Crunched Up Paper House

My friend and I always used to walk through a wonderful, spacious park when we were younger. It was full of tall trees, and it was very nicely maintained. In this large park, there was an abandoned mansion – I can’t really say how long it had been there, but on that day, the front door of the mansion was wide open. The two of us decided to check out what was inside the place. As we inched through the door, the very first thing we noticed was that the mansion’s floor was littered with crumpled up pieces of paper. We looked at each other and observed that there was no furniture, nothing except for those wrinkled balls of paper. The mansion had six rooms on its main floor, and every room we entered bore more and more scrunched up pieces of paper.

We decided to open up one of the paper balls to see what was inside – our curiosity got the better of us. I picked up a single wrinkled piece, and, as my friend picked up another, I unfolded my paper, smoothing out its bends and dents. At that moment, it was almost as if a piece of a rainbow emerged before our eyes, and I was suddenly standing next to a large window in one of the upstairs rooms of the house. I was looking outside into the large park. When I looked down at the piece of paper I held, it read: ‘Look outside the large window that oversees the park in the upstairs parlour.’ I dropped the piece of paper and it fluttered gracefully to the ground. Meanwhile, I stared at my open hands in a bout of horror.

Dazed and utterly perplexed, I found my way downstairs and met up with my friend. He was in the kitchen, sitting at a round table that hadn’t been there before. Where did that come from? I wondered. My friend stared at his opened paper and re-read the words several times before he looked at me and turned the page my way. It said: ‘Go to the kitchen and sit at the round table.’ We stared at each other for a few moments, vaguely afraid, but then we began to chuckle. Within seconds, we were laughing our heads off, marvelling at our newfound game. We could hardly believe what had happened, but being young as we were, the mystery was endlessly exciting. We decided again to open another scrunched up piece of paper. As we opened up the crumpled papers on the floor, we experienced the same sudden flash of rainbow colours, but this time I ended lying down in the field behind the mansion. When I peered onto the paper in my right hand, it read, ‘Lie down in the field behind the mansion.’ I giggled uncontrollably. After a few minutes of running around the house, I found my friend collecting multiple balls of paper in his arms, eager to experience more of these strange, exciting phenomena.

We both got the gist of what was happening at this point. We had no idea as to how it was possible, but we decided to have more fun with it; the supernatural always had a way of captivating our hearts. After a few more run-throughs with these strange mini-teleportation devices, I began to feel apprehensive. I wondered if, at one point, I would be placed somewhere I didn’t want to be, or I’d be made to do something that I didn’t enjoy. We continued, though. Minute after minute, we unfolded many papers and travelled through bedrooms, closets, trees. But then, after having been on the roof of the mansion, I stood before my friend, dead on the living room floor. I didn’t scream. I couldn’t. “Murder him,” I read on my crumpled page as I felt a surge of vomit and bile rising into my throat. Nothing came out, but the sickness in my throat spread to my stomach, my head and my heart.

I didn’t know what to do. At this point, I began to scream and shout, praying to God for this to be a nightmare. I wanted it to go away; I wanted to rewind our day and be outside again, together, walking underneath the trees. All I could do was hide his body in a cupboard. I willed myself to be calm, and I hesitantly unfolded another paper in the hopes that the problem would correct itself. Once again, I saw the colours of the rainbow, and I found myself standing behind a tree several meters away from the house. I could clearly see the front door; within a few instants, I saw both myself and my friend walk through that door. I began to wonder if I had died, or if I was having an out-of-body experience. I looked at the sheet in my hand, and the only words scrawled upon it were “time will repeat itself, and a paradox will take place, and it will be allowed”

That gave me an idea. In my pocket remained the paper that made me kill my friend. Without looking at it, I crumpled it back up. Quietly, I followed my other self, who had separated from my friend as he explored the rooms of the house. As I crept behind him, he turned around very suddenly. Before he could utter a syllable, I forced the paper in front of my eyes and in a flash of rainbow colours, I was able to kill my other self. The laws of time allowed me to take over my dead self’s place in this world and also because of the fact that it was allowed to happen, as it was written on the second piece of paper that I had on me; which reversed time. It must have control over time and paradoxes, which made me now the new alive and present of my other dead self.

I hid my limp, bleeding other dead self in a cupboard in the upstairs bathroom to rot. To my great relief, I heard my friend call my name from downstairs. My friend, who managed to stay alive and well—my best friend. When I went downstairs, he greeted me excitedly, smiling childishly and being blissfully unaware of the situation. I pretended that nothing had happened. In a heartbeat, I told him that the house creeped me out and that it would be much better if we left.

After that day, we never went near the mansion again. I don’t know if anyone saw or heard about anything that happened between us, but I recently heard from another friend that the house had been demolished. And I can tell you with great certainty that while this news a relief, I dreaded the probable prospect that my corpse was uncovered in the bathroom cabinet.