“Stop! Please! Don’t do this to me!”

“I’m sorry, Harold. You know who I am now and you know what I did. I can’t risk you spreading any of it.” The young man lets go of Harold.

“Noooooooooo!” Harold’s screech fades away as he approaches closer to the ground. Thud!

———————————-

Harold wakes up, drenched in sweat. He goes to check his temperature which turns out to be 102 degrees. He gets a small green towel, runs it under cold water from his sink, and carefully gets back into bed. He lays the towel on his forehead to help the fever go away. He then begins to rest his eyes.

———————————-

Ding Dong. “Who is it?” Jimmy opens the door and Harold walks in.

“Hey Harold! How are you?”

“I’m doing pretty well. How about you?”

“I’m doing wonderful! Would you like anything to drink?

“Just water with some ice sounds good. Thanks.” Jimmy goes to fill a glass with water and ice.

“Here you go. Do you want to come up to my room? There’s nothing much fun to do down here.”

“Yeah, let’s go to your room.” As Harold follows Jimmy up to his room, he notices a mysterious red stain on the railing of the stairs. “Hey, Jimmy?”

“Yeah?”

“Is this blood on the railing here?” says Harold as he points his finger towards the stain.

“Hm. That’s strange. I don’t know why it would be blood… It’s probably just ketchup or something.”

“Yeah…” Harold and Jimmy continue to walk upstairs. Once they get into Jimmy’s room, Harold notices that Jimmy’s room smells unusual, like a dead animal. With the mixture of a red stain on the railing and the smell of a dead animal in Jimmy’s room, Harold becomes very suspicious of Jimmy.

“Are you okay Harold? You look very worried.”

“Huh? Oh, I’m fine. I was just thinking.”

“About what?” Harold quickly looks around Jimmy’s room for something to lie about. His eyes land on a lightbulb.

“I was just fascinated by that lightbulb you have over there. It’s very cool.”

“Oh, thanks. It was a gift from my parents.”

“That’s nice.” Harold looks around Jimmy’s room again, this time for any hints as to what is going on. One of Jimmy’s two windows, the one that faces the back of the house, is opened. Harold tries to come up with an excuse to examine it without looking like he’s up to something. “Hey Jimmy, it’s getting really cold in here. Do you mind if I close that window over there?”

“Go ahead.” As Harold goes to close the window, he notices a red spot exactly like the one he saw on the railing. It was not ketchup. “Do you want to do anything?” Harold continues to stare at the red.

“What? Oh, yeah,” Harold snaps himself back to reality. “Do you have a board game or something?”

“Chess?”

“Nah, that’s too boring. How about Clue?”  

“Alright, we can play Clue.” As Jimmy goes to get Clue from his closet, Harold looks in the closet for anything out of the ordinary. He sees many board games, books, clothes, etc., but one thing stands out to him, which is an almost empty roll of duct tape. On the tape is a few drops of… blood? Bam!

———————————-

Harold wakes up once again. He isn’t sweating this time, but realizes that his towel is gone. He feels his forehead to see if there is any sign of a fever, and his forehead is extremely warm. He goes to check his temperature, which is now 103 degrees. He goes back to the bathroom to get another towel. In the bathroom, he notices that the same small, green towel that he used before was back in its original spot and perfectly clean. Confused, he decides to take it and runs it under cold water. He carefully gets back into bed, places it on his forehead, and drifts away to sleep.

———————————-

Jimmy slams the closet doors closed and walks towards Harold with Clue.

“Why did you slam the door?”

“My closet door gets jammed, so I have to slam it every time I close it.”

“Oh, okay. You almost gave me a heart attack!”

“I’m sorry. I probably should have said something beforehand.”

“It’s okay.” Jimmy opens the box and starts to lay out the pieces for the game. Harold notices that the wrench piece for the game is missing.

“Hey Jimmy? Where’s the wrench?” Jimmy quickly looks up into Harold’s eyes and gives him a deathening glare.

“What did you just say?”

“The wrench, for the game. It’s not there.”

“Ohhh,” Jimmy says as he releases his glare towards Harold. “I’m not sure, it must have fallen out somewhere.”

“How are we supposed to play then?”

“Um,” Jimmy looks around for something to replace the wrench and decides to rip a piece off of a nearby sheet of paper. “How about we use this?”

“I guess that will work.” Jimmy and Harold begin to play Clue. Jimmy chooses Professor Plum and Harold chooses Colonel Mustard.

As the game comes to an end, all of the choices eliminate down to the bedroom, the wrench, and Professor Plum. “Plum commited the murder in the bedroom with the wrench!”

“What?”

“It was Plum in the bedroom with the wrench!”

“Ohhh, in the game. Let’s see.” As Jimmy opens the package with the results of the game, Harold freezes in shock.

“What do you mean ‘ohhh, in the game’?” Jimmy quickly glares back up into Harold’s eyes.

“You don’t need to worry about it.” In fright, Harold quickly comes up with an excuse to try and get out of Jimmy’s room. 

“I-I’m sorry, I just remembered that um, that I have a doctor’s appointment to get to, so I’ve got to get going.” Harold sprints to the door and tries to turn the knob, but realizes that it’s locked. 

“Well that’s a bummer… It looks like you’re stuck in here with me.” Harold begins to bang on the door and shake the knob, yelling for help. “There’s nowhere to run now, Harold,” Jimmy says as he grabs a small dart off of his dart board and walks slowly towards Harold.

“What happened to you?! You’re not the Jimmy I used to know! Please let me go, plea-” Phoom!

———————————-

Harold wakes up again. He’s still not sweating, but feels a lot warmer than he did before. He also notices that his towel is gone again. He checks the time and sees that it has not changed since the last two times he woke up. Extremely confused, he checks his temperature again to see that it’s 104 degrees. He goes to the bathroom to get a towel for his head, but yet again sees the same exact small green one that he had seen the last two times in the same spot. Even more confused, he takes it again, wets it, gets into bed, and falls asleep.

———————————-

Harold wakes up in the trunk of a car. “What? Where am I? What happened?” The car comes to an abrupt stop. Harold tries to get out, but he realizes that his hands and feet are tied together by rope. The trunk suddenly opens.

“We’re here, Harold.”

“Where are we? What did you do to me?!”

“Don’t worry about it,” says Jimmy as he grabs the collar of Harold’s shirt and yanks him out of the trunk.

“Ow! What is this place?”

“I said don’t worry about it!”

“Jeez. Okay. Well, can you at least tell me who you really are, since I know you’re not Jimmy?!”

“I’m a shapeshifting alien from the future. I went back into the past to find and kill Jimmy and then take on his form so that I could replace him and slowly ruin his reputation over time. In the future, his amazing reputation led him to becoming a very successful man who was able to destroy my home planet, and being one of the only survivors, I came back for revenge.”

“Jimmy’s dead???”

“Yup, he’s dead alright. It was pretty easy to get rid of him, to be honest. All I had to do was wait until his parents weren’t home, get a wrench, and taunt him to get into his room. From there, I could knock him out cold with the wrench, tape up his body so he didn’t wake up and somehow escape, and then throw him out of the window to finish him off. It was a piece of cake.”

“What is wrong with you?! You killed my best friend! What did you even do with his body?!”

“Exactly what I’m about to do with you.”

“What?!” The shapeshifter pulls out the same roll of duct tape that Harold saw in the closet. He rips off the last strand of tape and slaps it over Harold’s mouth. The shapeshifter then grabs Harold by the collar of his shirt and drags him over tons of rocks and dirt, all the way to the edge of a cliff. He lifts Harold up off of the ground, dangling him over the edge of the cliff. Harold tries to kick and yell for help, but all he can do is make muffled noises and wiggle around like a worm. As Harold begins to run out of breath from yelling so much, the shapeshifter rips the tape off of his mouth and he lets out a huge gasp of air.

“Any last words?” Harold tries to catch his breath.

“Is this actually happening? Am I actually about to die?”

“You’ll never know, Harold, you’ll never know,” the shapeshifter says as a smirk comes across his face. His grip loosens on Harold’s collar.

———————————-

“Stop! Please! Don’t do this to me!”

“I’m sorry, Harold. You know who I am now and you know what I did. I can’t risk you spreading any of it.” The young man lets go of Harold.

“Noooooooooo!” Harold’s screech fades away as he approaches closer to the ground. Thud!