***

All this shit started when I found that little note.

On a square piece of paper I found at the bottom of a box I was moving out of my basement, it read, “HELLO? PLEASE RESPOND”. I had no idea how long the paper had been there, those boxes had sat in my basement since I moved in. I ignored it until the next morning, when I opened my coffee maker to throw out the grounds, and inside was a sopping wet piece of paper that read “PLEASE RESPOND! PLEASE HELP”. I figured it must have been put inside my coffee maker by whoever was pulling this pointless prank, because it wasn’t there when I put my coffee grounds in.

I found more notes, under my mousepad, inside my computer tower while I was putting in some new RAM, between the layers of tissue of my toilet paper roll, under my DVD player’s disc tray. Places that no one would ever look, places you’d never think of putting a note, places you knew no one would ever look and it would be foolish to put a note, because who knew when they would see it?

But it kept happening, and they all said the same thing every time, begging me to respond and help them. Being the retard I am, one day I just got fed up when I found one inside a cup in my dishwasher (right after I had run it – the paper was dry) I wrote on the back of it “HELLO. I’M RESPONDING. PLEASE EXPLAIN YOUR SITUATION!” and slid it under a crack in my bath-fitted tub.

No sooner had I left my bathroom did I find another piece of paper, floating on the surface tension on the surface of my glass of sprite I had in the living room.

I carefully picked it out of my drink, it read “THANK YOU.” and in larger letters, “I’M TRAPPED”.

I waved it around to dry it off a bit, and wrote on the back of it again, “where are you trapped? how are you sending me notes?” and, not creative enough to think of where to put it, I just threw it behind my couch. I waited and looked, but I didn’t see any other notes for the rest of that day.

The next day I checked my mail, inside of some spam letter was the next note, “IN THE SECOND DIMENSION. BELOW YOU”. I wasted no time in responding “whoever you are, this prank is retarded. give it a rest” and threw it outside, the wind blew it away.

The next note I got was still in obnoxious capital letters, though it was much longer than before and the last sentence seemed to have been squeezed into the remaining space. I think it was a passage from some encyclopedia or textbook. “The first dimension is a defined point in space. The second dimension (this was underlined) is anything that exists with height and width, while the third adds on length. The fourth includes time, the and the fifth is the past: time that has already occurred and is solidified in timespace.” Everything beyond that was too squished in to read. I rolled my eyes and responded again, “How can you read this if you’re in the second dimension? How can you even exist??” I slipped this note into the space in my toaster between the element and the metal casing.

My reply came when I brushed it out of my hair the next morning before I took a shower. “WRITING IS 2D. VISION IS 2D- TWO 2D IMAGES SUPERIMPOSED.”

That didn’t really get to the point of how I was supposed to “rescue” this person, which I defined in my next note that I flushed down my toilet.

“MAKE ME 3D” was all that was on the new slip of paper I found inside of a chocolate bar I unwrapped, later on. How the idiot was putting these inside sealed products was beyond me but at this point I decided to play along, maybe it was some kind of TV show thing.

“How?” was all I wrote for my reply. I remember exactly where I put it, because it was the last thing I wrote for a long time. I put it in a crack between my length mirror, and it’s wooden backing. As soon as I let go it slid out of sight and I didn’t see any papers again for a year and a half.

Getting dressed one morning for work, I went into my room and adjusted my tie and shirt in my mirror, the same one, only it was now on the opposite side of my room. Looking into it, I noticed a square behind me on the wall. Turning around, there was none. In the instant before I turned around again I thought it must have fallen off, but in the mirror it was still there, still suck to the wall. I touched my mirror thinking maybe it was some sort of warping or optical illusion, but it wasn’t.

I lifted my heavy mirror up from the ground and slowly walked backwards with it, nearing myself to the opposite wall on which the paper was stuck. The closer I got, the clearer the message on it became, until I stopped, sandwiched between the heavy mirror and the wall, looking at the paper immediately over my shoulder: “MAKE YOU 2D” it said.

I moved the fuck out of that house as soon as I could. After bunking at my girlfriend’s for a while, I got the fuck rid of the mirror, the toaster, everything. My heart still skips a beat when I see any perfectly square piece of paper, sitting on the floor, all alone. I still live in fear of some day I’ll open up a book or look in the inner lining of a jacket, and a piece of paper will flop out.

I check all my things, now. Constantly. I also don’t drink coffee anymore.