The Journal's Price

I ditched any belief in omens the minute I stumbled upon a dead bat sprawled out on my doorstep—seriously, what could possibly come after that with any semblance of class? But then Tuesday rolled in, determined to keep pace with the chaotic mess that is my life, and boy, did it put up a good fight.

First came the rejection email, which hit my phone at 8:03 a.m., subject line: “RE: Submission—‘The Cul-de-Sac at the End of the World.’” The body was brief, apologetic, and so effusive in its condemnation that I wondered if the editorial staff had taken turns composing it, each adding a new layer of regret, like a passive-aggressive mille-feuille. They wished me the best in my future endeavors, which, given my current trajectory, likely involved a long walk into traffic.

I threw my phone onto the couch, hoping to shatter something, but the universe couldn’t even grant that. It bounced harmlessly off the armrest and landed under a pile of laundry, which, in a small mercy, muffled the next notification.

The second sign of trouble was a busted water main on Oakley, which messed up the traffic and shoved it all past my apartment building. My street became a noisy, muddy mess, and it was driving me nuts. The city's brilliant idea was to dispatch a guy in a neon vest to enthusiastically flap a flag at approaching cars. If there was some deep metaphor lurking there, I decided it was best to roll my eyes and move on.

I poured myself instant coffee, the grounds clumping like coagulated blood, and decided to skip breakfast in protest.

My best friend, Brad, called at 11:16, which was early for him and therefore suspicious.

“I crashed my car,” he announced, as if reporting an unexpected change in weather.

“Are you dead?” I asked.

“Not yet,” he said, with a cheerfulness that bordered on sociopathy. “But they want to keep me overnight for observation. Concussion, maybe. I told them about my history with head injuries. You know, for accuracy.”

I had no immediate plans, just the usual ritual of rearranging my apartment so the depression felt new. “Do you want company?” I said, not because I wanted to, but because I suspected he’d do the same for me.

“Only if you bring snacks. I heard hospital food is basically murder by puree.”

I hesitated. “Do you want something sweet or savory?”

“Surprise me,” he said, and hung up.

I spent the afternoon microwaving a panic casserole. I did not go to see Brad. Instead, I spent thirty minutes aimlessly cleaning, and another two hours sitting at my desk, staring at the blinking cursor. The words would not come. The only thing I succeeded in writing was a single line: “Loneliness tastes like metal.” I deleted it before I could decide if it was clever or pathetic.

There is a peculiar sensation that comes from failing even at sympathy.

By the middle of the afternoon, I gave up pretending to be productive. I let the noise of traffic and the dull, nagging ache of my wandering mind take over. The day slipped away bit by bit: ten minutes on an article about how seahorses find partners, twenty on a looping video of a raccoon stealing cat food, forty scrolling back through old texts with my ex, overanalyzing every emoji for hidden meanings. Meanwhile, Brad's voice kept replaying in my head, always cheerful and unbothered. Nothing could bring him down, not even getting hit by a Buick.

Eventually, the light shifted—the city mimicking dusk, with an unsettling mix of gold and gloom—and it hit me that I was late. Not the kind of late you mark on a calendar, but the kind that gnaws at you deep inside, a reminder of all my failures. I threw on the cleanest clothes I could find, scribbled a note to "bring snacks," and slapped it on my forehead, challenging myself to remember.

I never made it out the door.

As I ambled towards the kitchen, my foot caught on a mysterious box that seemed to have appeared out of thin air, hidden behind the recycling bin. It wasn’t something I owned, yet it bore my name, scrawled in an elegant, syrupy script that teased the edges of my memory. With a curious tremor, I opened it to reveal a brown leather journal, its weight surprising in my hand. The cover bore cryptic markings that danced beyond my understanding. The initial pages lay blank, but the center swelled intriguingly with a hodgepodge of secrets: slips of paper, brittle flowers, a postcard from an unknown land. A strange cocktail of fascination and unease bubbled within me.

The journal was a relic, a thing you’d find in an estate sale run by witches. I flipped through, searching for a clue, and found, sandwiched between a Polaroid of a smiling child and a receipt for “Penzey’s Black Onyx Cocoa,” a note:

“Use this as you would your own skin. Carefully, and with a willingness to be surprised. - L.”

I didn’t know any L. Or more truthfully, I refused to remember any L, which felt both safer and more exhilarating.

I thought about Brad, somewhere in the antiseptic limbo of Room 427. I thought about the editors, and the bat, and the way the world seemed hell-bent on sending me omens I couldn’t decipher. Then I thought about the journal, and how it begged to be filled.

I uncapped a pen and wrote, “Today I went to see Brad at the hospital. He was awake, eating pudding, and we laughed about near-death experiences until the nurse kicked me out. Then I bought a lemon scone and read poetry by the river. On the way home, I felt whole.”

The pen felt smooth and cool as I rolled it between my fingers, its ink still fresh on the page. I stared at the notebook before me, where I had scrawled a vivid scene of laughter echoing through imaginary halls. The words shimmered with longing, each letter a glistening hope for a day filled with joy and wonder, a stark contrast to the reality that had unfolded instead.

I closed the journal and went to bed. I dreamed of rivers and hospitals and bats that circled over a city made of pudding and regret.

When I woke, the apartment was different. Sunlight was pooling on the rug where none should have reached. My phone was blinking with a text from Brad:

"Fetch me a lemon scone, will ya? That pudding's like a culinary felony!"

When I stepped out the front door, the bat was gone from the doorstep, replaced by a dandelion gone to seed. My computer pinged: an acceptance email, the editor’s voice cloyingly bright. “We loved your piece on the end of the world. Give us more.”

I checked the journal. The words were still there, but now, so was a new line in a script I didn’t remember writing:

“Nothing is ever just pretend.”

I gazed at that line, tracing the indentation with my thumb, sensing a subtle life within the page. On impulse—or perhaps because it was the only skill I truly possessed—I penned: "The traffic disappeared. The day nestled in and rested." Each word felt like a release. I closed the journal, half-anticipating a thunderous sound, yet

the world continued in its unyielding, insignificant way.

I kept a tally as the days dragged on. Each journal entry seemed to bend reality in small, jaw-dropping ways. My mail? Promptly delivered. The neighbor’s yapping terrier? Silenced as if by magic. I casually noted the coffee shop should revive their cinnamon rolls—boom, they were back the next morning, as if it had been the plan all along. Just little things, seemingly innocent. Changes you'd chalk up to luck or a hazy memory, unless you're used being served disaster by the spoonful.

On day six, I woke up to find a new entry in the journal that I had not written, the letters slanted and urgent, the ink glossy and damp as though freshly bled. The entry read: "Don’t be afraid. Write it real." Below, a crude drawing of a heart, split open down the middle.

I closed the journal and shoved it to the back of my sock drawer, because that felt like an action a rational person would take. Then I went about my day, which unfolded with a strange, floaty unease. The more I tried to ignore the journal, the more I found myself haunted by it. The words burned behind my eyes. I started seeing odd little rewrites bleeding into the world around me: the barista at the corner café now called me "honey" instead of "ma’am," and my neighbor's terrier had been replaced by a squat, dignified pug that nodded solemn greetings whenever we crossed paths in the hall.

On day eight, Brad called, his voice crackling with an energy I hadn't heard since college. "You haven't visited," he accused. "Are you avoiding me?"

"Of course I am," I said. "Isn’t that the entire basis of our friendship?"

He promised to come over at seven, leaving me just enough time to tidy up the charred disaster in my sink and erase any signs of supernatural meddling from the apartment. At 7:02, he showed up, holding a lemon scone and an uneven bouquet of flowers from the supermarket.

"To mark my brush with the Grim Reaper," he quipped, thrusting the bouquet in my direction. "Or was it yours?"

We perched on the balcony, nibbling on scone crumbs while the traffic crept past below. Out of nowhere, he reached over and squeezed my hand. It almost distracted me from realizing that he'd spotted the journal awkwardly sticking out from beneath a messy heap of freshly folded socks.

"Uh, is that new?" he stammered.

"An old friend sent it," I lied, because the truth was already too slippery and weird.

He opened it to the page with the urgent message. I waited for him to say something clever, but he just stared at it, brow furrowed, lips pressed tight.

"You didn’t write this," he finally said, tracing the heart with one battered finger.

"Not consciously," I offered, which was the closest I could get to honesty without falling apart.

He flashed that mischievous, lopsided Brad grin and quipped, "Oh, so you're haunted now, huh?"

"I think I’m just tired," I said, and he nodded like someone who’d read the last page of a book and found it predictable.

"Let’s try something," he said, stealing the pen from the kitchen counter. He wrote, in his blocky script: "Tomorrow we win the lottery."

We didn’t hit the jackpot or anything. Instead, we woke up to find the bank had generously added a whopping $1.37 to Brad’s checking account by mistake. As a bonus, he got a job offer from a start-up he hadn’t even bothered to apply to, and I stumbled upon an envelope crammed with cash in my mailbox, courtesy of some stranger who clearly can't read addresses. The universe was playing it by the book, but with a cheeky twist. Reality, it seemed, had mastered the art of sarcasm.

Each night, I fell asleep clutching the journal, waiting for it to write me back. Sometimes it did. The entries grew more intimate, more pressing. "Be bold," it whispered in the margins. "Break your own heart. See what survives." Some nights, I dreamed of rivers thick with blood, or of bats whistling lullabies under a lemon moon.

I scribbled down that Brad kissed me on the roof of his building, and the following day, we found ourselves back up there, locked in a heated debate about the worth of pop music compared to classical. As our voices echoed into silence, both gasping for breath, he kissed me—just as I had penned it—the city below whirling in a dizzying blur. I wrote that we laughed about it, and we did, but the laughter was tinged with a sharp, uneasy awareness that cut through the moment.

It was just a ticking clock before Brad pieced together my little secret. He was already aware of the journal's peculiar powers. He rang me up on a Saturday morning, voice a cocktail of frenzy and disbelief.

"This is nuts! You're scripting our lives, and it's spiraling into chaos. I can't even tell if I genuinely wanted to kiss you or if it's just part of your literary escapade—and it's seriously messing with my head!"

I opened my mouth to protest, to insist that his accusations were baseless, but the words lodged in my throat. The journal, with its leather-bound cover and ink-stained pages, had become an integral part of my daily life. Each morning, I reached for it instinctively, filling its pages with my thoughts and secrets. The weight of responsibility settled heavily on my shoulders.

"We need to stop," he said, and for the first time, he sounded scared.

I promised I would stop, and I genuinely intended to follow through. I hid the journal away, taping it multiple times, and buried it in the freezer beneath three bags of peas and a forgotten casserole. For a while, everything settled back into its usual chaos. The city resumed its madness, the barista couldn't remember my name anymore, and the pug was gone.

The urge to write never left me. I scrawled lines on grocery lists, post-its, even receipts. Brad forgave me without words—his hand in mine—but I still wondered if it was real or just something I needed to believe.

We swore off the journal and tried instead to write each other into being, using small notes, stolen glances, and the slow bloom of trust. I started to think the world wasn’t out to get me but to reshape me—though uncertainty still lingered.

I picked up the journal a few times, its worn leather cover smooth beneath my fingertips, the temptation to open it almost unbearable. Each time, I felt like a heroin addict, desperate for a hit, with the fix right there in front of me. But somehow, I resisted the urge to write in it again, the need dwindling with each passing day. As time moved on, Brad and I grew closer, our connection feeling more genuine, and the journal began to fade from my thoughts, its presence in my life diminishing.

The last time I opened it, curiosity had finally gotten the better of me. Inside, a single line stared back at me, written in a script that was familiar yet slightly foreign, as if a version of myself had penned it:

"You survived yourself."

I closed the book, carried it out to the back patio, and set it on the stone floor. Lighting a match, I pressed the flame to its spine and watched the pages curl and turn to ash.

The world did not end. It did not even tremble.

But I did, just a little, and it was enough.