"I wish Jon was alive."
It was what Mikey would do, of course, if he had a magic stone and his brother was killed. And it worked. Jon was sitting there as if nothing had happened.
In fact, everything was as if nothing had happened. Mikey realized that he wasn't even holding the stone any more. Mikey just did not understand the implications of the stone changing reality. It didn't bring Jon back to life by resurrecting him, it did so by making this be a reality where he had not died.
As Jon walked up the stairs, Jon's mother started screaming thru her tears.
"Stop! You can't go up there! She'll kill you!"
Jon gave his mother the finger without noticing her death, went upstairs, and saw Sarah. He moved fast and Sarah was unable to get a lucky shot in. He tackled Sarah and knocked her down, into a hard table corner. Sarah fell limp onto the carpet, unconscious.
The next step was to call the police and an ambulance. Jon knew better than to trust what he saw in the movies; someone who gets knocked out like that probably has a concussion. It would be a long time for Sarah to recover if she did at all. If she had gotten permanent brain damage he may have had to wish it away; but there was no way he was going to wish away the hospital stay and arrest.
As he considered his options he was suddenly interrupted by his brother entering the room. "You're alive!" he yelled, and ran forward to hug Jon.
"Just wait a minute..." said Jon, disentangling himself from his brother. "We've got serious problems here. A girl with a gun is no laughing matter. I need to figure out what to tell the police."
"But you're alive! Like I wished!"
Jon glanced at his wishing stone. It was still in his hand.
"I used that! But it went back to you!"
"I wish I knew what you were talking about."
Mikey waited and asked "Do you know...?"
He smiled at Mikey. "Yes, I know. You saved me."
"I took your stone but it went back to you."
"That's okay, Mikey. I wished nobody could take it against my will. That prevented Sarah from taking it even after I had died. It didn't prevent you from taking it because it wasn't against my will to take it and bring me back. Now we wait for the police and ambulance. I just called them and..."
"But Sarah's friends cut the phone lines."
"She cut the phone lines? Why would anyone do that?"
"Maybe she doesn't think that people who aren't rich have cell phones?"
"I guess, Mikey. So how many friends did she bring?"
"A lot. They all went downstairs. Say, do you smell smoke?"
Jon sniffed the air. "Yes, I do." He looked out the door through which Mikey had entered and saw clouds of smoke starting to reach him. "We have to get out before we die from smoke inhalation. They're burning the house. We... No we don't. I wish that the people trying to burn the house down had an accident and set themselves on fire instead." The smell just disappeared. Stepping over to the window, Jon looked outside. He could barely see two men in a pool of flaming liquid.
"You're scary, Jon."
"What? Mikey, I'm trying to stop some very dangerous people. Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you and I'm not going to let anything bad happen to us either. And Imean that; this magic stone lets me really make that happen. You really ought to go to your room and let me handle this."
x x x x x x x x
Seeing the corpse of his mother would have made for tragedy under any other circumstances. Not with a magic stone. He wished her to be alive and only tied up like Mikey, then began untying her.
"Thank god you're okay," she said. "I tried to keep you from going up there."
"After all if they kill me I can't be turned into a girl."
"I didn't want them to kill you because I was concerned for your safety, Jon!"
"This is your fault, Mom. Sarah knew exactly when I would become conscious. She would have had to have heard the wish to know that, and she would had to have heard it anyway or else she'd have forgotten once I became conscious. Which means that if you hadn't turned me into a girl this would never have happened."
"Then if you hadn't put yourself in the hospital for a month this would never have happened."
"You're blaming me for trying to fix what you did to me. This is all crazy. I'm going to my room, Mom, and once Sarah gets taken away I'm going to continue what I was going to do when I was interrupted."
"What are you going to do?"
"Oh, nothing. Watch the TV shows I missed in the past month, talk to Karyn, like I said. I haven't figured out anything else yet. But I might. Just wait for it." He walked up the stairs as ambulance sirens began to be heard in the distance.
