The Black Notebook

Twenty thousand dollars.

Twenty thousand dollars in my bank account where before there had only been a few hundred, just enough for a few bags of groceries before it evaporated and I had to start the whole goddamned process over again of securing enough cash for food and the rent to my apartment. My apartment, with its stained, threadbare carpet, minuscule windows and dimensions that would make most walk-in closets feel superior. A shithole, basically. Not the kind of place someone with twenty grand kicking around would live in.

So where the hell had I gotten that much money?

It’s probably weird that I’m worried about suddenly having that much money appear in my bank account but I seriously don’t remember where the hell it had come from. I don’t remember doing any kind of job for that amount, don’t remember selling anything. I’m not aware of any wealthy aunts or uncles that would will me that kind of dough once they snuffed it. Family has always been kind of an abstract concept for me anyways so it’s unlikely any blood relative of mine would include me in their will even if they did have money to dump on people.

And the thing is…my memory is kind of hazy in general, not just about where the cash might have come from. I know that I’m (usually) broke and I spend most of my time alone but…that’s about it. I can’t even remember what I did yesterday, don’t even know how I usually spend my days. Do I have a job? I don’t think so but there must be something I do to make money so I can survive. But I don’t know what that is and I’m kinda starting to get freaked out here. Am I on drugs? Is that something I do? Oh god, am I just one of those junkies that stays in their apartment all day and shoots up? Is that why I can’t remember anything?

I hastily pull my sleeves up and check for track marks, scars, that type of thing but don’t find any. Maybe I just smoke a lot of dope but I don’t smell any sort of skunkish odor on me or around my apartment. Just the usual smells of crummy apartment buildings, sweat and farts and my next-door neighbor’s microwaved leftovers.

Despite the memory loss, I don’t think I’m a junkie. The paranoia fits in to the stereotype but the self-awareness doesn’t. And I am definitely aware of how paranoid I am right now.

I restlessly wander around my apartment, searching for some type of clue that might help me remember. There’s not much to see: a faded sofa with pilled fabric and sagging seats; a cheap-looking coffee table that I’m pretty sure I had to assemble myself; and a rickety easel standing in the corner that is definitely not mine. Holding it for a friend maybe? Left behind by the previous occupant and I just couldn’t bother to get rid of it?

I feel strangely compelled by it though, moving closer to it to have a better look. There’s a blank canvas propped on the easel and a set of what looks like secondhand paints nearby, along with a cup of paintbrushes. It’s set up as if some artist is going to waltz in and start painting at any moment but when I touch the bristles of the paintbrushes, they are as stiff and dry as dead grass. Whoever’s been using them hasn’t been using them lately. So what’s all this stuff doing in my apartment?

The questions keep piling up and I don’t seem to be getting closer to any answers and it’s then I spot the notebook.

It’s just sitting there on the easel, right in front of the blank canvas but for some reason, I only just noticed it now. One of those small black notebooks that aspiring writers carry around, jotting down notes and ideas for stories that no one will ever read.

I reach out a hand for it but then pull it back. It’s just a notebook but there’s something…off about it. I can’t quite put my finger on it, the unease skittering around my mind like a spider but I don’t like it. The notebook quite possibly has all the answers I’m seeking written down in its pages, either by me or someone else but I can’t make myself pick it up and look. It’s as if, as I’m staring at it, the notebook is staring back at me. I don’t want to touch it.

Instead, I grab my coat and leave the apartment. I want to get away from that thing.

Outside, I’m at a loss as to where I should go. I can’t think of any place I would normally go, any place I would want to go. I just stand there outside my apartment building, people passing me on the sidewalk, not paying me any attention, too wrapped up in their own lives to notice a possibly-amnesiac person on the verge of a neurotic meltdown.

My stomach rumbles and that at least solves my current problem about where to go--I need food. Luckily (and I need all the luck I can get right now), there’s a burger joint just across the road, the greasy fast-food smells leading me towards it like a beacon. With twenty grand in my bank account, I’ve got enough money to buy as many burgers as I can possibly stuff in my face but caution checks me as I step up to the counter and place my order. No matter where that money came from, twenty grand was enough to live on for a few months, at least while I got my shit figured out. Could last up to a year if I’m really frugal, don’t spend it on anything except food and rent.

I ponder all of this while I eat my food, tasteless as cardboard and my eyes fall on the condiment bottles lined up on the table. Bright red ketchup, sunny yellow mustard, relish the color of that muppet that was on that kids’ show. The one that lived in a trash can.

And it strikes me how pleasing those colors look together, the bright boldness of them and my mind travels back to the easel sitting in my apartment, the blank canvas waiting patiently to be painted and I start to wonder what those colors might look like if I--

And then my mind shuts down.

It’s as if something inside me detonated, obliterating all of my thoughts, my imagination, leaving only darkness. Like there’s a black hole in my brain. And I’m just left with the feeling that everything is fucking pointless. That there’s no reason for my being alive. I can barely breathe, I’m so terrified.

Finally, after what feels like an eternity, a thought swims to the surface of my blacked-out brain: the notebook.

I stumble to my feet and rush out of the restaurant, making a mad dash across the street back to my apartment building. I need answers and that thing has them. It has to.

I unlock my apartment door with shaking hands, slamming it shut and dashing over to the easel where the notebook still sits as if it were waiting for me. I snatch it up and flip it open, rifling through the pages for something, anything, that will help me.

But the pages are blank.

Blank.

Blank.

Blank.

“No, come on, there has to be something!” The words come out in a frustrated scream and my heart is beating so fast, it feels like it’s going to burst against my ribcage. “Come on--”

And then I hear a sigh right beside my left ear. “You still don’t remember, do you?”

I turn to look but there’s no one there. But accompanying the voice is a shape in my mind, formless as smoke, constantly moving as if it might coalesce into anyone or anything.

“Don’t remember what?” I whisper.

“The deal you made.” Another sigh. “What you wrote in the notebook?”

Slowly, I turn my head to look at my hands still holding the notebook, the menacingly empty pages. And then I do remember.

I remember being, quite literally, a starving artist, painting way more canvases than I managed to sell, painting and painting and painting and still getting nowhere. I remember nights of black depression, the despair like a physical weight on my chest, so heavy I couldn’t bring myself to pick up a paintbrush.

And I remember the advertisement. The one that read “TIRED OF YOUR DREAMS NOT COMING TRUE? WE HAVE A 100% COMPLETELY FOOLPROOF WAY OF TAKING CARE OF THEM FOR YOU! NO COST, NO EFFORT AND ABSOLUTELY NO REGRETS! YOUR SATISFACTION AND LIFELONG SECURITY ARE GUARANTEED!”

I don’t remember where I got the notebook from or who gave it to me but I do remember what they told me.

“...they told me to just write my dreams down…” I say slowly. “Write down whatever I wanted in my life and then it would be taken care of…”

I can even remember some of the stuff I wrote down: Make a living as an artist. Be able to paint every single day. Fall in love. Move out of the city and live in a cabin by a lake. Get a dog.

“You traded your dreams for money,” the voice says. And the voice sounds a lot like mine. “Once you wrote them down, you forgot you even had them. That was one of the trade-offs. Can’t be miserable over dreams not coming true if you don’t even have them.”

“But…” I have a million questions but the only one I can think of to ask is, “why twenty thousand?”

“A thousand for every dream you wrote down,” the voice says and then lets out a sad little chuckle. “You had a lot of them.”

I flip through the pages of the notebook again, searching for any sign of the things I wrote down, a faded sentence, a single letter.

But the pages are empty.

I close the notebook, staring at the black cover. “I won’t remember this, will I?”

“No, you won’t,” the voice says. “It’s one of the perks.” The formless shape in my mind starts to dissolve, the voice growing fainter. “We’ve already had this conversation a few times before.”

I wake up, feeling groggy. My eyes travel over the confines of my small apartment before landing on a rickety easel standing in the corner, a blank canvas propped on it. There are some paints nearby, what looks like cheap, used paintbrushes. I have no idea what they’re doing here. I’m not an artist.

I think I’ll sell them.