Alice's Day Off

Alice walked home after work, the same route in the same mood on the same streets she had walked over & over. Today felt as ordinary as any other day. With her headphones in and head down Alice plodded along, business as usual. But today was no ordinary day. Today, would turn out to be the most extraordinary day of Alice’s life.

Alice reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone, she swiped through her music library. Switching from this to that, no particular genre or artist in mind. Just a mood. She stumbles. On most days she wouldn’t notice this, however her foot caught something on the ground. The object moved and caught her eye. “Is it a rat?” Alice thought to herself, “I would scream if it was a rat”. Cautiously, Alice turned and inspected the object. She bent over, cocked her head and grabbed it. It was a small black notebook. Non-descript, no distinguishable markings of any kind. The pages were white & clean. The cover untarnished.

She stood up with the notebook in hand. The street was empty, no obvious owners in sight. She started to walk, autopilot would guide her home. She responsibly flipped to the first page. “If found please return this notebook to ____________”. Blank. No luck. She flipped through the pages. There was something in the notebook. It was thick, the pages bulged around the object. Alice’s face scrunched. She flipped to the page with the item inside.

To her surprise. A small black debit card was taped to the inside of a page. Underneath it, in neat bold handwritten script was four digits written in sharpie: 4757. Alice had never seen anything like this in her life. She sat on the nearest bench she could find and examined the card. She noticed the card was attached with a neat roll of scotch tape to the notebook. The card peeled away easily.

Alice double checked the notebook, then triple checked it. “Maybe there’s a pocket in the inside cover?” No. “Let’s flip it the other way and see if I notice anything.” Still nothing. Alice sighed to herself and looked around. It was the end of a nice day. Golden light filled the trees lining the park where she sat on her bench. “What the hell” Alice thought to herself.

The ATM took the card, and Alice entered the code. The ATM showed the balances. Two accounts. Alice rubbed her eyes, should could not believe what she saw on the screen. “Withdraw Immediately Alice” was the name of the first account. The account contained $20000. The second account was named “No Deposits Under Any Circumstances” and had a balance of $0 dollars. Alice stared blankly at the screen. A chill ran down her spine. Things like this didn’t happen to Alice, ever. She worked a normal job, had gone to a normal school and generally liked what people normally liked. This wasn’t her, this wasn’t her!

She closed the ATM transaction and started to walk away. As she turned she immediately came to a halt. Outside the doors, across the street, a man stared at her. The man had a hat pulled low over his eyes. He was stocky, intimidating. He had an aura Alice did not like. He slowly raised his head so Alice could see his eyes. They were the deepest eyes she had seen in her life. Without hesitation Alice turned around and went back to the ATM.

‘Pffft pfft pffft pfft pfft’, money started coming out of the machine. Thankfully the rest of the lobby was deserted. She grabbed the money and stuffed in her bag.

Alice made it home, out of breath. She dead bolted the door to her apartment and dumped the contents of her bag onto the kitchen table. “Holy shit” Alice said to herself. This was the most money Alice had ever seen at one time. She didn’t even know where to begin. She went to reach for it and pulled her hand back.

Instead she grabbed the card off the table. This mysterious black card within the mysterious black notebook.

“Boom boom boom”. Alice whipped her head around. A knock on the door. Nobody ever knocked on her door. Alice pressed herself against the wall. She clinged to the card in her hand and covered her mouth with the other hand. “Boom boom boom” more knocks. A voice from the other side of the door. “The card, Alice. Give us the card”. Alice, looked around the room. She opened the nearest drawer and pulled out a scissor.

“Don’t come in!” Alice yelled. “No deposits under any circumstances!”

“You don’t know what you are doing” the voice from the other side said.

“I’ll give you the money back just leave me alone” said Alice .

“Give us the card and we will talk” replied the voice.

The booms on the door became more aggressive. Alice held the scissor in her hands with the card between it. The door broke open, the man with the hat entered followed by a group of men in hats.

Alice snapped out of her fear, and cut the card in half.

The group of men stopped in their tracks. A look of horror came across their faces. The two pieces of the card fell to the floor and clanked on the ground. “You have no idea what you’ve done” the first man said. Alice and the men stared at each other, awkwardly. The men slowly began to fade away to dust. As Alice watched them fade one of the men pointed to the card “The back” he said “read the back”. Alice fumbled with the two pieces of the card and looked to the back. The card was fading away as well but she could make out a URL address. She typed in the letters to her computer. A shortened hyperlink. She opened the web page and gasped in horror.

“TERMS AND CONDITIONS” read the page in bold letters.

“ITEM 1: Under no circumstances shall the participant in this experiment destroy the debit card. If the debit card is destroyed the participant will forfeit all rights to existence and will fade away, as will all traces of their life, and of this experiment.

These terms and conditions are automatically agreed to and cannot be voided upon withdrawal of the money.”

Alice was stunned. She looked at her hands on the keyboard but they began to fade away. “What have I done!?” Alice shrieked. “I should have read the terms and conditions!”