Ghost Writers

“I just feel like I’m in a good place, like I have a vision for my future,” Claudine told Valerie as they made their way back to the parking lot after a Saturday afternoon of wine, sunshine, and conversation on the green lawns of the park of Versailles, just outside of Paris.

For the first time in a long time, Claudine was hopeful. She had recently decided to quit her job as a web designer and pursue a writing career. Writing had always been something Claudine did in one form or another: poetry, diary entries, playwriting, movie reviews, even facebook rants. However, she never saw herself as a writer. To her, writers wore black turtlenecks, drank artisanal coffee, and read Voltaire and Hemmingway in their spare time. Meanwhile, she loved movies, nightclubs and wearing bright colors.

Then one day, it dawned on her that maybe she had it all backward. What if there was no archetype, no uniform required? What if, what made a writer a writer was simply… writing? And so she dismantled her mental barriers and took a chance on her private passion. All she needed now was some sort of confirmation from the Universe that this was indeed her true calling…

As Valerie ushered her hyperactive beagle into the backseat, Claudine’s phone vibrated.

“Huh… interesting,” she grinned.

“What?”

“Lori, a friend of mine, sent me a post on instagram. It’s a contest… a creative writing contest, with a grand prize of $20,000.”

“Oh wow, that sounds amazing!”

“Right?”

“What kind of story do you have to write?”

“Ironically, the challenge is to write a story about someone who unexpectedly comes into $20,000.”

“Cute.”

Claudine shrugged and put her phone away, without giving it much more thought than that.

Valerie was kind enough to drop her friend off before heading home. As the two hugged goodbye, Valerie thought to ask:

“Oh, so are you going to enter that contest?”

Claudine sighed and stared ahead.

“I don’t know… the deadline is in two days. What are the odds I write something compelling enough to catch anyone’s attention?”

“Well… if you give it a shot, you might surprise yourself. I mean, you have nothing to lose, right?”

“Yeah… maybe.”

“Just have fun with it! And when you win… you owe me a trip to Croatia.”

You have nothing to lose… Valerie’s words clamored inside of her buzzing head. It was Sunday morning and Claudine had spent the better part of it emptying out her phone and watching people lie on social media. In annoyance, she threw her phone to the side and laid starfish-flat on her back, eyes fixated on the off-white ceiling. Should she enter the contest? The truth is, she was scared. It wasn’t even about the money. If she entered and didn’t win, she would take it as a sign that her dreams of becoming a writer, of being a talented storyteller, were nothing more than that – dreams. However, if she did win…

A wave of warmth and relief engulfed her as she felt the excitement that would come from the validation, from knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was truly fulfilling her destiny. Claudine grabbed her phone and pulled up the contest details. She read the guidelines repeatedly before getting up to pace around her bedroom. Instead of letting her ideas endlessly bounce around in her brain, she decided to bounce them off of someone; so she called Valerie.

“$20,000… how does someone just… get that kind of money? I mean, the guidelines already mention the obvious: inheritance, the lottery…”

“What about a suitcase full of money? Like in the movies! I’d love to find money that way,” Valerie fantasized.

“Yeah, not bad… but not quite it.”

“Or how about some sort of graduation gift from a rich Tech entrepreneur uncle? Or a wedding gift from wealthy Saudi in-laws? Or a baby shower gift from a deadbeat dad who doesn’t want to raise his unborn child but doesn’t want to ghost the mother without leaving a little something behind?”

“All great ideas, thanks… but I’m still missing that spark, that inspirational fodder.”

“Well, I tried… maybe I should enter this contest,” Valerie pondered.

After hours of brainstorming, Claudine was no closer to an idea. Now, sundown was approaching, and so was the inconvenient covid curfew that Paris was still under. Feeling a sense of urgency and angst, Claudine decided to go for a walk.

She made her way through the 15th district toward Champ de Mars – where the Eiffel tower still stood proudly despite experiencing a recent drought in touristic attention – and sauntered over to one of her favorite spots in town: a weary forest green bench that offered up a splendid view of both the Eiffel Tower and the Invalides Hotel. Claudine often sat her troubled self down on that bench to admire this view. It always filled her with such appreciation for the journey that led her to this time and space in her life.

As a late-winter breeze wafted over her, Claudine closed her eyes, tilted her head back and took a deep breath, summoning the spirits of the Great Writers of this magical city. Suddenly, her eyes popped wide open and she leapt off the bench. The city-wide curfew would kick off soon, but before it could, she had a date with the dead.

A panting Claudine stumbled into the Montparnasse Cemetery. The guard at the entrance passively stared at her. She could tell he couldn’t fathom why anyone would feel the need to run to a cemetery. It’s not like the “residents” were heading out anytime soon. Claudine flashed him an awkward grin before scurrying off into the labyrinth of tombstones.

She had been here once before, on a first date funnily enough. It was an unconventional proposal, which was what she liked about the idea. Her date – not unlike the corpses around them – was a bit lifeless and bleak, but she remembered feeling surrounded by positive energy during their winding stroll through the rows of embellished graves. She remembered thinking, the spirits must’ve been happy to have visitors, and not the crying or grieving type. So it occurred to her on the bench that the best place to channel the Great Writers of Paris was at their resting place. World-renowned authors like Charles Baudelaire, Simone De Beauvoir, Samuel Beckett, and Jean-Paul Sartre were buried at the Montparnasse Cemetery. The only problem was, she didn’t grab a roadmap before venturing onto this huge site.

Claudine talked to the spirits as she wandered, asking them to guide her, or to follow her home and for the next 24 hours help her write a captivating story. Then again, maybe not. Time was running out. Exasperated, Claudine stopped to sit on the edge of a sleek black marble tombstone. She let her head slump forward as she gradually accepted the impending defeat she was reluctant to admit. It just wasn’t meant to be. The contest was destined for some other talented soul.

From the corner of her eye, Claudine noticed something oddly resting behind the neighboring tomb. Her curiosity now peaked, she got up to get a closer look. She bent down and picked up this little black book. It was nameless, but its pages were far from blank. Claudine expected to read the contents of a diary, or even just someone’s work journal, but as her mind interpreted the words on the pages, her eyes grew wide. She gasped and dropped the book. She looked around, feeling suddenly unsafe and exposed. Before succumbing to a looming panic attack, Claudine snatched the notebook and sprinted toward the nearest exit.

Once home and without skipping a beat, she grabbed her laptop, sat cross-legged at the foot of her bed, opened up a Google doc and started writing. The words came easily, the story arch progressed effortlessly, and within a couple of hours, she had finished the first draft. She placed the laptop down, slowly turned her head to look at the little black notebook that was silently yet menacingly sitting there beside her. A shiver crept up her spine as Claudine got up and headed for the bathroom. She ran the water hot and stood in the shower with a blank expression on her face, almost as if she’d just seen a_

After her shower, Claudine thought about going to bed and revisiting her story in the morning before submitting it, but a general sense of unrest plagued her. So she returned to her laptop, fine-tuning into the wee hours of the morning. Then finally, it was ready. She submitted her story, slowly closed her laptop, and exhaled.

Although her veins were coursing with adrenaline, Claudine could no longer run from the clutches of sleep deprivation. She passed out. When she woke hours later, she felt disoriented, as if she had just returned from another century in another World. She rubbed her eyes as she regained consciousness and remembered… the notebook! Her head snapped to the side to face her nightstand where she had last placed it. It wasn’t there. In fact, it wasn’t anywhere to be found, not in her bedroom nor her apartment. The mysterious notebook had vanished. Claudine wondered if it ever really existed.

Days went by. Claudine’s life resumed uninterruptedly, and the memory of the notebook and contest were slowly relegated to the past – that is, until a couple of weeks later. The results of the contest were in. Claudine skimmed the email she had just received, and although her eyes read the words “$20,000” and “winner,” it took her a minute before she fully registered the news that, SHE HAD WON! She shrieked long and frantically before falling to her knees and breaking down into stress-releasing tears. She did it! Not only was she $20,000 richer, but she also got the confirmation she needed. She wasn’t chasing a crazy dream. She was meant to do this, and all she needed to do was believe in herself and take a small leap of Faith – oh, and seek assistance from non-physical beings.

“Oh my gooosh! We’re going to Croatiaaa,” Valerie yelled over the phone.

“Girl, I think I’m still in shock. I can’t believe_”

“I can! I never doubted your capabilities, and see? You shouldn’t either!”

Claudine cackled with the ease and lightheartedness of a multi-millionaire.

“So wait, you never told me! What did you write?”

It was true. Claudine felt so insecure about her story submission and mentally unstable after the notebook disappeared that she never told anyone about it. So she proceeded to tell her dear friend about the series of strange events that took place after their call that fateful Sunday, which led her to the enchanted notebook that held a story too incredible to believe.

“What in Holy I Dream of Genie was inside that notebook??” Valerie asked emphatically.

“It was the story of… my day. The contest, our call, my walk, the bench, my visit to the cemetery, all of it…”

“What?” Valerie breathed.

“And it even said how I would win the contest...”

“Enough with the suspense already! What did it say? What did you write?”

“... It just said, ‘she wrote the story of her story, and in doing so, reclaimed her role as the author of her life, and manifested her own destiny.’ So, that’s what I did.”

Whether it was enchanted or demonic, whether she stumbled upon it or was led to it, Claudine could never again deny the magic of the Universe, thanks to that little black notebook.