Little Black Book

Little Black Book

Vocal Challenge

As a long streak of bright white lightning flashed across the night sky, two men in their late twenties early thirties could be seen running side by side through the gates of the warehouse complex. As they rounded the asphalt corner leading down a long line of rusted old cars, and junk. Behind them followed two men in suits, weapons drawn, and pointed in their direction discharging round after round. Nick the young Caucasian man on the left smiled as the bullets narrowly zipped past his head, and his long brown hair whipped in the wind. His best friend Danny, his black flowing hair whipping behind him, looked to his left and saw his best friend since kindergarten smiling, and it made him smile as a round zipped passed his head missing him by the smallest of margins. His Native American heart beat with the exhilaration of the inherit danger they were trying to outpace.

The lightning flashed a second time, and lit up the night sky again. As it did Nick and Danny ran into a dimensional window, that knocked them both from their feet. The suddenness of the window, and the speed at which they were running, which was a run for your life, destroy Jessie Owens world record or get shot in the ass, kind of speed run. Ended abruptly as the two lay on the ground gasping for breath, that would come from the hard clothesline style fall they both received from this unexpected development.

Danny was the first one to recover as he rolled over to start getting back up, gasping for air, he managed to wheeze out, “Come on Nick, get up.” As he stood on his feet and turned to keep moving away from the threat that was behind him, he immediately bumped into the dimensional window again, like someone walking into a steel wall.

“Ow! What the heck is that?” He asked as he rubbed his head.

Nick slowly regained his footing back under him, and on shaky knees turned to begin fleeing just as Danny had done, and walked into the solid dimensional window, as well.

“Ah! Son of a….” Nick yelped as his head bounced off the window.

“I said the same thing.” Danny told him, as he grabbed Nick’s arm and began to pull him around the window, “We gotta get the hell out of here man.”

Nick looked behind them to their two pursuers as he let Danny pull him along. “Hey Danny wait.” He yelled. “Look, they aren’t moving.” As he pointed to the two men in black suits.

Danny stopped, and looked back, and saw that indeed, their pursuers were not moving. In fact they looked as if they were stuck in time, in some kind of temporary suspended animation.

“What is going on man?”

As the two of them centered themselves in front of the window. They looked at their pursuers and slowly turned around to see that what they had run into was indeed a window into another world. They looked at it with intense scrutiny, and what they saw shocked and surprised them. There sat a man in front of what appeared to be an iPad, and a keyboard typing away like he was doing a college exam or perhaps writing a story. The man never stopped writing, he merely looked up from his IPad, and smiled like he saw them, and then went back to his typing.

“I have no idea Danny, but look”, as he pointed to the lightning bolt that was still standing in mid-air lighting the night sky. “I think time has stopped.”

“Jeez you think?” Danny said tapping on the window. “It’s freaking solid man. Like….how?”

“Yeah, you know that guy kind of looks like an older, fatter, less good looking version of me don’t you think?” Nick said, becoming increasingly disturbed, and perturbed by these developments.

“Huh? Yeah, I guess he does.” Danny laughed. “I guess your going to be an old fat bastard one day then huh?”

“Not if I have anything to say about it.”

He began tapping on the window, and screaming “Hey! Hey you, in the window!”

“Nick I don’t think he can see or hear you man.”

“I don’t know Danny, I got a weird feeling about this man.”

Nick began pounding on the window, when suddenly his fist busted through the window, knocking over the mans IPad. Who abruptly jumped up his eyes going wide, as a fist materialized in his home knocking over his iPad.

“What in the Sam hell?” He cried. As another hand materialized and began tearing the walls between time and space. As he watched and saw the tear grow bigger and bigger, the images that he saw in his head became real and he leaned forward, and said, “What in the world is this?”

“It’s me.” Nick told him, as he reached forward and grabbed the iPad off the mans desk. “What are you typing about so much in there. Let me see that…” he told him.

He began to look through the many words typed on the screen. “Little Black Book, vocal challenge, uh-huh….two guys…one named Nick, one named Danny……” He looked up as Danny tapped him on the shoulder, and all around them little windows of people sitting in chairs with iPads, kindle fires, cell phones, and even some sitting behind computers all smiled and laughed, began popping up all around them.

The man in the window, the older version of Nick said, “I think I know what’s going on guys.”

Both Danny and Nick looked into the window throwing up their arms and scrunching their faces in that “Well?”pose we all make when we are all waiting on an answer impatiently.

“Well, apparently a combination of the thunder storm in my dimension, coupled with the lightning storm and magic inherent in your world has allowed you to temporarily break through the so called ‘fourth wall.’ He told the two younger men.

“So….what you’re saying is all this stuff that you’re writing about is just stuff that you’re dreaming up in your head?” Nick asked him.

“Yeah pretty much.” He told them holding out his hand motioning for them to hand over the iPad.

“What about all of these other windows that we’re seeing?” Danny asked waving his arm pointing at them.

“Ah, those would be the readers of the story I’m writing.”

“So all the crap we’ve been through over the last couple of weeks, is all because of what you’ve been writing?” Nick asked him.

“That would be correct young man.”

“I’m calling bull crap.” Danny told him skeptically.

“Here watch Agent Black there behind you.”

As Danny turned to watch Agent Black, the Caucasian agent who had been chasing them, he saw him simply fall over like a toy soldier, still stuck in the same pose he had been in when time stopped. The man in the window handed the iPad through the window, and said, “Danny here man, read it for yourself.” Danny grabbed the iPad, and read where Agent Black fell over like a toy soldier. After he finished reading it he handed the iPad back through the window his hands shaking with anger and fear.

“Well, Danny?” Nick asked.

“While he was typing everything that he typed happened.”Danny told him.

“So everything we’ve been going through? These guys torturing,” Nick waved to Agents Black and White, “me for days, dad dying, everything, over the last few days is all your fault?”

“Well, I don’t think it’s my fault per say. I think I’m just the one that sees it in my head. It’s obvious you two are just as real as I am. Which means that somewhere in some dimension, someone, is writing a story about me writing a story about you. Which is weird, even to think about let alone say out loud.”

Nick scrunched his face, and said, “Yeah, that is kind of a serious mind fu”…

“Hey language!” the man in the window told him. “I don’t know if we can cuss or not on vocal. Your story is important to me. Don’t blow it now.”

“What?”

“Look, in my world I’ve been out of work for about a year. Bad bosses all that jazz. I came across a website called Vocal, its for writers, they do competitions and all that stuff. I’m supposed to write a story about how a little black book, changed some ones life. Either a fictional story or a non-fictional story. I really need to win if I can. Your Beamer? I own one just like it. I need to pay it off, the prize money would do that. Plus, I just like to write, so I don’t know how or why your particular story came to me, but it did.”

Nick pulled a little black book out of his back pocket. “This is what your story is all about?”

“That book ain’t been nothing but trouble, Nick.” Danny told him shaking his head.

“Yeah, and how it unexpectedly changed your life, with a large sum of money.” The man in the window told them, making a sorry expression.

“A large sum of money? It lead us to a bank account with twenty thousand dollars in my dads bank account. With a whole bunch of other stuff scribbled into it that we haven’t been able to fully decipher yet.” Nick told him flapping it back and forth.

“Well, if you got to this point in your story you figured out the numbers on page two were actually grid coordinates to a secret hidden base that your dad had built from the secret bank account he found during his time in the CIA right?” The guy in the window told them.

“Uhm…..yeah.” Nick told him. “I guess you are writing our story aren’t you?”

“Yeah I am. You know, since we are right here, and we’re talking why don’t you tell the readers how you got to this point in your words.” The window man told him.

Nick turned around to face all of the other windows, and began to tell his story.

“Well basically the short version, is my dad was unexpectedly murdered. Danny and I came out to help my little sister take care of all the arrangements. Turns out that he left everything to her except this little black book and the keys to the nineteen seventy-three Dodge Challenger we built together when we were kids. Inside the black book, Danny and I found the name of a bank, and an account attached to it, that contained twenty thousand dollars to help us get to the next thing dad wanted us to find . Which as the older, fatter version of me has stated is a secret underground base he had built. The two guys chasing us are actually monsters, not federal agents, who are trying to kill us to get the other secrets inside this little book. So…yeah. Its changed our lives quite a bit. That about cover the short version?”

“Sure did Nick thank you. You guys had probably better use this opportunity to get the hell out of dodge. No telling how long this window will stay opened.” The window man told them.

“One last question.” Danny said. “ In your world do you have a Danny like me?”

“Yep. I sure do. He’s been my brother and best friend since I was in kindergarten just like you two.”

“Is he an old fat guy to?”

“No, he’s an old guy, but he still looks like he’s eighteen.”

“What happens next?” Danny asked him.

“You run!” The window man told them as the window slammed shut, and left the rest of the story to be told at a later date.

As the windows all around them slammed shut, Nick and Danny took off running, not sure how they knew, but they knew everything was going to be alright.

The End