Gage Tunnell

the little black book

Sounds of sirens fill the street, cars driving past me down the highway. The sound of the street lights fill in the gaps. The bridge where I normally walk from work just reminds me how bland my life is. In the middle of the bridge is usually where I stop and light up a cigarette so I can sit down and enjoy some what of what I call peace before I get to my apartment, which is filled with noisy neighbors that wear cement blocks for house slippers. As I sit, listening to the street lights, the tobacco burning simultaneously, the wind picks up and blows my cigarette, flawlessly, into my shoe and immediately starts burning my foot. I retreat the cigarette out of my shoe and drop it on the ground and regather myself as I’m screaming on the sidewalk like the other people at night around here. As I bend down to pick up my now burnt out cigarette, I see a brown, paper bag under the bench where I was sitting. I cautiously pull it out from under the bench because who knows what bullshit is in bags around here. As I’m opening the bag, I see a little black book on top of what looks like half a million dollars, just a large sum of money appearing from what seems like my dreams. I close the bag, pick it up and tuck it into my jacket and casually walk home. I splashed the bag of contents onto my lovely coffee table and just stare at the money. I’m already thinking about what car I’m going to buy, what house, what clothes, what life I’m going to buy! I’m definitely not showing up to work tomorrow. I immediately called my boss and told him I quit. The douchebag doesn’t even know who I am, I work 12 hours a day stocking up for his smoke shop and he can’t even remember my name? Whatever, who cares. I put the phone down and check out this little black notebook that was more importantly at the top. I open the book up to a list of names, addresses, phone numbers, bank accounts, you name it, all of this info on 12 people. I check all the pages for personal notes to identify anything about whose stuff this was. Nothing. “Knock! Knock!” A bang at my door set me off guard because I never get visitors. I don’t have friends or family so I don’t know who this would possibly be. I look into the peep hole quickly and quietly, it’s dark. They’re covering up the peep hole which means they intentionally don’t want me to know so that means it’s time to leave. I grab all the money and the book, shove it into a backpack and jet to the bathroom and escape through my window. I continue down the fire escape and sprint across the street to seek a hiding spot but just found a dark alley. I see a group of men, dressed as like Russian hitman or something from a James Bond movie. They also had guns and turtle necks under their leather jackets. All they need is a perm and they’d fit the 80s cop look. They scurried down the street away from me. I start to get up and feel an arm approach around my face to put me into a head lock and a gun to my head. “Move and I shoot.” - mysterious person said ever so calmly which immediately made me shit my pants, metaphorically (I hope), so I did what the person asked. This mysterious person takes off their mask and threw it on the ground and told me to listen and I’ll live and turns me around. It’s a girl. Like in her 20s. Man card revoked how I just let her man-handle me like that, congrats to her, well done. She begins to tell me, “we’ve kept our eye on you for some time, did you think you found that bag by luck?” “I thought this was a set up” I strategically said. “No setup, we knew you’d take the same route home like you do everyday. We needed a nobody to secure the bag and give us enough time to read the contents.” “So am I now a spy or something? Are you going to kill me now?” I said quickly. “They will find you and kill you. If you don’t want that, follow me.” She takes me on a wonderful 2 hour journey through the sewers into a facility underground with the foundation of brick and shit. Lights inside like it’s a normal house. “That’s not normal” pointing to the chocolate water outside the door.” “Get in.” She ordered. The light shines down her face for the first time and noticed that she definitely applies moisturizer on her face due to the shine and a normal workout routine. She takes me to a room with a large metal box, the size of a room with a door on it. Above it, a line of people on a balcony saying after another “welcome back” in the scariest of voices. “But I’ve never been here” I said confused. “Yes, I thought you’d say that.” I’m handed a tablet showing 1st person videos of me doing horrible things, murders, assassinations what it appears like. The camera pans out and shows me. This has to be fake. They bring me passports, clothes, paperwork, more videos indicating that it was me but how? The mysterious old man mutters, “Before you is the path to the past and the future that you once took. You were our best assassin, completing jobs no one else could. Until you went rogue. You stole all of the names of everyone in this pact and we could not afford that out in the world. So we made you bring it to us.” I collapse to my knees in silence and confusion still trying to understand. “I-“ gun goes off.