Secrets of State I shouldn't blab about on Twitter

Little Black Book Writing Challenge

Bon. Facebook sait que j’écris.

Je sais pas si ça vous est déjà arrivé, de voir une pub pour ce site. Ça se présente sous la forme d’un concours d’écriture : Little Black Book. Premier prix, 20 000$ . Pas mal, pour 600 mots de texte. Ce qui est pas mal moins intéressant, c’est qu’il faut s’abonner à une plateforme qui coûte 9$/mois pour s'inscrire au concours (oui, c’est une pub, et c’est parce que quelqu’un espère faire de l’argent avec ça que je la vois aussi souvent). Ah, et en plus, il y a une affaire de banque en ligne alternative, j’ai pas trop compris.

Bref. J’ai décidé d’écrire quelque chose et de le publier sur mon blog, pour le fun.

Les contraintes liées au concours, c’était qu’il fallait écrire un récit bref, où quelqu’un entre en possession d’un petit carnet noir (le concours est subventionné par la compagnie Moleskine), et de la somme de 20 000$. Ça s’appelle : « Secrets of State I shouldn’t blab about on Twitter ».

Secrets of State I shouldn’t blab about on Twitter

Overall, this past year hasn’t been great. To start with, I died. What I mean to say by that is that part of my died, because you can’t completely kill a tree just by cutting it off. My roots are still in place, but I no longer have any leaves, or any bark, and I’ve also lost all the fungi, ants and other species that were living inside me.

On the bright side of things, there were parts of me that were used to build rather beautiful things, my favorite one being this elegant black little notebook, with pages that are soft to touch and ever so light to turn. Rarely have I felt so elegant as I do now, in between these covers. The part of me that was stuck there hoped that I would belong, one day, to a poet, or an artist of some kind. If only I had been a luckier tree.

Instead, I ended up in the hands of a guy with bleached hair, rather old and funny looking, who only took me out of his drawer to write, and I quote: “Secrets of State I shouldn’t blab about on Twitter”, along with a couple of gibberish notes. He then quickly proceeded to put me into a briefcase, which got lost. I’m not entirely certain I can tell you the events that followed in the correct order, but I’ll try.

At some point, there was a car chase, with a machine gun and some helicopters, and a few people got killed. The guy who got a hold of me had a bit of an accent, I couldn’t tell from which country it was, but he always wore sunglasses and looked very dull when he talked with other people on the phone about how thrilled he’d be to hand me over to my rightful owner for a large sum of money. Personally, I can’t say I was thrilled at the idea of falling into the hands of Mr. Blondie-with-a-red-tie again, but I’m afraid I didn’t have much of a say in the matter.

There was another car chase, but this time with a pile of explosives and a bomb ticking on national television. I’m rather proud to say that by that time, I had become somewhat of a celebrity. You probably heard the story anyways, it was all over Fox. I tried to follow the news as well, but it was so confusing. The only clear thing about it is that it was in no way Mr. Blondie’s fault that I had been lost.

In the end, the second guy with sunglasses, a dull look and a bit of an accent didn’t gain much from this entire business. What I mean to say by that is that he’s not the one who kept the 20,000$ check he managed to extort from someone in exchange for my body. At some point, in between a car chase and another bomb that got deactivated, someone slipped the check inside my pages. The money has been with me ever since, and I’m now located in another a forest, with a few pounds of earth lying on top of me.

So, what can I say. I’m a rich little notebook. I would probably still prefer to be a tree, if you ask me. At least, I had access to sunlight back then. And now, the only thing I can say I gained from this business of being cut up and chased all around the country, is that I’ve lived a more interesting life than others.