Used-to-be-Arthur and the little black book.

It was quarter past three on a Thursday afternoon, and Arthur was dead at his table in his usual diner.

Surprisingly, for the fact that he was (emphasis on past tense) an otherwise healthy forty-six year old, it took two hours for anyone to discover that he was no longer as healthy as he had been. And when someone did, it was not the someone Arthur might have hoped for it to be. It was not, as Arthur may have wanted, a paramedic. Or even a member of the faux-jovial staff that always pretended to remember his face.

No, it was Cecil. Cecil, who was not having a very good day.

It was, ostensibly, better than Arthur’s in the most basic sense that Cecil was not dead, but he had spend a decent portion of the day thinking that it wouldn’t have been inconvenient if he was. Where Arthur had gone into the diner under the misguided impression that he would have an average meal and an average continuation of his average but enjoyable life, Cecil had visited in the decidedly un-average desire to sit and figure his way out having no money.

He was not being hyperbolic, either. Cecil was broke. Completely. Not. A. Penny. He almost wanted to laugh. Almost. The rest of him wanted to cry.

Twenty-seven and totally broke.

‘Not a penny,’ he told the top of Arthur’s dead head as he slid into the booth, intending only to wait until an empty table came free. An indisposed - what was the man? Sleeping? High? Unconsciously attempting to suffocate on his half-finished sandwich? - companion was sufferable for now. ‘Can you believe that? Nothing.’ He shoved his head despondently into his hands and heaved a world-weary sigh. ‘You really wouldn’t believe the day I’m having. I got fired, you see. I was supposed to get paid today, so I spent the last of my money last night on - well, you know what, I don’t think you care that much, and I can’t be bothered to say - on stuff, and then I get into work today and bam! I’m fired. No pay, either. Oh, I really am fucked, aren’t I?’

He rubbed his face, entirely too aggressively, but it was strangely satisfying to feel the unpleasant push and pull of tired skin going up and down. When he opened his eyes, he blinked the static hum from them, noticed something small and black just past the weirdly still fingers of his weirdly still table-mate and made a noise vaguely like an ‘ah’.

‘What’s this? You really should be more careful with your things -‘ He reached out to pull the little, black notebook out of the puddle of tomato ketchup it had fallen into. ‘- you know,’ he finished, wiping the red sauce onto a white napkin he pulled from the broken dispenser. ‘It’s also really not good to fall asleep at the table with your things lying about. Someone could steal it. Honestly, anyone could just walk along and spot it right there on the table and nab it out from under your nose. It’s honestly a bit careless.’

He whistled a line of a song he didn’t know the name of, and turned the notebook over in his hand. It wasn’t locked or held shut with any straps or bits of anything that Cecil could see, but the covers refused to open and the pages all seemed stuck together. On the back was a note that said ‘For the love of God, don’t open it.’

Cecil gripped the front and back covers and decided to ignore it.

What was the worst that could happen? It was a notebook. No one had ever been hurt opening a notebook -

‘Ow!’

He sucked his thumb into his mouth, licking up the line of blood drawn by the unconscionably sharp corner of the black back cover.

Correction: no one had ever been hurt successfully opening a notebook.

He scowled, and glowered up at his still narcoleptic-ally present ‘friend’.

‘You really sleep like the dead, you know. And why the funny note? Have you got some kind of secret written in here? A lost fortune, maybe?’ He smirked and preened, pretending for a moment to enjoy the feeling of a bucket-full of money just falling into his life. Oh, what a day that would be. What an astoundingly unlikely miracle. ‘Either way, I should suppose you’d like to keep that miracle money though, wouldn’t you? Ah, crumbs. It was just a dream.’

He put the book down and sat considering the man he didn’t know had been Arthur.

‘You’re very pale. You probably ought to get some sun. Or maybe just a fake tan? I really hate to say it, but you are looking quite dead - oh!’

He had, in an action he would likely regret the rest of his life, reached out and prodded No-Longer-Arthur in the head, which had, with a startlingly sickening thwop, rolled lifelessly onto its side.

He stared, unblinking, until something in his chest went snap! and he jolted back into the pleather-y embrace of the cheap diner seat.

‘Oh,’ he said again, still just blinking at dead Arthur as though staring a little longer might do something to alter his dead-ness. ‘You are dead. Silly me.’ He laughed, though he was sure it sounded more than a little unstable. ‘I guess…’ He looked down at the notebook sitting snug in his other palm. ‘…you probably won’t miss this after all? Not to say that I’m glad you’re dead - no, on the contrary, I’m very sorry, you see, but well, I suppose once a thing has happened there’s not really much you can do about it is there? You’re dead, and I’m curious as all hell as to what’s inside this notebook. Can I open it?’

Cecil waited approximately thirty seconds before deciding that had been an appropriate amount of time to have passed, and smiled. ‘Why, thank you very much, Sir. Your generosity is astounding.’

Apparently having sensed that its previous owner’s demise had been discovered, the little black book flopped open in Cecil’s hands, settling quite comfortably between his fingers. He hummed approvingly, already liking the book. He liked it still more when he took a closer look at the page it had opened to.

‘Well I’ll be damned,’ he said, face doing something funny that he was sure probably looked quite possessed. ‘Twenty thousand?’ He looked back up at Arthur, finger tips tip-tapping on the table top when he put the book down very carefully. ‘Twenty thousand dollars in the account it says here? So why the little note, hm? Why the ‘For the love of God, don’t open it’? Trying to keep it all to yourself?’

He hummed. He scratched his nose.

‘That didn’t turn out very well for you, did it? I wonder what happened to you.’ He snapped the book shut. It had clearly decided to come to him. Whatever the circumstances, it was clear as crystal that the book was his and with it the twenty thousand dollars in the labeled account. ‘Well! I suppose it doesn’t matter. It’s sad, and I’m sorry you’re… you know… not so alive anymore. But thanks for the money! You’ve really helped me out. Hmm. I should do something for you too, I guess. Ah.’

He waved his hand, easily flagging down the waitress who was walking past with a sad looking pot of maybe-coffee in her hand.

‘Yeah? What can I get you?’ She eyed was-once-Arthur warily and Cecil smiled.

‘Oh, I’m fine. I’ve got everything I need, and I think I should be going now. But I thought I’d just say - I sat here to wait for a table but I’m pretty sure this man’s dead. Like. Dead-dead. I think you might want to get a coroner or someone here pretty sharpish. Sorry! Not the best news for lunch time, but I suppose it’s better for you than him, hm?’

He slid from the booth as the waitress dropped the pot of sludgy, brown something and he smiled again, a little sadly. ‘It really is awful for him, but that’s life, I suppose. Ah - well, perhaps the opposite? I’ve never been much of a philosopher.’ He clutched that small black book closer to his heart and turned his back on the poor girl as she figuratively combusted, and made sure to shut the diner doors before her horrified scream could reach his ears.

He felt bad. He did. But if he was honest with himself - which he usually was, through no fault of his own - he really hadn’t asked to sit at a table with a dead man during the late afternoon lunch rush. Either way, for better or worse, his money issues were currently solved, and with a light spring in step he put the diner in his metaphorical mirror and made his way towards the nearest bank. He had twenty thousand dollars to transfer to his own account, after all.