"I Won"

I won.

Vocal recently held a short story contest with a $20,000 grand prize and I won.

I’m as shocked as anyone.

I remember seeing the ad a little over a month ago and being intrigued by it, not only because of the hefty prize attached (which I began to fantasize about immediately), but by the prompt as well: the story had to involve someone who came into a large sum of money, and a mysterious black book, but the rest was essentially left up for interpretation. I liked the black book– my mind was already going many different directions with it.

I thought about writing of a young man, either on a hike or walking through the city, that would have stumbled upon a little black book and opened it to find all the movements of his day described therein. He would’ve gotten to the point of being truly disturbed before closing the book but, not long after, out of some absurd curiosity that defies reason, he would have skipped ahead to the present moment and read the line that explained how he skipped ahead to read that line and, like a man possessed, followed the path it had set for him from there. This would have led him through a series of odd encounters and minor trials, and at the end he would have found an anonymous briefcase with $20,000 seemingly meant just for him.

But, while this idea certainly had its merits, it seemed to me too typical– the hero (ha-ha) embarks upon some journey into the unknown and must go “through the fire,” so to speak, before returning to relative normalcy changed by their experience, and with a reward in this particular case. It could have been done and has been over and over, so I decided to keep on thinking.

It wasn’t until the next day that I remembered the prompt again. This time my idea revolved around the inheritance of a little black book left to the girlfriend of its former owner, a strange young man of mysterious wealth. He would have been severely troubled by the end of his life, isolating himself before committing suicide and blaming everything, both his fortune and downfall, on the book: the central conflict would have been the dispute over what should happen to it now that he’s gone.

His last will and testament would have stated that he wished for it to be destroyed, but his family would argue against this: his siblings obviously would have wanted to use it for personal gain, either choosing not to hide this or simply lacking subtlety (I had not thought that far); his mother would claim she’d like to keep it as a memento, that he was being irrational when he wrote that in, and that she can’t imagine destroying anything of her son’s even if it was his last wish, though her motives would have seemed questionable; the girlfriend, it’s lawful owner, would have been silent throughout the process, only to reveal that the book would be destroyed as requested when finally asked.

And while I liked this concept for the fact that it offered an opportunity to create characters with greater depth than the former, I thought that such a family drama might be a bit dry, a bit boring (as I find them).

I travelled along the lines of an inheritance for some time, though, even venturing to begin a poorly conceived piece two pages prior to this one with the words “When I was young I lived in the mountains…” I am young and currently live in the mountains: I was going to create a character like myself who, late in life, reflects upon his coming into the possession of a little black book filled with cryptic symbols that he would have spent years trying to decipher only to discover– or, moreso, conclude– there was never any meaning to be found in it.

I wish I could explain this idea as I had the others, and give a reason for why I began that piece out of them all, but what is there to say of such nihilism?

It was about this time, though, after writing half of the introductory paragraph, I actually went back to read the contest guidelines fully. They were more specific than I originally thought– the character had to come into exactly $20,000. A statement regarding this is what sparked my final idea (this very work you’re reading now): “... daydream about all the possibilities that come along with a $20,000 prize…”

But instead I remembered all of the strange tangents I had been sent on up to that point, and I thought that I could work my entire thought process from when I first saw the ad to my actual writing of the piece into one coherent text from the perspective of having already won the contest and that, ‘Hey, that’s not too bad.”

And then I thought about how that would allow me to comment upon my writing as I wrote, discuss my thinking with the reader as I went along and even mock my own blatant narcissism (“He would have been a young man…), have the whole text scream “LOOK AT ME! LOOK! IS THIS WHAT YOU WANT? IS IT?” and still make sense within the context, berate myself for it and preemptively deconstruct my story before it’s even finished, make a joke of it because I’m so afraid that you would do the same if given the chance and that no matter how much I deny it I do care what other people think, and that I could let the text spiral for a moment like my thoughts were right then and...

And I thought more about the prospect of sharing my piece, the vulnerability of it: I thought that this work could be intimate, personal, and in the same instant that this desire to let it be so arose it met my defensive nature– I was divided. So I began to think of some alternative, a way in which I could reconcile with the opposition in me.

And that’s when I thought, ‘It doesn’t have to be me if I don’t want it to be: in fact, if it’s written, it can’t ever be anything but words, an approximation. The ‘I’ isn’t I.’ That I could write not of myself and my own actions but, perhaps, of a character like myself, with thoughts much like my own and, in this way, let you in yet still leave room to say “It’s not me, though! No! It’s fiction, pure fiction!” should I ever wish to deny my works closeness to me.

And I realized that these thoughts were senseless, and would be endless if I let them be– that whether I entered anything or not I wanted to see this idea through then (I really did like it), and then nothing else mattered, all resistance was gone in me. Excited, I opened the little black composition book lying in my bed to the next clean page, skipped the first line and began my story on the second from the top with a confident two words: “I won.”