Something they never warn you when they tell you of the great magical abilities of wizards, is that they are conniving little runts who never make good on their promises.

You want to be the most beautiful human to roam the earth? Fine, but you also have a horrible odour that keeps everyone away.

You wish to live forever? Well alright then, but you will remain trapped in a cave for the rest of eternity with no company and no companions.

Those were the types of wishes The Great Erlington Salvatore granted, half wishes that were never really what you asked for.

When I had sought his help, taking the trek all the way to his sprawling estate in Dallas, I imagined someone…different that who I had met. There was no long grey beard, no star printed cloak, and certainly no magic wand. No, The Great Erlington Salvatore was a balding middle aged man who hid his threads of hair beneath a giant blue cowboy hat. Though he was thin and tall, he wore layers of colourful clothing and strings of beads around his lean neck. To say I was surprised to meet this…this character, was an understatement.

Though I was certainly caught off guard, I knew that I still needed his help. I had come for one thing and one thing only: to be the greatest chef of all time and have the best restaurant in all of Manhattan.

Of course, Sir Erlington Salvatore was more that happy to help me out, stating that ‘of course he could make me the best chef in all of Manhattan- the best in the entire world in fact’.

So, brimming with joy and eager to get back in the kitchen, I agreed to his promise:

He would make me the best chef in all the world, free of charge.

It wasn’t until I was back in my kitchen stirring up some beef ragu, that it hit me, sudden and striking.

One moment the air was filled with fragrant flavour, red wine, tomatoes and garlic and then the next, it all vanished..

It was as though my nose had been pulled from my face and buried far, far away, hidden from the scent of my beautiful delicacies.

I frantically ran about the kitchen, grabbing jars of whatever spices I could find and shoving my nose into them, in search of something- anything- to indicate that the worse of my fears hadn’t come true.

It was around this time that I found that even my tongue failed to grasp the flavours of my dishes. No amount of horseradish, peppers, garlic bulbs or fermented wines could rouse my tastebuds even the slightest bit. It was as though my most prized senses, my taste and my scent, had simply ceased to work as they should.

This went on for sometime, this inability to smell or taste any kind of food. It was a tortuous and painful experience to watch all my dishes grow increasingly popular while I remained unable to even smell what it was I served. My restaurant soon became one of the only 5 star restaurants in the city, and in 2 years I had various establishments blooming all over the country.

Despite this newfound fame and the title of ‘the Best Up and Coming Chef of the United States’, something was still amiss each time I entered the kitchen. Without the aroma of my creations wrapping around me and enveloping me a cocoon of intense flavour, I no longer loved the experience of cooking as I had before.

What was a chef, really, without his sense of taste and smell? No matter how good the response was to my dishes I still felt like a fraud, a fake.

Years later when I went back to that same Dallas estate in search of a certain little lying wizard, I found that he had picked up and left. The Great Erlington Salvatore had apparently grown bored with the whims of dreamseekers in America, and had chosen to immigrate to some city in Italy for some fun.

While I’ve become well recognized in my field and am known to many as a talented chef, I had to admit that perhaps I had been cheated by Sir Ellington Salvatore. Never again would I ever be bested by a wizard who promised me favours for nothing in return. With that being said though, I heard their was a witch in Brooklyn who was willing to toss a few wishes to desperate folk for the right price. I would say I was opposed to seeking out magical beings after my last experience, but in recent years a terrible tragedy had befallen me. My thick lucious locks had thinned out to the point that one might call me ‘bald’. Desperate times call for desperate measures so maybe it was necessary that I sought a little magic once more (making sure to read the fine print this time, of course) .