To find yourself holding a Monkey's Paw is to hold a paradox in your palm. It's a tiny, mummified talisman that offers the universe's greatest temptation: three wishes, granted. But as the old tales warn, fate is not a toy to be played with. The paw has a famously cruel sense of humor, twisting the plain meaning of your words into a dark, ironic caricature of your true desire. It grants the wish, but it exacts a terrible, unforeseen price.
This guide is for the brave, the foolish, or the creatively morbid. It’s a collection of ideas for those who wonder, "What *can* you wish for with the Monkey's Paw?" Consider this less of a "how-to" and more of a "what-if"—a list of cautionary tales waiting to happen. Use them for your stories, your role-playing games, or simply as a thought experiment on the nature of desire and consequence. Remember, the paw is always listening, and it never gets the joke.
The Classics: Wishes for Wealth, Love, and Power
These are the cornerstones of human desire, the most common temptations whispered to the paw. They seem simple, but their vagueness is a minefield of tragic loopholes.
1. The Wish: "I wish for a million dollars."
- *The Consequence:* You receive a life insurance payout for a loved one who dies in a tragic, million-dollar industrial accident.
2. The Wish: "I wish for the love of my life to be with me forever."
- *The Consequence:* Your unrequited love becomes a "Fatal Attraction"-style stalker, or you're both trapped together in an elevator or collapsed building for the rest of your short lives.
3. The Wish: "I wish I were the most powerful person in my company."
- *The Consequence:* The entire C-suite and board of directors perish in a plane crash on a corporate retreat you missed, leaving you to inherit the leadership of a broken, grieving, and bankrupt company.
4. The Wish: "I wish I owned a beautiful house on the beach."
- *The Consequence:* You inherit a stunning seaside villa from a distant relative you never knew... a house that is teetering on an eroding cliff, condemned, and set to fall into the ocean next week.
5. The Wish: "I wish I could have a feast fit for a king."
- *The Consequence:* You are mistakenly invited to a state dinner, only to be arrested for trespassing. Or, you get food poisoning so severe you end up hospitalized.
6. The Wish: "I wish my enemies would get what they deserve."
- *The Consequence:* Your enemy wins the lottery and is immediately beset by false friends, lawsuits, and crippling paranoia, but you are implicated in a "get rich quick" scheme they were running and face legal trouble yourself.
7. The Wish: "I wish to find a legendary lost treasure."
- *The Consequence:* You find the treasure map, but it's in a museum. You spend your life savings trying to acquire it, only to find the treasure was recovered decades ago.
The Altruist's Gambit: Wishes to Save the World
For those whose hearts are pure, the paw's irony is perhaps the most painful. These wishes aim to fix the world, but the paw uses a sledgehammer where a scalpel is needed.
1. The Wish: "I wish for world peace."
- *The Consequence:* An alien race invades, uniting all of humanity in a desperate, losing war against a common enemy. There are no more human wars, only one great slaughter.
2. The Wish: "I wish to end world hunger."
- *The Consequence:* A genetically modified crop becomes the only viable food source on the planet. It's bland, barely nutritious, and sterile, ending agriculture and biodiversity as we know it.
3. The Wish: "I wish for a cure for all diseases."
- *The Consequence:* The cure works, but without disease to keep the population in check, the world quickly succumbs to catastrophic overpopulation, resource scarcity, and famine.
4. The Wish: "I wish for a solution to climate change."
- *The Consequence:* A sudden, unexpected ice age begins, freezing the planet but technically "solving" global warming.
5. The Wish: "I wish everyone could understand each other."
- *The Consequence:* Everyone can now hear everyone else's unfiltered, innermost thoughts. The constant noise and brutal honesty drives society into madness and chaos.
6. The Wish: "I wish all corrupt politicians were removed from power."
- *The Consequence:* A global scandal reveals that virtually every world leader has engaged in some form of corruption, leading to a total collapse of all governments and global anarchy.
7. The Wish: "I wish for humanity to have access to unlimited clean energy."
- *The Consequence:* A "cold fusion" device appears in the center of a major city. Its energy is clean and limitless, but its radiation is silently and terminally sterilizing the entire human race.
The Personal Upgrade: Wishes for a Better You
Who doesn't want to improve? These wishes are for enhancing your mind, body, or talent. But the paw teaches that there are no shortcuts to self-improvement.
1. The Wish: "I wish I was incredibly attractive."
- *The Consequence:* You become so beautiful that you are constantly harassed, stalked, and unable to lead a normal life. Your entire identity is reduced to your appearance.
2. The Wish: "I wish I could play the guitar like a rock god."
- *The Consequence:* You wake up with phenomenal skill, but you also have severe, crippling arthritis in your hands, allowing you to play for only a few agonizing minutes at a time.
3. The Wish: "I wish to have a perfect memory."
- *The Consequence:* You remember everything, with no filter. Every painful moment, every cringe-worthy mistake, every tragic news story, replaying in your mind with perfect clarity forever.
4. The Wish: "I wish I could speak and understand any language."
- *The Consequence:* You can, but you can no longer speak your native tongue, alienating you from all your existing friends and family.
5. The Wish: "I wish I could lose weight without any effort."
- *The Consequence:* You are diagnosed with a wasting disease that causes your body to shed pounds rapidly and uncontrollably.
6. The Wish: "I wish I was funnier."
- *The Consequence:* You can only find humor in the tragic and painful misfortune of others, transforming you into a cruel and callous person that nobody wants to be around.
7. The Wish: "I wish I was the smartest person in the world."
- *The Consequence:* Everyone else in the world is struck by a mysterious neurological condition that reduces their intelligence to that of a young child, leaving you alone in a world you must now manage.
The Ironclad Contract: Wishes That Try to Outsmart the Paw
For the clever wordsmiths who think they can beat the system with semantics. These wishes are loaded with clauses and conditions, but the paw is a far better lawyer.
1. The Wish: "I wish for a winning lottery ticket for this Saturday's Powerball, to appear in my hand, causing no harm to anyone, directly or indirectly, in its creation or consequences."
- *The Consequence:* The ticket appears. You win. The joy is immense until you learn the man who *would* have won was a philanthropist on the verge of bankruptcy whose charitable foundation, which saves thousands of lives, is now forced to close. No one was harmed, but immense good was prevented.
2. The Wish: "I wish for the ability to fly, under my own power, without altering my human anatomy, and without drawing any unwanted attention from the public or government."
- *The Consequence:* You gain the ability to fly, but only two inches off the ground, making you look like you're just hovering weirdly. It's so unremarkable that no one pays it any mind.
3. The Wish: "I wish for perfect, 20/20 vision for the rest of my natural life, with no negative side effects to my health."
- *The Consequence:* Your vision becomes perfect, but hyper-sensitive. The normal light of day is blindingly painful, forcing you to live like a hermit in a darkened room. Your health is fine, but your life is ruined.
4. The Wish: "I wish my student loan debt was paid in full, with the money coming from a source that will not be missed, like a rounding error in a multi-trillion dollar corporation's budget."
- *The Consequence:* The debt is paid. The "rounding error" is discovered during a routine audit, triggering a massive fraud investigation. The lead accountant, a single mother of three, takes the fall and is sent to prison. The money isn't missed, but her life is destroyed.
5. The Wish: "I wish my dog could live as long as I do, and be healthy and happy for all of it."
- *The Consequence:* The instant you finish the wish, you both die peacefully in your sleep. You live exactly as long as your dog, as requested.
The Reality-Bender's Folly: Wishes That Break the Rules
For those who want to tamper with the fundamental laws of existence. These wishes are the most dangerous, as their consequences can unravel not just your life, but reality itself.
1. The Wish: "I wish I could travel back in time to fix my biggest regret."
- *The Consequence:* You succeed, but your "fix" creates a butterfly effect that results in a world far worse than the one you left, perhaps one where you were never even born.
2. The Wish: "I wish I could stop time."
- *The Consequence:* You can. Time stops, but you are also frozen along with it, conscious but unable to move or think, trapped in a single moment for eternity.
3. The Wish: "I wish I knew the answer to any question I asked."
- *The Consequence:* You gain access to cosmic, Lovecraftian truths that the human mind was not meant to comprehend. The knowledge shatters your sanity.
4. The Wish: "I wish I could create things just by thinking about them."
- *The Consequence:* The power works on your intrusive and subconscious thoughts, too. Your fleeting fears, nightmares, and anxieties manifest instantly and uncontrollably around you.
5. The Wish: "I wish I could be immortal."
- *The Consequence:* You stop aging and cannot be killed. You watch everyone you've ever loved grow old and die. You watch civilizations rise and fall, and eventually, you are left floating alone in the void after the heat death of the universe.
6. The Wish: "I wish I could walk through walls."
- *The Consequence:* You can phase through solid matter, but you can no longer control it. You risk falling through the floor, through the crust of the earth, and into the planet's core.
### A Final Word of Advice
The tales of the Monkey's Paw aren't just about cursed magic; they are about the nature of desire. The most perfect wish is the one left unspoken. So if you ever find a strange, withered paw in a dusty corner of an old shop, maybe the best course of action is to leave it be. But if you can't resist, take one of the ideas above and twist it into your own unique story. Just be careful what you wish for. You will most certainly get it.