Yannie HY Leung

The Art of the Black Notebook

“You’ll need to do better than that, pretty little thing! Here, let me help you get started!” He tore a page from his little black notebook, the object of Alice's fantasy and desire and threw it in her general direction, her a crumpled pile on the wet, sodden asphalt of the dockyard. She leapt at the scrunched-up piece of paper as if it was gold dust, jumping up like a cat jumping for that ball of yarn. She ripped it open and shone the page up to the dim flickering light of the dockyard lights. None of it made sense- a pyramid here, an oval there, rectangles and a scrambled array of shapes and unrecognisable characters. What did it all mean? She lay there, defeated as his laughter rang through her head on repeat.