Little. Black. Book.

Reasoning at dawn had left behind when dusk had hit their horizon.

Cara couldn’t have fathomed how all this could have happened to her. It was an expected evening like any other one that she’d had before this one.

All she could do beyond sitting at her kitchen table with her dark hands folded under her chin was stare.

Stare straight at the little black book, innocuous in it’s harmless place on the center of the table. You don’t belong to me, it seemed to taunt her, it’s dented surface tar like in substance and nightmarish in color. I don’t belong to you. But now - we do.

It hadn’t been there before… she remembered the table emptied for her dinnertime. She’d stood up, straightening up the cutlery placed atop the fine china on the nice placemats they sat on. They’d serve up the delicious Swedish meatballs and tortellini she’d cooked for him. Had stood back from it, admiring her handiwork before nodding in triumph. Then having turned around to taste test the fresh food one more time before deeming it ready.

And then she’d returned to the table and had set the steaming pot onto the center of the table before noticing the book.

Sitting there alone. Placed almost as it was old in its craft.

Cara had panicked. She’d felt her blood pressure rising, and had run around her loft to check every nook and cranny. She made very sure that there was no intruder in her home. She’d even grabbed the longest knife, sharp and ready as a weapon of defense should anyone try anything with her.

But after double and triple checking everything, there was nothing. The bedroom, den, balcony, the bathroom and the foyer. Even all the window and doors remained shut tight. Empty were all the closet and cabinets spread throughout the space.

And there had not been a stray speck of dust put out of its place.

Not a piece of furniture housing any strange inhabitant lurking in the shadows.

The only predator intent on prey was her own curiosity with that of the phenomena.

The book. It’d seemed to have appeared into thin air.

Sighing as she raised the palms of her hands to cover her face, Cara leaned over and rested her head for a while. Perhaps she was hallucinating. Or maybe even in some peculiar fever dream that seldom occurred when she’d sleep walked in her early youth.

The cuckoo clock above her head kept ticking as the seconds kept passing by. They were sluggish and distant as she slowed her pulse. Deep breaths in and out.

Focusing on grounding herself back into reality. To diminish any anxiety to keep her clarity from being at bay.

When the spell passed, she sat back up, and released another sigh.

Cara’s eyes fell on the mysterious battered thing again. Not a moment lost on it, either.

All she could think of doing? Despite this entire situation being downright insanity? Was to indulge her own gravitational pull.

To open the book. See what was inside, if anything.

It was bloody insane, she’d give it that.

But what else was she to do? She’d already determined that it’s inexplicable presence deemed her or her home no threat.

And even if someone had somehow indeed sneak into her home? To even manage to deliver this beyond her locked up doorstep? it was impossible for her not to notice.

To have already done something about it. Called the authorities. Screamed off her lungs for help so her next door neighbors could come help or her or go find it.

But even if she did try, she felt trapped.

Her prisoner had her shackled to the floor.

And yet, it was still no less impossible as the travesty of the little book peering up at her.

Indignant with herself and this whole ordeal, Cara muttered to herself lowly, “To hell with it.”

She then snatched up the frail, leather bound thing and turned it’s fraying pages open.

A rectangular object suddenly fell out of it, with a gray scrap of parchment attached to it by a single, short tag.

Be Open, and You Shall Then Receive..

Remain Closed, and You Shall Never Be.

Her fingers began to shake. Then her arms and legs began to give into slight, uncontr uncontrollable tremors. She took her time as she opened the package.

When she looked within to see its contents, she found something she’d never expected to hold in her life.

Money.

A large, thick, ridiculously sturdy wad of money.

When she peered at the numbers, her heart rate soared beyond the roof.

The hundred dollar bill peered up at her through Benjamin Franklin’s heavy eyes.

Instinct told her what to do. And seeing as she feared her loss of sanity if she refused to follow her intuition, Cara listened to it.

She was careful with herself as she began to count all the bills up.

She counted by the hundreds. One hundred. Two hundred. Three. Four. Five...

It kept going. Adding up as she trembled in her counting.

Ten hundred. Eleven hundred. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen…

It seemed to keep going on and on, and she knew time wasn’t going as slow as she felt it was.

Maybe that was just a part of humanity’s nature.

Feeling as if there’s no sense of time or place when everything seems impossible.

Several moments of shuffling the bills passed by. Cara moved the bills between her shaking hands, and she stopped herself short once she’d come to an end. When she tallied the final mark, she set the money down and staring in disbelief.

Twenty hundred dollar bills lay before her. All fine and pressed. Some fresh, some old.

The bills were all real fledged bills, too. Not those fake ones that she knew to recognize. She went through the pile again and checked it for any counterfeit with her trained eye in security.

No. She had had a whopping 20,000 dollars sitting before her.

Having fallen out of the rectangular carving of the book’s pages laying open before her.

20,000 dollars… She mouthed her thoughts as she tried to regain her composure. This all had seemed to be so bizarre to her.

20,000 dollars. All laying in this little dainty book.

As dark as the tides falling underneath a blue moon. Old as time itself, she was sure.

But a ridiculous amount of cash now at her dispense.

And now awaiting for her own disposal.

“Jesus Christ,” Cara breathed in disbelief. “This can’t be real.”

In that precise moment, the old telephone near the cuckoo clock began to ring.

The clock struck midnight, and the bird began to pop out of it’s house, cuckooing away.

Shaken beyond reason, Cara could do nothing else but shuffle away her newfound riches. She steadied her shaking fingers as best she could. And as she shoved the bills into the mysterious envelope before placing it in the book’s open pages.

She closed it shut, and waited for the cuckoo clock to finish blaring before answering the phone.

Once the bird on the clock stopped blaring, Cara stood up from her seat at the kitchen table. She took her time as she strode to the black telephone ringing off of it’s hook.

When she picked it up, she was about to answer the call with a cheery greeting. It was what she usually did at this late hour of the evening.

But she heard the heavy breathing on the other end of the line, she stopped herself short and remained quiet.

She waited for the caller to say something - anything, anything at all.

For way that their skittering breaths crackled through their side of the call to hers?

It brought on a strong wave of chills to shiver up and down her spine.

“Hello?” she answered lowly. She clutched her hold tight, holding onto the phone for dear life. The bones in her hands seemed to stretch themselves taut against their joints. “How may I help you?”

For a moment, there was no noise on the other end. Save for that of her muted breaths and the other person’s strange wheezing coming and going. She thought she’d gone mad before the stranger on the call did, indeed, respond.

“Cara,” they croaked out, saying her name in a way that made her stifle another shiver.

“Do you know what my gift to you now means?”

The blood drained out of her face when she realized who this stranger was.

They were the owner of that little black book.

“N-no, I don’t,” she stuttered in shock. Her eyes began to roam like a wild creature around her loft. A small part inside of her had still been ready to pounce if anyone was in here hiding…

Chuckles sounded out through the phone before they gave her an answer.

“It now means that you’re finally free.”

Cara gulped in true fear now, frozen in place. She could do nothing but grasp onto the reasoning left intact within her. She tightened her hands as she clutched the phone even harder. Tried to focus on processing the words that the stranger had spoken.

“Free?” she asked, eyebrows raising in confusion. “Free from what?”

She hated that she could have sworn that she heard their sly smile before they answered again.

“Free from the man next door.”

The line went dead after that. And that was when she knew.

She was free. Free from him.

Free from his lies and deceit. From his abuse and his conditioning of her imprisonment.

Free to flee the country now; to report him and all those other captive women and men that he had trapped here.

To live in confinement. Do nothing and be nothing but his faithful little slaves. Only able to go out and about to collect intel on his enemies and lovers.

To build up the knowledge of the secrets he kept inside his little. Black. Book.

Cara turned around, the realization sinking in when she saw the book now open again on the kitchen table.

The money was still tucked away in the carving where she’d last left it.

But when she came closer to the table and looked at the book even closer, she realized that the book was not empty at all.

The words were slight in their legibility. Their near invisible gray ink made it difficult to manage to read well. But they were there.

Whatever magic her savior had committed, they’d freed them all from this place.

The place she’d pretended to be her home from dusk till dawn her entire life.

And now? Now, she, indeed, is free.

Freed from his shackles. And freed from the book.

Huffing a low laugh in euphoria, Cara went back to the phone and dialed a number.

She sank to her knees as she waited for an operator to answer her call. And the cuckoo clock began to ring again: blaring loudly into the night beyond.

Singing it’s notes of harmony that sang with her heart’s desires.

To be free. To fly and have the world to be her own soaring conquest.

And now, she was.

The little black book had freed her.

It would free those who’d also had to contend themselves with being enslaved. Trafficked. Abused and lost forever.

Cara whistled the bird’s tunes long after the clock had began ticking regularly again.

She didn’t stop until an operator answered.