The List

It was raining in Portland.

I could have started this story with “the day ended in Y” or “they’re making another superhero movie”. Anything that was kind of crappy but constant. Of course, it was raining in Portland. But it’s important, really. That’s how the book found me.

I was crossing from Burnside to 30th when this little, black book came sailing down the flooded street gutter. It was surfing that gutter stream so fast it went right past me, like it had someplace to be. I don’t know why I followed it.

I jogged to keep up with the book; half a block maybe, but still, no logical person dodges their regular route to follow around a piece of trash. Unless you happen to be my mother referring to the girls I entertain, then this is just typical of me.

When I picked it up, the notebook is dirty and warped. Inside, in nearly illegible scribbles, someone had written a list of names. I could barely make them out in the pale blue light and drizzle. I read the first one: John Butler Grim-

A spray of water hit me in the back right at that moment, cold and electric. I looked up to see it was from a car skidding, it’s rear jackknifing right into an old man on the crosswalk.

Oh man, I’m shaking just writing this down.

I’d never seen human blood puddle before. The street was wind-whistling empty. I rushed over. It’s gonna be ok, I tell him. I took my jacket off to make a pillow for the old man’s head. The guy on the phone for the ambulance told me to keep him conscious while we wait so I start telling him about my work life, my apartment, my awful cat, anything to keep his watery blue eyes on me. He actually twitched out a smile when I told him about my cat using my shoe as a litter box.

Dying, you know, it really promotes togetherness.

The paramedic later told me the ID in the old man’s wallet was to one John Butler Grim. I kept my mouth shut because I was gonna to look like a psychopath with a little, black hit-list if they see the book.

I know this all sounds crazy, but we live in a world with the Bermuda Triangle, unexplained UFO sightings and Guy Fieri with a hit TV show.

What I’m saying is: this world is big and strange things happen all the time.

I had accepted my part in the Outer Limits episode of my life, glad for it to be over. Three days later, though, I got a call from some gold encrusted law office. Turns out: he had lived long enough in the hospital to call his lawyer.

That crazy old man turned out to be a crazy rich old man. And he had left everything in his will to me.

____________________________________________________

I watched the funeral from a far-off hill. I’m not family, I’m not crashing that particular party. I do, however, legally needed to haunt the wake to finish up the will paperwork.

The house, and the family for that matter, were stone cold. Stone cold beautiful, stone cold rich, stone cold towards me. I can’t say I blamed them.

One of them, the oldest daughter, cornered me in the library.

“You have no idea what you’ve done,” she said, one manicured finger pointed at me, the other four wrapped around a glass of alarmingly expensive champagne.

“That man was a monster. He hasn’t spoken to us in years. He withheld everything from us: his love, his business, everything.” She snarled. But I could see there was pain in her blue eyes, too. “Guess you were his grand final joke on us.”

I tried to do a good thing, I told her. I didn’t ask for any of this, I muttered as I tried to shrink myself out the oak doors.

“Did he…” she called out from the quickly darkening room. “Did he mention anyone- I mean, did he say anything? You know, at the end?”

I turned back to her. He said he wanted to see his family, I lied. I watched how her jaw twitched and her nose flared. She wouldn’t cry in front of a stranger. I headed out into the newly formed night and went home.

____________________________________________________

I tossed the book out my apartment window. I watched as the local vagrant picked it up and shuffled back to his spot under the bridge. Good riddance, I thought. You’re gonna be reduced to nothing but hobo toilet paper, you evil little book.

But then 3AM woke me up with a cold sweat. Like a zombie, shirtless and utterly bat-crazy, I found myself under the same bridge trying to spot the homeless man who took my book.

God, I wish I hadn’t now.

He was slumped over a dying fire, blue skinned. He had taken his coat off to inject his junk of choice and I can’t say for sure if it was the hit or the cold that did him in.

I wretched but did a small kindness and closed his eyes with my fingertips.

The backpack is lying next to him. I dug in, and I found paper.

Lots of paper. Money.

What is going on?! I thought. I couldn’t attract money to me in my 20s if I had worn a big sign that said “CHEAP BEER” and stood in the middle of the downtown Pearl District. Now I’m… I’m what? Following down a list in a Monkey’s Paw-esque notebook; it grants your wish but in the worst possible way?

I couldn’t help myself. I found his library card and ripped open the little black book. Grim, then another name (is that where the homeless man got the money?) and then: we had a match. His library card and the third name in the book.

Both his.

____________________________________________________

I didn’t leave my apartment for weeks. The black book collected specks of dust on the highest shelf of my closet. Aren’t you rich now? You’re probably thinking. Why are you living in a moldy apartment when you could be in Fiji?

It’s an aesthetic thing.

My yellowing linoleum tiled apartment was the perfect moody backdrop for my downward spiral.

If I hadn’t stepped in, gotten involved, would the old man had lived? Was me and the book finding him what caused all of it to happen in the first place? Or was it destined?

If I hadn’t thrown the book out my window, the vagrant wouldn’t have picked it up. He must have seen his own name. Not knowing what that implies, he must have stumbled upon Dead Guy #2 on the list, got the money, and maybe got spooked. Maybe he connected the dots. His name next. Did the drugs kill him, or did finding the book make him take too much out of fear of the future? Did he do it on purpose as a ‘take control of his destiny’ kind of thing?

I can never ask.

I didn’t eat. I drank dangerous amounts of coffee to ward off sleep and nightmares. Showering became a funny, silly thing other people do. Happy people. Not me.

Cursed. I thought to myself. I’m cursed. The money I have is cursed. That freaking book is cursed.

Days later, I must have cracked because I came up with an idea. A painfully stupid, caffeine and insomnia-fueled idea.

I opened the book.

I hopped on the internet.

Next name on the list: Emilia Watkins.

She lived in Seattle. Retired schoolteacher. She’d won some awards for- oh, man- providing free lunches to low-income students in her community. Christ, I thought. This woman's a saint.

I arrived in Seattle the next morning. I sat in a nondescript coffee shop all day, hoping to talk myself out of the plan.

I don’t look for Emilia. I guess because some part of me knew I didn’t have to. I purposefully chose a seat facing a wall. Then I got this tingle at the back of my neck and I knew.

I knew she’s standing in line at the coffee shop, right behind me.

I suddenly felt like I was drowning. If I looked at her, I knew something horrible would happen. If I didn’t look at her, would she live? Would anything at all happen? Is that even an option in this horrific and weird dimension I’ve stumbled into? Or is the fact that I felt compelled to come here at all indication that I couldn’t stop Fate and I was just a scruffy, fairly ripe smelling pawn in its game?

Then, the barista shouted my name for my coffee order, and I couldn’t help it. My head snapped to look towards the bar and at that same moment, Emilia clutched her chest and crumpled like a napkin.

____________________________________________________

I found a lottery ticket in Emilia’s coat pocket. Figures. It grew damp in my hand as I waited for her daughter to walk out of the school building. She had followed her mom’s footsteps, also becoming a teacher.

She looked exactly like her social media picture, so I was able to spot her easily.

Emily? I asked.

“Yeah? Who are you?” She was pretty in the Girl Of My Dreams kind of way but talk about the opposite of a meet-cute.

I, uh, I was there when your mother… I told her. I tried to help.

Or rather: I basically caused what happened to your mom to happen at all. If I hadn’t shown up, there was a chance your mom would still be alive and I’m a horrible person slash Fate’s golden retriever. Do you want to go get some Mexican food with me sometime?

She told me to give you this, I lied, handing Emily the ticket. The jackpot was hovering around $750 million back then.

“My mother told you to give me this?” Emily asked, unconvinced.

I had to think. Yeah, she kept talking about you. About, you know, making sure you were taken care of and she just handed me the ticket.

I wasn’t sure if she believed me. She stared down at the paper in her hand for a long time.

Eventually, she said, “thank you. That means a lot to me.”

It’s a lot of money if you win. I said, although I already knew it was the winning ticket.

“I don’t care about the money,” she clarified to my dumbfounded face.

She continued, “you were there when… you telling me I was the last thing she was thinking about, it helps. A little.”

She placed her hand on my shoulder. “It’s a good thing you did.” She walked past me to the parking lot.

I spent the rest of my day like a ghost walking around the harbor. I remember the wind picked up and pushed against my back.

What if I finished the list? What if I go down the line and offer some solace to those left behind, make sure the money goes into the right hands? It’s almost Bruce Wayne-like, I tried to tell myself. Eh, more like a high school dropout Grim Reaper, I rationalized.

I didn’t have the nerve to leave the little, black book in someone else’s hands; and destroying the book filled me with a mortal fear of being good and cursed forever.

There was no other option, I decided: I had to find the people on the list, help out if I could. If not, at least help those whose lives were about to be both destroyed and miraculously fixed in one cataclysmic event.

So, yeah. That brings us to why I’m writing to you.