Notebooks and Nightmares

I shut my eyes for probably the twentieth time that night, desperate, longing for even a few minutes’ worth of rest.

3:13 AM.

It felt like the blinding supernova of my phone’s LED display had seared into my memory the only thing I cared to keep track of anymore:

The time.

This is pointless, I thought to myself, eyelids still closed. Tonight would mark day number four without any sleep—a new personal record.

Hm. Maybe I should celebrate.

I used to lament these endless, wide-awake nights like it was earning me retirement money, with interest. That is, until, finally, I had no one else left to listen to me complain.

My boyfriend had totally ghosted without a trace. I discovered that he had been cheating on me throughout what I’d thought were two good years together. The feeling from that was as if Zeus himself had struck me with holy lightning bolts—I loved my partner. After some pitifully embarrassing and unsuccessful begging on my part for him to stay, however, it became clear that he didn’t quite love me back the same way. He moved on without saying goodbye.

My family was gone. They’d all perished in the hotel fire during last winter’s vacation. It was our first trip outside the country that we could afford, and the last one we would ever take together.

The Belgian fire department officials informed me that loose party decorations had caught fire and set the banquet hall ablaze in fewer than thirty seconds. At least, that’s what I gathered from their rough, guttural accents, my brain scrambling to recall every piece of French vocabulary from when I studied the language.

Thirty seconds. One hundred sixty-four injured. Fifteen died, my family included.

I’d never forgiven myself for slipping away from the party to walk along the River Scheldt.

I need some air, mom. My excuse.

I’ll be right back! My unfulfilled promise.

The beauty of the cityscape reflection against the water that night was almost painful.

Any mention of New Year’s Eve quickly became one of my greatest triggers for panic attacks. Also: hotels. Also, also: rivers, creeks, lakes, oceans…any body of water larger than what fit in my bathtub, really.

Stupid flammable decorations. Stupid party. Stupid hotel.

Before the fire, I was addicted to self-help literature: it was something of a guilty pleasure, a balm for the bleeding cynic in me. After flying home, I had celebrated my sudden distaste for that fictional genre with a cocktail.

A Molotov cocktail.

There was a hidden purpose to this ritual, unknown even to me until after I'd gotten home that night.

I had set a timer to see how long before the flames spread to each one of my forty-seven books:

Thirty seconds, on the dot.

If that wasn’t the ultimate middle finger from the universe…

In retrospect, no amount of that nonsensical, feel-good fluff could have prepared me for the bottomless hole that the death of my family left in me. Most days, I felt nothing at all. Three failed suicide attempts later, I concluded that maybe I suffered from some kind of survivor’s guilt.

Or, maybe, it was the crushing realization that I was thrice too much of a coward to kill myself properly, and thrice too much of a coward to face what awaited me if I successfully completed the job. I wasn't sure anymore.

All of my friends were gone, too—not dead; they just stopped calling or visiting after a while. Hell, as inconsolable, bitter, and unwilling to accept any of their help as I was after my series of unfortunate events, I wouldn’t have wanted to be around me, either.

I took the three-step journey, up and away from the lumpy mattress on the floor of my dingy studio apartment, to use the toilet. My landlord had read about what happened to my family through our city’s top online newspaper—4 Americans, 11 more killed in tragic Belgian hotel fire, the headline went—and, upon discovering that we had some mutual connections, she reached out and offered me a heavily discounted rate on a place in her building. “It’s really the least I can do,” she had assured me after I insisted she shouldn’t treat me any differently from her other tenants. The studio was infested with roaches and, periodically, a four-pound rat or two—Maybe it really was the least she could do, I remember thinking after the first vermin sighting—but, it was home.

For now, I reminded myself.

I finished my business and rinsed my hands, the frigid water sending shivers up and down the innermost parts of my spine. I shut off the fire hydrant of a faucet, the water pressure frighteningly too strong and long overdue for a mechanical adjustment, and lifted my head. I looked into the mirror, the opaque slab of polished glass looking fractured and sorrowfully withdrawn: an appropriate parallel to the ghastly reflection returning my blank stare.

My eyes searched the splotchy, sleep-deprived skin that stretched across my broad forehead. I curled my cracked lips and prominent cheekbones into a snarl that revealed my large, crooked teeth, stained yellow from too much coffee and not enough regular maintenance. The bags below my eyelids were exhausted, weary from carrying the weight of my thoughts. I did little anymore to prevent the mysterious ethers of old from swirling about my mind: a professionally choreographed dance between electricity and death. Against all logic, the ethers sometimes assumed physical form—materializing only to etch away at my face as if subtly, painstakingly counting down a release date.

Such is the cosmic joke of my life, I thought wryly.

I stopped short.

Eyes squinting, I fixated on the 18- by 30-inch collection of shards in front of me—a literal Ikea Pangaea that my landlord had miraculously repaired using carpenter’s glue, resin, a blow dryer, and some love.

This taught me that she was skilled enough to glue a broken mirror back together and make it look artistic. It also made me wonder if this actually meant that she was too cheap to simply buy a new one.

An unexpected sight snatched me away from my abstract musings about the mirror and returned me to the present.

I flinched violently, nearly knocking myself to the floor.

Using the sink to stabilize myself, I stared wide-eyed at the mirror for no less than forty-five seconds: not at my own tattered countenance—which, in and of itself was shocking—but at the small, black notebook attached to the wall behind me.

It almost looked like it was floating. I could feel its eyes on me, quietly observing my every move.

I turned around slowly. Cautiously, I inched toward the notebook, as if the thing would fly off the wall and bite me if I didn’t approach it with utmost attentiveness and discretion.

The notebook, placed slightly below my eye level, made no sound as I gingerly removed it from the concrete wall.

I had so many questions.

What...?

When....?

Who…..?—

Never mind who—HOW?

My drumbeat heart pounded thunderously in my ears. A thousand human-sized hummingbird wings flapped in unison—a sinewy metronome threatening to tear a hole clear through my chest.

My hands trembled. I took a deep breath before finally summoning the courage to open the notebook.

At the bottom of the first page, a tiny label number “1” was hand-written in blood red ink—an alarming contrast against the rest of the bleached, white paper.

I rolled my eyes at what I saw next and scoffed.

A crisp, unblemished $100 bill clung flush with the top of page 1, hanging neatly by a single square inch of invisible tape.

One hundred dollars…just like that.

Seriously.

Seriously?

This was quite obviously a joke—an excellent, damn-near diabolical joke—but a joke, nonetheless. This had to be fake money or, at the very least, some kind of mistake. There was only one way in and out of my tiny, creaky, wood floor flat, and I hadn’t left or slept in days. Human guests of any kind had been out of the question for nearly a year.

I’m pretty sure I would have noticed someone gluing a notebook to my bathroom wall, for Christ’s sake, I thought.

I looked up and scanned the ceiling. I reached above me and wiggled the release button adjacent to the rectangular exhaust vent, suspiciously peering inside. I slid the shower curtain aside, the rusty metal rings click-clacking against each other as they moved, and whipped my eyes across the empty bathtub. I opened the toilet seat, confident that I would find hidden cameras and a crew of giggling tricksters swimming in the porcelain bowl.

I halted my frantic search for signs of notebook goblins. This cannot be happening.

I turned the page.

Label number “2”, again, written by hand at the bottom. Another $100 bill hung from the top.

Excitement and joy overtook me. The lingering hint of disbelief, however, remained.

I tore through the entire notebook, sheet by sheet, like a small child opening Christmas gifts for the first time. True to the first page, each one contained a single hundred-dollar bill taped at the top.

I continued rifling through the black book with its white pages until the red numbered labels stopped exactly at 200.

Math time. Carry the zero…

HA!

There I stood, in my bathroom, holding $20,000 in my hands.

After four years employed in upper management finance, and another two with the United States Bureau of Engraving and Printing, I could identify counterfeit money with my eyes closed.

I’m not kidding. It was how I got recruited for the Bureau job in the first place.

But these bills... Each one possessed its own, individual serial number, and the ink from the serials matched that of the Treasury Seal—a common forgery mistake, I’d learned.

I flipped through the notebook backwards before stopping at random. Carefully peeling the tape from the dollar on page 106, I raised the Benjamin against the flickering bathroom light and examined it. It was unmistakeable: the micro printing, raised textures, and laser watermarks were all there. I lifted one federal note to my nose and inhaled. It even smelled like new money: untouched and undefiled by pairs upon pairs of unwashed human hands; dirt-tracked city subway car floors; jam-packed wallets, stuffed inside sweaty trouser back pockets; body parts, sticky from sweat, artfully muscling up and down shiny metal poles; piggy banks—glass, plastic, and every kind of material in between; and humble tokens of appreciation from the Tooth Fairy herself.

Somehow, some way, these hundreds were genuine.

I felt the familiar sensation of tears forming and closed my eyes.

I smiled as steaming saltwater slipped through the crescent slits and spilled over, gently rolling down my cheeks. I brought the notebook up to my chest in a small hug and silently gave thanks. Maybe there was a God, after all.

Somewhere in the distance, my phone rang.

I opened my eyes.

Total darkness. Instant confusion.

I guess that old bulb finally burnt out, huh…

Wait. No.

It couldn’t be.

Where did the notebook go? I wondered.

My hands, eyes, and head darted aimlessly in the dark as I felt around blindly for the thing. I found the mini puddle of my teardrops, wet and still warm, and my phone, still ringing and vibrating.

I stopped short. It felt like someone had vacuumed the oxygen out of the room.

My phone…

Ringing.

Vibrating.

Impossible.

I distinctly remembered leaving my phone on the mattress.

What is my phone doing in the bathroom?

I pressed the device home key.

3:20 AM.

I sat upright.

How did my mattress get in here?

I continued to feel around for the notebook, before it finally dawned on me.

Like a helpless, frustrated child, I began to sob.

Please, God. No… I—

I had never gone to the bathroom.