Answer The Door

It was 07:00 hours when my alarm went off, and for the first time in a long time, I woke up instantly. It was as if my body were alert to something my mind had no idea of. I made a cup of tea as usual, but as I walked to the kettle, I noticed something placed neatly behind it. I pulled it out from behind the kettle and stood in the kitchen, confused. It was a small black notebook, my fingers running along the textured surface, tempted to open it up and start writing. But I didn’t know why. I didn’t even know who the book belonged to. I had to open it. Perhaps there was a name.

Opening the pristine black notebook, I noticed there was no writing in it, nothing at all. How did it get here - I lived alone. The overwhelming feeling of wanting to write in it took over, I grabbed a black-inked pen and started writing as if I knew exactly what each sentence should say.

I had finished a page of writing within seconds and all of a sudden the doorbell rang. It surprised me, the timing of the doorbell, just as I added the last full stop to my first page in my new black book.

I ran to the front door, thinking it may be the postmaster, however there was no one there. Looking down, instead, I noticed a thin brown envelope. It had cash inside it! $83.33 to be exact! This is the strangest thing that happened to me, but I kept the envelope to one side, thinking someone would come by asking for it.

Venturing back to the book, compelled to continue writing, it was with ease I had filled up the second page. It was at this very moment that the doorbell rang again. Again, there was no one there, except a brown envelope with another $83.33 inside it. I thought this was incredibly strange, perhaps someone was playing a practical joke. If it was, they got me! But nobody came by for the money, it had been days now. And each day, I completed a number of pages, the money would be left in a brown envelope on my doorstep.

I was just about to finish another page, when I decided to instead leave the door unanswered. What would happen then? Would whoever is playing this practical joke then give up and stop? It was worth a try. I added the last full stop to my sentence and just like clock work, the doorbell rang. I ignored it. It didn’t ring again, and although each time I was tempted to go to the door, I carried on doing this several times. Surely this strange occurrence, or practical joke, would end now.

An hour had passed, and I had completed ten pages of writing. I walked, hesitantly, to the front door, not realisingly my fingers were crossed, secretly hoping for this oddity to come to an end. I pulled the handle of the door downwards, and pull the door toward me slowly. My eyes were already planted on the brown envelope that sat on the doorstep. But there was something different about the envelope. It looked thicker, bulkier, as if there was more inside it. Indeed there was, much more. I had ignored the doorbell ten times, and this time inside the envelope there was $833.33 inside it. At first, I was utterly confused, wondering why the amount would suddenly change. However just as I had finished with that thought, I realised that it made perfect sense. I was given a certain amount after completing each page of writing. So if I had completed ten pages, that’s ten times the amount inside the envelope.

I immediately started counting how many pages were in the little black book, my fingers running through the pages ferociously. Two hundred and forty. There were two hundred and forty pages in this book. I was never any good at math, but the numbers seemed to be rolling off my tongue. Each page is worth $83.33, so multiplied by two hundred and forty gives you… $20,000! It couldn’t be. Or could it?

It's been several months, I am almost at the end of the book, all but one page is full of writing and I have just under $20,000. The only thing that's stopping me from completing this last page is not knowing what happens when all of this comes to an end. And I'd rather not find out!