LITTLE BLACK BOOK

You're tired of being lonely.

Earlier this week, you passed a bookstore with a green hand on the door, and a little black book in the window had caught your eye. It was a worn book, obviously secondhand, with SPELLS, VOLUME 1 embossed in tiny gold script on the spine, barely noticeable. Thumbing through it, you noticed the table of contents included a chapter on Love Spells. You bought it, desperate to fill the aching hole inside. Tonight is Saturday night, and once again, you are home alone. You microwave a Hungry Man dinner--Chipotle BBQ Sauced Boneless Chicken "Wyngz". The bland potato mush sticks in your throat, threatening to choke you--one of your greatest fears, as you live by yourself and are not sure how to give yourself the Heimlich. Feeling equal parts ridiculous and desperate, you grab the brown paper bag that is buried under a pile of mail--hidden intentionally from view, as you had been embarrassed as soon as you stepped out of the bookstore.

The pages are crinkly, yellowed, with ominous rust-colored spatters in places. You flip through, passing Love Potion No. 9 and a section on Aphrodisiacs that suggests wearing the testicle of a rooster in a pouch around the neck. Skipping over some of the more complex rituals that call for things you can't even pronounce, as well as the ones that are intended to draw a specific lover to you--being so lonely you can't even call to mind the last time you had a real crush--you land on A Ritual to Summon a Demon Girlfriend from Hell. After chanting what you hope were the right words and making a mess of your floors with Morton's salt, you close the book, feeling a flush of shame crawling up your cheeks again. "Am I completely insane?" you ask, and resign yourself to eating potato chips in bed while watching Law and Order SVU. Walking down the hallway to your bedroom, however, you notice an eerie red glow coming from under the bathroom door. There is a burning smell, with an edge of sulfur to it. Oh God, is the septic system backed up again? You open the door, and a blast of heat hits your face. The red glow is coming from the cast-iron bathtub, and as you stand there, stunned and open-mouthed, a small hand curls up around the rim, leaving streaks of black across the off-white enamel. Followed by a head of hair, the color of which it is hard to tell through the soot. Glittering black eyes lock onto yours.

"Hey babe, sorry I’m late. What’s for dinner?”

She is a force to be reckoned with. Her ascent from the bathtub brought with it a complete overhaul of your previously lackluster life. The first thing she does is stake her claim on one side of the bed--your side. You don't mind, because she usually starts levitating a few minutes after she falls asleep, leaving the whole mattress to you anyway. The overall decor has improved, with what appear to be actual moons orbiting each other in the corner and a galaxy of stars sprayed across the walls. An upgrade from the beige of before. Your drab, hospital-grade bedding has been replaced, with a comforter and pillows so fluffy and cloud-like you are surprised she didn't float down on them from heaven. The eerie red glow you first saw in the bathroom now emanates from under the bed, fading to pink where it meets the glowing blue cast by the ceiling-sky, but the smell of sulfur has been replaced by lavender and something spicy you can't quite put your finger on.

Your girlfriend, despite her origins, is sweet--though her temper is not to be trifled with, unless you’re looking to receive third-degree burns both physical and verbal. She knows her way around the kitchen, putting your days of microwave meals firmly in the past. Gone are the Tombstone pizza boxes, cartons of Chinese takeout, wilted carrots bought with best intentions and promptly forgotten in the crisper drawer. The fridge is now gleaming and filled with strange fruits, a rainbow of vegetables, kombucha, juice, coconut water, oat milk, slabs of organic meat, smoked fish, homemade cheesecake with berry sauce, jars of jam, jars of pickles, jars whose contents you would rather not investigate. And hot sauce. Lots and lots of hot sauce. You didn’t know there was so much subtlety and nuance to hot sauce flavors.

The grocery bill is significantly higher than it was when you were gagging on reconstituted sawdust. Your girlfriend can’t exactly go get a job, seeing as she didn’t quite pass through immigration when she relocated from Hell. No Social Security number, no identification, no birth certificate. Truthfully, you’re not too keen on the idea of setting her loose upon the world, even if it were possible to find some under-the-table work for her. You also find it hard to say no, and your budgeting suggestions were met with disapproval. 

“You are what you eat. If you want to be a hungry man, keep eating Hungry Man,” she says, “but for myself, I require wholesome, nutritious food. Because I’m a wholesome, nutritious girl.” She winks, and you know the discussion is over.

You think about picking up overtime at work. God, you hate your boss, and the thought of spending more time around him and less time at home with the girlfriend you’re worried about feeding seems too cruel a price to pay. Maybe he would agree to a raise? Lord knows you deserve it, but he’s a stingy bastard. Rob a bank? You are deliberating between classic ski or Jason mask for the big heist when you realize the obvious solution has been staring you in the face. You get up and cross the room to the bookcase, and slide the little black book off the shelf.


You flip through the table of contents, which looks slightly different than you remember. There is a section on Financial Magic, lettered in green. Your finger traces a line past COIN TRICKS [including “DISAPPEARING COIN - H.HOUDINI”], skips VANISHING DEBTS [...TO PREVENT UNJUST ENTRY OF YOUR HOME BY UNSCRUPULOUS DEBT COLLECTORS], pauses by MONEY BAGS [like the ‘aphrodisiac’ you encountered before, these involve special items placed in a pouch and carried around for luck], and lands on FAST MONEY SPELLS. With several to choose from, you decide to go with MOON WATER SPELL TO CALL IN MONEY MONTHLY. It calls for a simple list of ingredients--glass bowl, silver coins, candles--and a full moon. You glance over at the calendar, which, thanks to your girlfriend, has all the lunar phases boldly marked in blue sharpie. The full moon is tomorrow night.

On your way home from work, you stop by the co-op down the street from your apartment. You had not shopped there much before, instead preferring the low prices of the CantAffords across town, but your girlfriend’s insistence on eating organic has you adjusting your shopping habits as well. On one of your early visits browsing these foreign aisles--filled with bulk herbs next to cork-stoppered glass containers, dried edamame snacks in place of potato chips, tinctures and essential oils and recycled toilet paper, all on shelves that advertised LOCAL and HANDMADE and ORGANIC--you had noticed a multicolored display of taper candles. This time, you make a beeline for them and select a box of silver ones. On the way to the register, there is a flower stand, and you wind up leaving with a bag of candles and an armful of chrysanthemum, peonies, dahlias, freesia, and eucalyptus. As well as another pomegranate for tomorrow’s yogurt.

You arrive home to find your girlfriend preparing for her own full moon ritual, which she performs religiously every month. Presented with the bouquet, she buries her face in it, and then in your chest. “Thank you, these are beautiful!” she says as she wraps her arms around your neck, covering your face with hot kisses. Her skin is always very warm to the touch, being from the Deep South and all. She twirls away and opens the cabinets, looking for something to put the flowers in. She locates an especially large mason jar, fills it with water, and sticks the bouquet inside. She disappears for a moment and reappears with some red yarn, which she uses to fashion a bow around the jar. “There, that ties it together, don’t you think?” she asks. “Now, I’ve got to finish something in the bedroom. It’ll take me another hour, then we can eat. There is a charcuterie board already made in the fridge--do NOT touch it before dinner.” She pokes you, sticks her tongue out, then vanishes down the hall into the bedroom. The door closes, and in a few minutes, you can smell something burning. Best not to ask what.

This gives you ample time to perform your own ritual. You grab the book, the candles, a lighter, a glass bowl, and a handful of coins out of the change jar. These, you bring outside to the back yard. If this does work, maybe you can cut back on your hours. Maybe even quit your job! You picture the look on your boss’s face when you tell him you won’t be coming in anymore. Fuck-You money, that’s what you want. You arrange the items in front of you, then curse as you realize you need water in the bowl. A trip back in, a minute at the sink, and then you’re walking back outside--a bit slower this time, so as not to spill the water everywhere. It is time.

You crack the little black book open to the page you had marked with a dollar bill yesterday. Washington is giving you a slightly disapproving look, as if what you’re doing goes against the bootstrap-pulling he intended for his citizens. You set him aside and read over the instructions a couple of times. Candles, lit. Coins, in bowl. Words, chanted. The incantation is in a language you don’t recognize, so you cross your fingers and hope you got the pronunciation right. It says to let the candles burn overnight, so you close up the book and leave everything else as is, heading back inside to enjoy the selection of finger foods your girlfriend has prepared.

The next morning, you wake before your alarm. All night, you dreamed about quitting your job. Your fantasies have grown from simply affording a higher grocery bill, to never working for someone else again. Finally having time to explore your own passions, travel, volunteer, learn another language--everything your current work schedule leaves you too tired to do. You think about taking your girlfriend to the Caribbean, seeing her frolic on the beach. Filling a bathtub with exotic flowers for her to swim in. No, not a bathtub--a hot tub. A big one.

You all but run out to the backyard, where the nubs of the burned-out candles are barely visible as you approach. You can no longer see the coins in the glass bowl, either, as it is now full of something dark, almost black. As you draw closer, you see an envelope floating on top of the water, with a strange symbol drawn on it in red ink. When you reach into the bowl to grab it, your hand comes away wet and red. The envelope is somehow still dry, and when you open it, there are two stacks of $100 bills, each with a mustard-colored band that reads “$10,000”.

You head back inside, wiping your hand on your sweatpants. You don’t care if the liquid from the bowl stains them--you’ll just buy more. All you care about now is getting inside and making that phone call you had been practicing in your head all night.