Do it,” said David, sighing. It wasn’t like he needed a little finger. Who touch typed with one of those? But when he checked his bank account there was a year’s worth of runway. Now all he had to do was write.
#
David didn’t miss his lost finger. Lost was the right word as it was there, and now it was not. No blood, no pain. The ultimate sleight of hand trick.
He certainly didn’t miss work. Who would? The reduced hours of the shift work had been good, but the frantic work had hurt his back, his neck and his very soul. Now he had all the time in the world to write. He was just finishing an extensive deep dive into lace-making through the ages for one of his side character’s grandfather’s backstory, when a letter arrived with a thump.
David opened it and swore. He moved to summon the Djinn, but found the swirling form already there, floating in the lounge.
“You signed me up for a loan?” asked David, opening and closing his mouth in pure horror.
“You got what you needed.”
“I suppose I did,” said David, biting his lip. After all, what did it matter? When his book sold, he would have all the money he needed to pay it back and more. “I need something with a bit more pep. I think it’s getting a bit boring, and I need to liven it up between the rounds of coffee drinking in their childhood home overlooking the cliffs their father died on.”
“I could do you a head in a bag?”
“A head in a bag?” asked David with a scoff.
“But not just any head in a bag. This one has an intriguing tattoo on her neck. You can discover it in a skip, outside an office, in the freezer. The possibilities are endless.”
David’s eyes flashed excitedly. It was exactly what his book needed. “How much?”
“Your other little finger.”
“Agreed,” said David. It’s not like he missed the other one. It was effectively useless. At least now he was symmetrical again.
#
Eventually, Mina twigged that David wasn’t going to work. Perhaps due to him saying anytime was fine, perhaps she had been to the diner, but she didn’t let on.
Instead, she arranged a second trip this month, and in David’s excitement, he didn’t realise she had taken him to a Djinn support group until he saw the banner in the little church hall with a collection of chairs.
But she was there, and they provided refreshments. So, he took a fresh doughnut and a cheap black coffee and sat at the back. Free snacks were free snacks after all, and he didn’t have the budget for doughnuts. Especially not ones with two kinds of sprinkles.
The group speaker, Bill, stood at the front, wearing a cheap suit and the smug mask of virtue triumphant. With his slicked-back hair, he looked more slippery than a greased ferret. He began with the statement, “It takes two to wish.”
Everyone clapped to that statement, startling David and making him feel like he was in a cult. All those desperate, smiling faces looking at Bill to fill a void.
He went around the room and asked people to describe their wishes, while making it clear that it was a judgement-free zone. David rushed through his story about just needing a hand to get his book finished, and was drowned in sympathetic smiles, nods and some light clapping. All of which made him feel even more uncomfortable than a room of strangers singing happy birthday to him.
In turn, he did his best not to laugh or scoff at their own stories. Such trivial things, one wanted an acting gig, another wanted the girl across the road to notice them. Simple wishes for simple minds.
At the end he took a doughnut for the road and went outside, already counting down the minutes until he could return to his craft.
“How was it?” asked Mina, appearing next to him almost as silently as a Djinn.
“Well, I get why they need it,” said David quietly, nodding to the people filtering back into society. “But I have a purpose, a glorious purpose. And once I achieve it, I’ll be done and never look back.”
“Even now, after that.” Mina waved her hand at the room they’d just left. “You’re still going to risk everything in order to get some book just to impress people you’ll never meet?”
“You just don’t understand me,” said David with a smile. “Nobody does. I have this vision, the best vision anyone has ever seen. And when I finally get it right the world is going to be a better place. You’ll see.”
“You’re not a misunderstood genius, you’re a very much understood wanker,” said Mina in a calm, level voice. “But I can’t help you until you help yourself. When you come to your senses, call me.”
David didn’t even watch her leave, he was already heading back to the house to finish his writing.
“How was the program?” asked the Djinn, appearing near David the second he came back into the house.
“A waste of time,” said David. “The doughnuts were worth going for, though.”
“They always are a waste,” said the Djinn, curling around the sofa. “If you would like to be able to go without sleep tonight to make up for it, I would accept just one of your back teeth.”
“Deal. The one at the right.” David barely registered the missing hole at the back of his mouth as he started to type. There was just so much to do on, ‘Kick Me Through the Goalposts of Life.’
#
David didn’t go back to the program. He wasn’t like those idiots, trading bits of themselves for whatever whim takes their fancy.
As soon as the book sold, he’d never see that goddamn Djinn again. But for today, he traded an eye for a new love interest, a paralysed ballerina who was determined to dance again.
David blinked, only a blink, but when he opened his eyes, his field of vision was altered. The right eye was no more. The reflection on his computer screen showed a smoothness where it had been, no socket. As if it had never existed. He didn’t weep.
He just wrote.
The book is close, he could taste it. Revelations of a Soul as it was now called, would change the world soon. In preparation, he typed up a query letter and a mail merge to send it to every literary agent in the country all at once.
David wasn’t as dumb as his daughter thought he was. He knew the Djinn was bleeding him dry. It was time to make it work for him.
#
By chapter 111 the novel’s title had changed to ‘Of course I love you… Till I find someone else’, and the entire narrative was in the voice of the hero Chad himself.
David finished it, and sat looking at his twenty-six little friends on the keyboard. And then the pieces of himself he’d chipped off in service of the great book.
“I just need a synopsis. All I need. Then I’m done.”
“Any preferences?” asked the Djinn.
“It just has to be fitting to the rest of the book. Capture it as authentically as possible.” David swallowed, it was finally here. “And be saved to the synopsis file on my desktop.”
“Alright.” The Djinn paused for a moment, then smiled. “It will cost your eye, and your remaining fingers.”
David knew the price would be dear, but he was ready to pay it. He’d spent all night reading up on auto-sending emails so that he could.
It was still a shock when it came, as if someone had suddenly turned the lights off.
“You can’t publish it,” said the Djinn, “No-one to type. No-one to ask. You’re separated from everyone, and the only person who would dream of helping you is me.”
“Idiot. I arranged it beforehand.” David laughed, despite the lack of eyes, and the lack of hands. “Now you’ve completed it, the book is on its way to every literary agent in the country.”
“That’s fine. The book is shit. It wouldn’t be published in a hundred years.”
“What?” asked David, pausing mid-chuckle.
“I gave you absolutely everything you asked for. It’s a load of shit. You’ve got a bunch of tropes loaded together. So many quirky characters it’s meaningless. You need regular characters to highlight or you’re just trying too hard. And they don’t even do anything. You thought character driven meant you didn’t need a plot, but this is just a bunch of quirky idiots talking and drinking coffee. Occasionally a shot rings out, or a head in a bag arrives, and then they just go back to drinking coffee and discussing childhood memories. It’s ridiculous.”
“Why didn’t you say?” asked David, eventually.
“You never asked.”
“…” said David.
“I offered to write it for you. You said it needed to be in your hand. Just a push. Well, your hand is shit. You’ve traded everything in your life for a book that couldn’t even make the bargain bin at a charity shop.”
“Where does that leave me?”
“I’ll give you a clue. Here’s a paddle on the house.” There was a thump of wood hitting the floor. “Shame you can’t use it.”
David couldn’t think or feel as he slumped into a ball on the floor. For some seconds he felt nothing except shock, as disorientating as being stabbed in the stomach. Then it went numb, so much feeling that he couldn’t feel anymore. “Can you help me?”
“Of course,” said the Djinn, its voice as smooth as chocolate again. “For the right price.”
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