The Little Black Book Challenge

Elizabeth sat across the mahogany desk from a stifled man who was seemingly uptight. He was an older man with crystal blue eyes, that although they were tarnished by multiple folds of sagging skin and unsightly moles, remained beautiful in a haunting way. All of his personality and social skills must have been stuffed into his ill-fitting off black suit, like a man trying on his wedding day tuxedo he'd retired several years prior. His hands, gnarled with arthritis, held onto a black leather book steadfastly; the book itself showing signs of great age. Aging in the way of cracks in binding and cover, crispy pages, and dog-eared pages whose edges would never be smooth again. Golden letters are carved into the face of the text and one side, "The Rules of The Cast." The clock ticked away the minutes as both Elizabeth and Mr. Carmichael, as he had introduced himself, exchanged awkward periods of exaggerated throat clearing and heavy sighs.

"You're the only one who has shown up. It is now fifteen minutes passed. I would suppose that if anyone had an interest in contesting your award of the 20,000 dollar sum or the house, they would have arrived on time." Mr. Carmichael assumed laying out several papers with thick red X's next to lines for her to sign.

"My grandfather didn't get on so well with the majority of the family members that are still alive. I was the only one who attended his funeral, apart from his help and a few casual business partners." Elizabeth said, whisking ink across the lines in illegible cursive writing.

"That's more information than I need, ma'am. I just need this last signature." His words were engrossed in an abundant but indistinguishable accent.

"You know, it's crazy because you see all these movies about estranged family members receiving lavish homes and inheritances from aunts and uncles. It almost seems cliche, doesn't it?" She probed collecting the apparatus that held several dozen rusty silver keys and placing them inside her knock-off purse.

"Hardly," Mr. Carmicheal objected, "The assets have to go somewhere."

"Right." She said, devouring the flesh on the inside of her cheek nervously.

The room fell silent, once again. The air was stale and static with an impenetrable dry suffocating warmth. Elizabeth considered that perhaps, her favorite red turtleneck sweater was now proving to be an unfortunate choice.

"You may go, Ms. DiAngelo, if there is nothing else." He encouraged, viciously scribbling inside the little black book.

"Okay, thank you so much for your help," Elizabeth said politely, collecting her items. After hovering over her sitting counterpart quietly for a moment, she turned to leave but was stopped by a tight grasp of her forearm.

"This book is also for you. I suggest you read it privately, in your new home. Alone."

"What's it for?"

"Instructions." He said, waving toward the small camera she hadn't noticed was in the very corner of the intricate crown molding beside the bookcase of encyclopedias. A man that was double, maybe even triple her size, descended into the room and escorted her, almost forcefully, outside Carmicheal's Law Office.

After her rushed departure, she contemplated her encounter with the two strange men. There was something quite peculiar about the security officer and the estate attorney. A shared idiosyncrasy that she was unable to pinpoint. A significant presence of secrecy, or maybe, they were just two men who couldn't wait to be alone with each other. Whatever it was, Elizabeth was happy that it only had to be a once-off occurrence.

In a celebratory fashion, much like in cinematic productions, Elizabeth complied all of her irreplaceable possessions into her 1995 hand-me-down Subaru Legacy. Off-white, dented, and intermittently covered in tacky auburn-colored rust, the car was as reliable as anything. She barreled down the highway, going ten miles over the speed limit, on the way to her new home. She wasn't afforded pictures of her new humble abode. Elizabeth was convinced any living arrangement was better than couch-surfing from one happy young couple's apartment to another.

Dissimilar to movies, Elizabeth and her grandfather had always been inseparable, despite his blatant and unavoidable character flaws. It would seem that their propensity for dysfunction and recurrent failure would unite them, even after his death. However, it was only a year or so ago that her grandfather had begun to join clubs and moved into this new home she was inheriting.

As she drove up the short gravel driveway, Elizabeth found herself underwhelmed by the quaint townhouse surrounded by a lively garden of flowers and plants. As unreasonable as she knew it was, she wouldn't have been upset to be driving up to a towering mansion with 10 bathrooms and cascading ponds featured in the landscape. Sadly, it wasn't anything like her unrealistic aspirations, and it was just a regular house with a couple bedrooms, a bathroom, and a visible but unimpressive rose garden. Nothing about the residence screamed suspicious inheritance from infamously rich grandfather. It just cautiously whispered, welcome home.

Later that evening, after hours of tedious organizing, dusting, and unpacking, Elizabeth accompanied herself with an old friend, of which she had an undeniable crush on for the majority of childhood and adulthood. He rifled through boxes of belongings, occasionally mocking her lack of packing skills and what she deemed a prized possession.

"Whoa, what's this?" Trevor asked, tracing the crevices of the little black book with his fingers.

"It's a book," Elizabeth responded, looking over her shoulder before continuing to pour cheap champagne into dollar-store wine glasses.

Trevor rolled his eyes and wrinkled his brow at her obliviousness, twisted the latch, and opened the book. His sarcastic smile withered into concern and then into disgust. He turned yellowed page after yellowed page with his mud-brown eyes growing wider and wider.

"What's that look on your face?" Elizabeth said, handing him a glass.

"Liz, have you opened this book?"

She shrugged and grimaced. "No?"

"You should read it. I don't know if it's an instructional manual or just a really screwed up work of fiction. Either way, I think your Grandpa might have been a few cards short of a full deck."

"Yeah, the guy, Mr. Carmichael. He said it was instructions, and then his big neanderthal boyfriend removed me from the premises like I was a threat." She said, motioning to her tiny stature and unintimidating build.

Trevor carried the book to meet her in the middle of the living room and retrieved his beverage. He watched as her reaction to the text mimicked his.

The little black book was indeed instructions, but not like Elizabeth had assumed. She half-expected to find anally-retentive instructions on maintaining the house in her Grandfathers death as he was always a specific man. Elizabeth thought she'd find reputable gardeners and handymen to tend the delicate aesthetic of her townhome and a manual that described in detail the use of each one of these keys.

However, inside the book were instructions for a game that his newfound friends and he had invented. This activity consisted of carefully selected players, unwilling participants, that were suggested to be vagrants or untouchables that no one would miss. These at-risk players should be a diverse group of people ranging in ages and ethnic backgrounds, spanning the entire nation in an attempt to ensure no one would recognize each other. In the words of the book, "alliances ruin the authenticity and the overall intensity of the game." Each player should be quartered from the other player's for several days, even weeks. They should remain restricted from anything but minimal life-sustaining resources. Water and sleep should be rationed and controlled by the gamekeeper, the holder of this book, to encourage optimal entertainment and willingness to engage. The book went on to list the rules of the game.

No person under the age of 18 or over the age of 50 shall be recruited to participate.

No person from outside the United States shall be allowed to participate.

No weapons shall entertain the arena, on the persons playing the game, or at the hands of the gamekeeper.

The book continued on in thorough detail for the next 100 pages. It discussed the rules of the participants further and the obligations of the gamekeeper. There were numerous pages about locations, rewards, penalties, where and how to broadcast, how involved speculators can be, and at the very end, there was contact information. It was a list of previous watchers, betters, and other gamekeepers. Mr. Carmichael's name being toward the top of the facilitator's list.

"You know that I loved your Grandpa, but this is weird even for him," Trevor said, flipping back to the front of the little black book.

"Yeah, it looks like it's just a proposal for a twisted board game or something. There's no way Hector killed anyone. He sure didn't kidnap hobo's from the street and starve them until they behaved like rabid dogs and then unleash them on each other." Elizabeth mocked, shoving her face with chocolate chip cookies from a bag.

"How certain are you of that?" Trevor asked inquisitively.

"Okay, here's how I know he couldn't have organized something this elaborate. When I was maybe 15 years old, I remember him and my mother fighting in the kitchen over forgetting to write the caterers a check for my quinceanera. Organizing something like this would take months of coordination, dedication, and a lot of other skills that he didn't have." She smiled.

"Okay, well, I won't disagree with you that he was a little flighty. I don't think this is the type of book that you should keep on the bookshelf." He joked, handing it over to her.

"You're probably right. I wonder if my 20K came with any rules, too." She mentioned playfully, waving the check around in the air.

"The book said it was prize money." He said.

"What?" She said, stopping her boastful dancing.

"The book. It was on one of the pages. Maybe 56. It talks about the money."

Elizabeth retrieved the book from the table and rushed to the middle of its pages. She skimmed over page 55 and, as Trevor had mentioned, page 56 explained in grave detail how to use her inheritance.

"When a gamekeeper passes, a new one must be promptly and expeditiously appointed. The new gamekeeper will be allotted a sum of twenty-thousand dollars to ensure the success of the game. Half of the sum shall be reserved for any expenditures incurred when locating an arena for play and other game-related expenses. The other half shall act as a reward for the solitary surviving participant."

"Ten grand hardly seems like enough money to die over," Trevor commented sarcastically, peering over her shoulder. Using his right hand, he pointed at another paragraph in the little black book.

"New gamekeepers must comply with all the rules and regulations of the game. New gamekeepers are required to participate once they have been appointed. Thus serving until their death or any other type of incapacitation."

"That's funny, but you couldn't threaten me enough to let homeless people fight to the death," Elizabeth said.

Fluorescent lights flickered like the activation of Friday night football lights. The inescapable stench of urine and feces emanated from across the concrete and into her nostrils. Sweat protruded from her scalp and danced vigorously down the sides of her face. She held her hand in front of the beam of blinding light while she gained some semblance of awareness. A tall glass separated her and other people from a gallery of well-dressed people. A shadowy figure stood in the middle of a room she couldn't discern. A loud screech of a microphone radiated and attacked her already diminished sensibilities. A burst of pretentious laughter came overhead, and the familiar toothy-smile of an old friend revealed itself from the shadow. Elizabeth shook.

"Ladies and gentleman," Trevor articulated, "let the games begin!"