Disobeying the Notebook

The night was dreary. Rain soaked everything it touched as it fell from the black starless sky, including the young woman running down a dimly lit alleyway. Her clothes clung to her skin, barely providing a barrier against the icy onslaught of rain. She shivered involuntary as bright lights appeared behind her and hugged a small black notebook closer to her body. Just a month prior she had been at the highest point in her life all thanks to the notebook she clutched.

The words in the notebook had been written by an unknown writer whose guidance was priceless. It all started with the book leading her to $20,000 in cash buried beneath the sprawling branches of an old oak tree in a barely travelled part of the city park. After that she followed the instructions scrawled on the yellowed pages religiously. Invest in this company. Donate to this organization. Buy this company. And the most important rule, stay anonymous. Everything was going great—she was rich, she was powerful—until she got greedy. She started ignoring the notebook, tossed it in a corner and forgot about its existence. At first it started with her breaking the number one rule, stay anonymous. Then she began investing in whatever she wanted to. As a result, she had to start selling some of the companies she owned once the investments she chose failed. Regardless of her mistakes she still was rich; however, not so powerful.

She didn’t remember the notebook’s existence until she started noticing that people were following her. First it was the man who followed her into every store she entered one Saturday. Then there was the woman who drove around her house seven times in one night. As the frequency in the appearance of people following her increased, she became more convinced that something was wrong. Slowly she became paranoid and a recluse, refusing to leave her house except to get groceries. Somewhere between fortifying her house and researching state of the art security systems, she remembered that there was a list of warnings in the notebook and from what she could remember one of them was similar to the situation she was in. In a hurried frenzy she dug through every drawer, container, and box in her house. When her eyes read the warnings on the yellowed page of the notebook after she found it in a box in the attic, she began to cry.

If you do not follow the rules, you will attract THEM. Once they begin their surveillance it is too late. You are DOOMED. You SHOULD have followed the rules!

Run! Maybe you will be lucky.

She cried for an hour in frustration over her foolishness. If only she had not let the power and money get to her head and convince her that she didn’t need to follow the advice of the notebook’s unknown writer. Once she felt that no more tears would fall, she stood up, grabbed the small amount of cash she had in her purse, and left her house.

She didn’t know where she should go, just that she needed to run like the notebook said. Her car was ditched in the parking lot of the train station. The notebook said THEY would have an almost invisible tracker on her vehicle and that it would be wise to get a new one. As she walked down the city streets, the sky darkened and rain began to trickle down to the earth. By the time they found her, the rain had begun falling harder and now had an icy bite.

Her feet made water splash in every direction as she ran down the alleyway. Mud mixed in with the water stained her soaked jeans, but she didn’t care. At this point her life was on the line so a little mud stain didn’t seem that important. Despite her attempt to escape her pursuers, they caught up and boxed her in the alleyway. The headlights from the cars blinded her. All she could see were three shadowed figures standing by the car in front of her and two standing by the car behind her. She twirled desperately in her search for an escape route, but there was no hope left. Thunder rumbled as if in protest of the events playing out beneath the storm, muffling the bang that echoed down the alleyway.

Red water trickled out of the alleyway and into the street, becoming more diluted the farther it travelled. An old woman with wrinkled skin and baggy clothes stared at the red water from underneath a plain black umbrella. Her lips formed a straight line and her brow became more furrowed the longer she watched the red water turn clear once again. Slowly she lifted a black notebook with a list of names into her eyes’ line of sight and began scribbling words beside a scratched out name on the yellowed page. Experiment 43 is a failure. Greed was too strong of a factor. Possibly experimental subject 44’s nature will provide better results. With a clack the old woman closed her notebook and began walking off into the stormy night.