The old, dried-up wishing well stands in a quiet corner of the park, hardly ever visited.
The old man visits it from time to time. Usually, on his way back from the shops. Neither the children playing on the equipment in the central play area, nor their mums watching them, ever took much notice of him. They never noticed how he would pause momentarily to look at it, before moving on with his shopping bags. Why would they? None of them knew his secret. In fact, nobody did. Not his late wife or his children had ever been told about it. He simply couldn’t tell anybody what had happened that day, so long ago.
It all started in the school playground. He must have been ten years old. The school bully came up to him one day, totally out of the blue, and began pushing him around. This went on for a while, before he fell over and the nasty kid had walked away, laughing. He remembers the shock of it, rather than the pain. That was just the beginning. He must have been an easy target, because after that first incident, it went on and on for weeks!
He remembers telling the old pensioner, who lived a few houses up the street from where he lived, all about it one day, on his way home from school. The old man had never hidden the fact that he thought of himself as a wizard. Most people thought he was potty, but as a boy he had always liked him. He would call in and chat with him, at least once a week.
On the afternoon he had let the old guy know what had been happening at school, he was given a token. It looked like any other penny he had ever seen, but the man had told him that it was a powerful artifact, quite capable of granting a wish, if the wish was strongly felt. He listened intently as the old man had explained that using the wishing well in the park would do the trick. He went on to describe what needed to be done before tossing the coin in. Although he didn’t know at the time, that was to be the last occasion the two of them would spend time together, because the old man would pass away that night.
So, with all these instructions in mind, he went home knowing what he was going to do at morning break at school, the next day.
When the time came to confront the bully with the offer the old man had told him to make, using the exact wording to do it, he was amazed at how interested his tormentor was. The thought of the wishing well allowing the boy to become wealthy within only a few short weeks had easily done the trick.
It had just so happened that on the day in question he had left home without his lunchtime sandwiches. This meant that by the time the boys got to the park he was feeling desperately hungry. Not wanting anything to distract him from carrying out the instructions he’d been given, he concentrated on what he had to do. At the well, they stood on opposite sides, both leaning on the wall.
With the token in his hand and peering down into the dark water, he let it go. At that same instant, he felt his stomach rumble and he was momentarily distracted. First, he heard the plop, this was followed quickly by an even louder pop. What happened next, he had never fully understood. When he looked up, the boy was gone! In his place sat a small, individual pork pie, just like the ones his mother buys.
What followed was a bit of a blur. He remembers how, in a daze, he had walked back further into the park, where he found a seat. He recalls sitting there looking down at it for a long time.
Then, he ate it!
