A Little Black Book

A little black book.

Untouched and ostensibly ordinary, its cover was bare. The glossy black leather was unfettered with any etchings or imprints of any kind. On the top-right corner, however, was plastered a bright green star of a sticker with the words “GUARANTEED BESTSELLER” bursting in white. What would be a bold claim in a bookstore was a whim of fortune in this unassuming garage sale you have found yourself meandering by.

You reach forward to accept it’s offer.

Inspecting its exterior briefly, and seeing that the body was in fact entirely barren with the exception of the sticker, you open it expecting a notebook of some kind, one searching for new life.

First page, empty. A quick flip through confirmed no signs of life.

Splendid.

You had just finished coughing and wheezing into existence a miserable monotony bored of passion, only survived by undead caricatures of mannequins, beset with trials of writer’s block and the thrills of finally finishing one’s work. A eulogy from the start, and an autopsy for its end.

Perhaps this would be different.

It felt different.

It’s fleshy pages nurturing, it’s spine bold and armed for adventure, you think why not conceive another! If we are to be fruitful and multiply, we must take those misfortuned and malnourished children of mundanity and feed them to mouths agape and anew, and only then can true life, a rayonnant conqueror of life be born!

You wave the book to the wizened, grey-haired proprietor of the establishment while raising your eyebrows in query. He looks once at you, and then to the book, and then to you once more, grinning and gesturing away. Perplexed, you reach into your pocket and begin to approach the solemnly jovial man, but he furrows his brow, irritated, and beckons you away. You furrow your brow in return, and at his return to a smile and with yet another wave away, you shrug and nod your head, smiling back with a wave of your own.

Strange!

Home now, you sit in the same beleaguered armchair you have ordained the seat of your soles, and with your newfound destination in tow, you depart.

And up and down we go!

As advertised, your novella careened sales into bounty, twenty million copies being sold in a meager three months! Exalted are you! Overnight your name has become household classic, you’re the talk of the town, you’re all the rage! Book tours cross country, undergarments confettied, you even hear your favorite movie director is nose-deep in your pride, surely sniffing out fortune for her own! Joy!

But what next? Why, another of course!

Alive, you procure your next masterpiece and to battle stations! You mount your armchair once again, invigorated, and with pride and with power you make your first incision.

Empty.

Confused, you slice away another layer, and another, and another still.

But where is it? Where has it gone?

You hack away at its unrelenting and at its unyielding, you tear open its hide, you reach deep inside and grope and grasp and grab and grovel around for your glory… Where has it gone?

It must be here!

It must be, it was right here, right in my hands, it was mine and mine alone, where did it go, where has it gone!??

It was hollow from the get, I’ve been got! I’ve been deceived!

No, this cannot be. This must not be the one, of course not every one’s the one, my pride has gotten the better of me! The one must be the one made into!

And so recourse must be made!

Onwards for another, onwards for the one!

But nothing.

No land ho’s, no horizon’s anywhere to be found. no northern stars ashining, no frozen corpses marking ways to newer heights, nothing. No hope, no voice, not a peep.

But wait! In the distance! I can hear it before it can be seen, but to be sure it is there! Heart in my hands I listen close:

HA HA.

HA HA HA.

HA HA HA HA HA.

Laughter? Mockery!

The very worst kind, the kind that could only come from within oneself, from one’s own belly, from the depravity of one’s own gluttoned and starved ambition.

Am I a fluke? It cannot be, I have done it once, I can do it once more, I must!

What am I but else?

HA HA HA.

It is inescapable now, it is all around, inside and out, upside and down, make it stop

HA HA.

But no, it is neither from the stars nor from my soul, but it is close! In form it is near... but where?

The little black book.

My prize, my abundance, my Self and all of my being abound. The book.

Framed and exalted upon my mantle, my trophy and my monument to the only legacy I had ever desired, it stands there now, tall and terrorizing, taunting above me.

HA HA HA.

I break the book down from its throne HA HA I grip it tight and beg and plead and PLEASE HA I promise I can make you proud, I swear of it, I need to, what am I without you, without us HA HA I can do more, I can make for us greater beings more, I can take us to the highest heights and to the lowest lows, we can be we! HA HA We can take it back to new beginnings or we can take them to old, we can take it all back to where it all began…

Aha!

Back to where it began! Amazing!

On the hunt once more, you retrace your steps and have words with yourself, jumbled and fumbling around for routes and roots to a place that must clearly have never been, a phantom, a fantasy land, a failure

Where has it gone? Come back to me PLEASE

HA HA.

I give a haha for myself and hurry along.

Perhaps I had known from the very beginning that this would be the end.

From porches to paradise, and from penthouse to pavement

SPLAT