Ouroboros

Katherine!

Kate stared in puzzlement at the little black notebook she'd pulled from her bag.

The hard cover was plastered with stickers; some so worn that they were nothing more than white, misshapen blobs, while others seemed to have come from some sort of vintage store. They were all layered over one another, carelessly arranged as if a child had done it. She flipped the book open to the first page, astounded to find the calculated and deliberate strokes of someone who was most certainly not a child.

How had this wound up in her bag? She couldn't remember having seen it at all when she'd been at the library - and with a cover like that, she was unlikely to forget it. It was the kind of notebook she would have picked up on a whim, promising herself she would fill it with something worthy - a drawing, a story; it was clear that beneath the stickers was a quality leather, old and meant to last for years. The cord used to hold it close was made of a fine material, too, not too easily frayed despite its age, which was far more evident once she opened it and began to inspect it more closely.

As she flipped through the pages, yellowed and crinkly beneath her fingertips, a small slip of paper fluttered to the floor, and she quickly bent down to pick it up. She halted at the looping zeroes in the amount: $20,000. It was, sadly, the largest number she had ever seen written on a check, and the sheer shock of it made the paper slip from her fingers just as her legs gave out from under her. She fumbled for it, as though the wind might suddenly sweep up and carry it away, nothing more than a strange dream that would be forgotten by sundown.

How had this wound up in her bag? More importantly, why did it have her name on it?

Kate panicked as she frantically searched the check for a name. Scrawled in slanted, looping cursive was the name Eloise Miller. The woman had filled in the amount and signed her name, and there at the top was her own name spelled out in the same grooves and dips of the writing in the accompanying notebook. She stared at the cover, trying desperately to remember anyone who had sat near her when she’d been at the library last week.

The notebook seemed to call to her again, begging to be explored and devoured. There was something so devious about the idea of reading a stranger’s thoughts, but she reasoned that anyone willing to give her such a large sum of money was someone who would want to be found. Wasn’t she sort of owed an answer? No one would even know she’d looked, really.

The contents of the notebook at first sight fell short of what she had been anticipating considering the aura of mystery surrounding the entire situation. It read like a diary, though the dates were missing, and it boiled down to nothing more than seemingly innocuous ramblings and to-do lists buried between sentences, reminders written in rushed scribbles with the worry that they’d be forgotten in the next sentence.

And what about the check? Was it meant to be some sort of gift, a game, maybe? None of those felt like good enough answers for the hefty why that seemed to suck all the air out of the room. The entire thing felt so ominous that her gut rumbled, seemingly solidifying her uncertainty - as though her very bones knew this linked her to something tragic, something not easily explainable.

She tossed it onto her dining table, a shudder passing through her, and stalked into the kitchen; a hot cup of tea would calm her down. Every so often, she shot a glance to the table almost as if she was afraid it would no longer be there and instead would somehow appear next to her hand - her finger twitched at the thought. .

When she finally settled down with the cup of tea, she hadn’t come any closer to solving the question of why, so she turned her attention to the who. Eloise Miller. The name didn’t ring any bells; Eloise Miller could have been anyone. With a frustrated sigh, she opened her phone to a trusted people finder: the internet.

As she skimmed the search results, she hesitated on an obituary and the accompanying photograph, which jarred something in her memory. Her chest tightened as she clicked the link and realized the deceased Eloise Miller was the kind librarian who had often helped her. A librarian. Instead of answers, she only had more questions.

She picked up the notebook again, more gently this time, her fingers intently tracing the grooves of the stickers on the cover as she pondered how surreal it was to think this had, until recently, belonged to someone who was now deceased. Just last week, Eloise had been a functioning person, and now, she was a cold corpse in a deep grave. Laughter bubbled in her throat as she considered the Shakespearean irony of the situation; a tragedy of wrong time, wrong place.

Right time, right place for her, at least.

She shook her head, physically fighting the thought off, and instead let the overwhelming sense of morbid curiosity about Eloise’s life distract her. Kate flipped the notebook open to search for the most recent entries, suddenly overcome with a need to know what had been on her mind days before her passing. Had there been any warnings? Red flags she may have missed? In an instant it felt as if her perspective had shifted, and the need to know why took a backseat to the all consuming need to understand who this woman had been at her core. Kate had to know.

She read through the last ten or so pages in the book, the hairs rising on the back of her neck as she slowly leafed through each page, devouring the private stream of consciousness for a woman she hardly knew. She let out a gasp of surprise at the mention of her own name, her fingers clutching the book tighter at the vivid, detailed description of Kate’s personal life. Occasionally, she would see the odd note written in the margins; a nervous chuckle escaping her lips as she read Gay? written off to the side of a paragraph that seemed to be about her social life.

Kate shivered as she read the full account that the librarian had made about Kate’s relationships with others -- staggered and unsettled by the near-perfect accuracy on most of the observations. Why had she written so much about Kate?

Her last written words were simply: She’s perfect.

Kate’s eyes wandered to the check that sat near her now freezing cup of tea, and she wondered what on earth could have possessed Eloise Miller to write this check out to her. Perhaps she knew something of Kate’s financial struggles. Maybe she felt some sort of kinship that made her want to help with Kate’s schooling. Whatever the case, she had clearly wanted Kate to have it.

She bit her lip as she stared at her name on the recipient line. As a child, Kate had always loved a good mystery; the search for the truth in a world obscured by lies seemed like a noble calling. These days, she was much more preoccupied with the hows more than the whys. Did it really matter if she discovered what had set off this series of events? Or was it more important to acknowledge her wishes and put that money to good use? It would certainly help to ease some of the burden on her student loans. She skimmed the obituary again for any mention of a surviving spouse or children, but nothing implied that there was any surviving family. Kate would be a fool to pass up such an offer when the money would simply end up going back to the government. At least she would be doing something useful with it, something that would allow her to carry on Eloise’s memory -- her spirit -- in some way.

The following day, Kate lightly fingered the check as she stood in line at the bank, her breath shaky and shoulders tight. She was overcome with a new sense of dread that had been missing before she had left the car. She tried to ignore the bile that burned at the back of her throat as she held her head high and forced her shoulders back in an attempt at confidence. She had recited the words like a mantra on her way to the bank: “I’d like to deposit this check,” with the forms of ID ready for the draw like a cowboy in an old western. The check was in her name, and there was no one in her life who could have claimed it. If worse came to worst, she could always turn to the notebook as proof.

Despite her practice, she still fumbled as she handed the check over to the teller, her eyes widening at the amount before plastering on a smile and excusing herself. Her pulse picked up again, her eyes following her every move as the teller entered an office and both of their eyes went back to her. For a moment she pondered if she should wave but settled for a tight lipped smile as she turned her head back to the still empty seat.

An eternity later, she returned, assuring her that the check would clear after two weeks. It seemed in all her preparation she had somehow neglected signing the back of it. The relief at how simple it had all felt escaped her body in a sigh as she slid the pen across the check.

There was darkness then. A sharp pain shot through her spine, making it vibrate at a frequency her body was not designed for. Fragmented into pieces and put back again one molecule at a time. A rebirth.

Off in the distance, a voice seemed to call out to her behind a frosted window - a light shining brightly behind it. But when she went to speak, the words caught in her throat as if they all wanted to tumble out all at once and instead rolled into a ball too large to make any sound.

Is this what Eloise had felt in her final moments too? Is this what death was?

Frantic, she headed toward the light, only to find that the closer she came to it, the more it appeared that she had entered a movie theater that was playing a movie about her life. She couldn’t see herself on the screen, but it was the same scene she had just been playing out. It was the feeling of passing someone else in a car and momentarily allowing yourself to exist in their world; as if she had somehow continued to exist in a body she could no longer control. The thought should have been panic-inducing, but instead she felt a sudden sense of calm as she slid into an empty seat. A few rows over sat Eloise, just as entranced as the others -- not breathing, never blinking, a stillness on her face that couldn’t quite be deciphered -- although Kate swore she had seen a tear roll down her cheek.

“Katherine!”