Ordinary Magic

It was cold and overcast on Marissa's last night on the job. As she hauled the garbage around the back of the building and tossed it in the dumpster something caught her eye in the dim light. It appeared to glimmer and Marissa was intrigued, getting caught up in fantasies about faeries and helpful wights, which she had a predilection for. She made her way into the tight corner between the dumpster and the building next door and had to wedge her shoulder between stacks of old pallets in order to reach the thing that now seemed lost in the shadows. She stretched her hand a far as it would go, making contact with it's smooth surface. When she brought it up into the light, she was a tad deflated to see that it was just an old notebook. Before tossing it into the garbage, her curiosity got the better of her and she decided to thumb through it. The pages were perfectly blank and totally pristine, as if it had just come off the shelf. Marissa shrugged her shoulders thinking, "I was just thinking about starting a new journal," and gesturing to the sky, she said, "thanks Universe!" She tucked the little black book into the back of her pants and went back inside to close up shop.

Later than night, after she had washed off the grime of the day, Marissa turned the journal over in her hands curiously while her mind restlessly wandered. A month prior, she had put her foot down with her manager, making an ultimatum, either he could give her a significant raise or she was walking. He had just ignored her, even after she submitted her notice and checked each day off the company calendar. None of her coworkers even acknowledged she was leaving, they went about their days in the same monotone as every day previous. After five years of drudgery, she thought she at least deserved a going away party, so she planned one for herself. She decorated her apartment, bought bubbly, roses, and best of all, chocolate bundt cake. She had thought at least a couple of people would come, after all, free champagne is a big draw, but everyone was too paranoid about the recent viral outbreak. So there she sat, alone in her apartment toasting an empty glass and eating an enormous slice of cake, staring at this journal and wondering how she was going to pay the rent next month. Just then a breeze moved through her apartment and the book fell open. On the page were three words, "Write your wishes".

Marissa could have sworn she had leafed through the whole book and it was untouched, but there were the words, undeniably real. She rubbed her hand over them and the ink smeared across the page as if they had just been written. Marissa stared at the book and downed the rest of her champagne. Her heart raced and her mind returned to the old wives tales she loved so much. Stories about poor cobblers and lost girls, who in their time of need had come to rely upon invisible little people with magical powers. She thumbed through the book, inspecting the binding, rubbing the pages between her thumb and forefinger. She sniffed the book, and it smelled like it had just come off the printer. She turned it over and opened it up again, the words she had seen were gone. The ink smear was also gone, although her fingers were still fresh with it. "Woa! What the heck it going on?!", she pinched herself. She then got up, reached into the champagne bucket and splashed ice water on her face. The book sat there, on the coffee table; ordinary, nondescript. Marissa walked back over and as she reached down to pick it up, a beautiful, ball point pen rolled out from under the coffee table. At this point, Marissa's skin perked up with a flush of goosebumps and she felt certain that she needed to fill the pages up. She could hear the very first birds of the day warming up to greet the dawn, but she was wide awake and filled with an urgency she had never felt before. She thought of all the things she had ever wanted, lost loves, missed opportunities, dreams she had long ago abandoned. She picked up the pen and wrote until the sun rose to it's pinnacle in the sky. She wrote until her fingers cramped, and her neck cried out. The pen flew across each page, her fingers a blur, sometimes writing around the edges of the page to fit everything in. She didn't even realize she had had so many wishes inside her. It was as if a huge boulder had been rolled aside, revealing a doorway into a whole new world, filled with vibrant colors, delicious foods, beautiful people, and music streaming from every corner! This entire world had come alive in her imagination, and she felt in her bones, as if this was the world where she belonged. When she had finished, she closed the book, set it on the coffee table and collapsed exhausted onto her couch. She thought to herself, "Thank goodness I quit that job, now I can just rest and enjoy my creation." And she fell asleep wondering how she might publish this unique story she had written. A few hours later, the doorbell woke her up. A package had come for her. It had a card attached, which read "Welcome to your new job"and out fell a check, in her full name, for $20,000. Marissa was dumbfounded, and she opened the box. In it was a stack of notebooks that looked exactly like the one she had found, each of them pristine and untouched. There was no company logo or contact information anywhere. Marissa couldn't believe what was happening. She called the bank thinking that the check had to be bad, but the bank confirmed that it was valid and she was free to deposit it. She pulled out a fresh notebook from the box and opened it up. It had three words written on it, "Tell your story". She knew exactly what story she needed to tell. And so it is that Marissa receives a fresh package of new journals each month, along with a large check and she spends her days imagining the most beautiful worlds, the most transcendent and egalitarian futures her imagination can reach for. And every day is filled with wonder and gratitude for the magic of something as ordinary as a little black book with fresh, empty pages.