Curiosity Kills

She’d been staring at it twice a day, every day for two weeks. A little black book meticulously tucked between the seat and the wall of the bus so it blended with the trim of the threadbare seat cushion. When she first noticed it she thought she’d give the owner a day or two to retrieve it before perusing the pages herself. Now, 14 days had passed and there was something about the mystery within that kept her from prying it out of its hiding spot.

Then something happened. Across the aisle a man made eye contact with it. She couldn’t understand how he saw it. Maybe a light outside reflected off the glossy leather for a split second, and he happened to be looking in the right direction. He had been standing next to the seat in front of hers. He went to lift his foot and move towards the elusive book. The bus lurched. Hard.

It seemed like slow motion. The man's hand flailed and grasped for the nearest pole with a look of utter terror in his eyes. The only thought she had as she looked into his too-wide eyes was that she needed to reach the book before him. As his hand closed around the paint-chipped pole, she flew across the aisle landing almost on top of the binding.

She recomposed herself and crossed her legs gingerly as if having flown gracefully across the seats like a swan gliding on water. In reality she had looked like a possessed raggedy ann doll with two broken legs.

When he finally regained his balance, he looked at her with an equal amount of curiosity and contempt.

She winked in response.

He got off at the next stop refusing to break eye contact with her. She could not understand why. Maybe he stared in case she decided to renounce her claim to the seat and, in turn, the book. Her thoughts of the stranger left with him.

She was one stop away from home. It was now or never. Looking straight ahead, she slid her right hand down the wall and felt her fingers close around the cold, soft cover of the little black book. She was able to pull it free easily enough, making it seem as if the book wanted her to find it. She turned it over in her hands, studying every inch of it. There wasn’t so much as a scratch on the outside cover to give her a hint as to what lay inside. She would have to open it.

Two weeks of curiosity sped through her mind. Maybe it was someone’s private journal. Maybe that someone was famous. Maybe that famous someone wrote dirty little secrets about their life. Maybe it was a Bible and someone had written in the margins next to their favorite verses. Maybe someone wrote a story and she would be the first to read it. Maybe the owner has no idea it’s there. Maybe the owner is dead. She had to know.

With anticipation that stretched from her to the moon, she placed her hand on the cover and held her breath. She lifted it slowly, taking in every millimeter of the page as it revealed itself to her. Unblinking and unable to break eye contact with the book, she took in the first page.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. A blank, coffee-stained page stared back at her. Disappointment seemed to ooze over her body. Steadily increasing as she flipped through page after page of nothing. Fourteen days of wonder and imaginative curiosity, amounted to nothing.

Disappointment turned to anger as she wondered how she could have let such a silly little object control her last two weeks. Her foolish trance broken, she looked up and realized she missed her stop. That meant another hour for the bus to make it back around.

Frustrated beyond words, she looked down to return the book to its former mysterious glory with the intention of letting it disappoint someone else. Then she saw it. Lower still in the crack between the seat and the wall, a band. A band that held together a significant stack of money.

Her eyes widened and she stared straight ahead as her hand reached down and pulled the money out, sliding it smoothly into her purse. She didn’t think anyone saw. The other bus goers were too caught up in their own lives. Older ladies loudly talking over one another as they compared their tragic life stories, not hearing a word the other said. Strangers trying their hardest not to make eye contact with one another. A homeless man, asleep on the seat and avoided so intensely it was as if he didn’t exist at all. A couple of teenagers sharing headphones, singing along to a pop song that sounded like every other pop song. She exhaled and told herself to calm down. A wasted effort.

Something about this felt wrong, almost illegal. All her senses seemed to be on overdrive. Her heart raced faster than the beat of the pop song and louder than the shrill voices of the women. Adrenaline pumped through her veins and pushed her heart to near-explosive levels. Goosebumps and cold sweat raced to cover every piece of her skin. It was invigorating and terrifying all at once. She felt more alive than she had in years. A crooked smile pushed its way across her face without her realizing it.

Deciding to return the book to its former glory, she looked down again. Her jaw dropped. Another perfectly wrapped stack of money sitting on the floor between the seat and the wall. She grabbed it without thinking and slid it into her purse along with the book.

She jumped up and got off at the next stop feeling like she needed to escape the scene of the crime. She walked the rest of the way home.

When she got to her crappy apartment she slammed the door shut and dead bolted it behind her. Flipping on the nearest light, she flew to her kitchen table. The table protested as she sat down. With it being almost 50 years old, missing some screws and half a leg, this did not phase her. She reached in her purse with both hands and snatched the money out of its depths. The two bands of crisp bills lay on the table. Benjamin Franklin bore holes into her soul as if he knew she had done something wrong. Purposefully placing her thumb over his face, she picked up the stack and removed the band.

Then she counted…

...and counted.

$20,000 in total.

She lost track of time daydreaming about everything she’d be able to afford. She could put a down payment on a house and put a stable roof over her head. She wouldn’t have to blast music to cover up the short, sporadic, poundings she occasionally heard from her neighbors at night. Although it never lasted long, she still hated having to hear it and always felt bad for whomever was on the receiving end of that transaction. Maybe she’d stay put and buy some nice furniture, then put her neighbors noises to shame just to spite them. Or, she could travel the world for a couple of months - something she had always wanted to do. Travel, take pictures, keep a travel diary… the book.

How did she forget about the book? The thing that started her on this journey, what felt like years ago. She took it out of her purse planning to throw it away. Standing up and leaving her daydreams in her chair, she took the two steps to her garbage can. She looked down at the book to mentally thank it before ending it’s life. It lay in the palm of her hand, the cover looking back at her. Then, the book opened of its own accord.

Where there had once been a coffee stain and a sea of off-white emptiness, was now a star with a circle drawn around it in red, still-wet ink. She screamed but no sound came out. Then the book flipped to the next page. A name. A name and a place. Then the next page. More and more quickly the book flipped through page after page of odd details. Names, places, times, weird notes about disposal. Something about weapons?

The faster the pages flew the warmer her hand grew. It felt like the book was melting in her palm. The pain had been distracting her from comprehending what she was looking at. Her brain tried to connect the dots between internal screams of agony.

Finally she understood. It was a hit list.

Each page gave a name, detailed where that person would be on a future date and exactly how to end them.

This hardly phased her because her hand now seemed to be in the heart of a flameless fire. She couldn’t let go of the book. It wouldn’t let her. The pain was unbearable. Waving her arm so ferociously she thought it might disconnect from her body, she dove for the sink. She ripped the faucet on. It took what felt like a decade to gurgle to life. She forced her hand under the stream of water.

The pain stopped immediately. Instead of drenching the pages and running the ink, the water did not make contact with the book at all. What little water had managed to escape the faucet froze in midair. She pulled her arm back from the peculiar sight and the water fell again. The book flipped to its final page. The words were still being written here. She watched whatever force the book possessed, painstakingly slowly write out…

Finish them…

...or I…

...will finish you…

...in 20,000 different ways.

Finish them…

...and the money is yours…

The second the writing finished, the book began sinking into her hand. She couldn’t understand what she was seeing. Was she dreaming? Hallucinating? Had she had a bad batch of her aunt’s brownies again? Nothing made sense. The book got thinner and thinner until it looked like only one page sat in her hand. Then, it too sunk under her skin. She stared at her open palm. She would wake up any second. She was sure of it. She realized something on the back of her hand seemed to be tingling. Maybe the book was falling out the other side? Because that somehow made sense to her. She turned her hand over and there, on her skin, was a red star with a circle around it. This time the red was her own blood. It looked like someone had carved the shape into her skin without her knowing.

Hardly two minutes had passed since she stood up from the table. She heard heavy footsteps running up the stairs of her apartment building. She dropped her hand to her side.

Bennett Wellberg/ 29/ 2040 W Kingsbury Road Apt #11C/ March 31, 2021/ 17:36/ the item in your pocket/ disposal: fire due to gas leak

These stats ran through her mind as if saying a prayer to herself. She had, literally, soaked up all the information written in the book.

She looked to her right at the clock on the stove. 5:35. She was standing in apartment 11C. Her apartment. She heard the footsteps slow as they grew closer to her door. She watched the digital clock change to 5:36. In that same moment her door flew open, shattering the door frame as the deadbolt tore through it with an odd amount of ease. It was the man from the bus. The one who had seen the book. A knife in his hand and a malicious grin on his face.

He was the first name the book gave her. It was him or her and they both knew it. He winked. She reached her hand into her pocket.