I thought I was losing my mind at first.  Little things were going missing in my house like coins I had left on the side table would be there one day and gone the next.  I usually hang my keys up by the door but I would find them in the microwave when I was about to make a really sad dinner for myself.  I'd never put my keys in the microwave as that doesn't make any sense.  What good would microwaving a set of keys do?

But these strange happenings kept occurring and they're even getting in the way of my career.  I run a youtube channel where I interview war veterans in VR chat (my avatar is a giant hotdog man) about how they got their PTSD during combat.  Intense conversations about the brutality of war from the people who have experienced it but their avatar is Hatsune Miku and I'm interviewing them in a virtual car driving nowhere in the rain.   Recently I couldn't find my VR headset for over a week and only found it by chance under my kitchen sink behind a bottle of bleach.  Who was moving all these items around my house?

The thing is I live alone and rarely have guests.  I don't even leave the house much right now I just get everything delivered to my door.  I do have a life though I'm not a total loser, I spend 8 hours a day in the metaverse that is VRchat with my friends.  But I digress - The point I'm trying to make is that the only person who could have hidden these things has to have been myself.

So that's why I thought I was losing my mind.  I thought maybe I've developed some form of dementia but I'm young so I figured I was probably sleepwalking.  I had heard of people doing some unusual things in their sleep.  My pal told me once that he slept walked into his housemates room one evening and pissed all  over her playstation 5.  She wasn't in at the time so he told her a rogue pigeon must have gotten into her room or something and just pissed all over the place as pigeons do.

I setup a camera in the corner of my room to watch me sleep and to see if I'm getting out of bed in the middle of the night.  And the next day I fast forwarded through the footage and that's when I first caught sight of it.  I had to slow the footage down and zoom in for a better look and I could not believe it.  Crawling into my room was a tiny humanoid creature, about 1 foot high, covered in rags.  It walked around my room on scaly green skinned feet confidently like it didn't care I was asleep and began going through my wardrobe for a few minutes before taking one of my shoes and exiting the room.

I ran over to my wardrobe and the fucking shoe was gone!  The little bastard had ran into the night with it.  Maybe I am losing my mind as this isn't possible.  I had to seek council from somebody who could either analyse my psyche or explain what I had seen.

So I logged into VRchat and asked around, asked if anyone had any familiarity with what I was experiencing. 

"Anyone have an issue where things are going missing in their home and there seems to be gnomes fucking with them?" I asked in one of the rooms that looks like an old tavern

A 3 inch tall worm avatar with a London accent said -

"That'll be goblins mate.  My mum had them for months we had to call the local druid to purge the house of them, nasty bastard things."

I had to lay on the floor to chat with him as he was so tiny.  Just a tiny little worm person talking to me in a thick cockney accent.

"What are you talking about?  Goblins?  Druids?  That's insane" I said

"Nah mate, goblins are real and they will slowly drive you mental.  You need to either capture it yourself or find a druid to help you as they're real good at getting rid of goblins for some reason.  I think its like an 'old world' thing if you get me."  He then wriggled away like that was the most normal statement he had ever said.

He's got to be fucking with me right?  I googled 'Jacksonville Florida, Druids' but the nearest druid was all the way in New Orleans.  From what I've read they don't tend to drive so that guy was out of the question, I'd have to try capture this goblin myself.

That evening I setup a little trap.  I emptied out my freezer of all its trays so there would be more space.  Then I setup some elastic bands around the door to the frame, so when you open the door it will slam shut itself, before using a spoon to prop the door permanently open.  Then in the freezer I placed something that I know a goblin would no doubt go for, something of value.

I understood that to defeat a goblin I would have to think like a goblin.  I would have to go into 'goblin mode' so to speak.  So I thought 'If I was a goblin what would I want to fuck up just to annoy somebody' and I knew exactly the item in my home for the task.  It's been locked up in a safe for years now so the goblin probably didn't even know it was in the house.

It was a princess Diana decorative plate my grandmother left me in her will for some reason.  I never really understood why this was the only thing she gave me when my brother got the house but she didn't have an oculus rift so we rarely talked when she was alive.  My gran loved princess Dianna its a shame the Queen had her quadra smashed in that Parisian tunnel.

But I knew it was valuable and I knew a goblin would not be able to resist Princess Diana's beautiful face painted on fragile ceramic.    So I placed it gently in the freezer, propped the door and stood back at my trap.  The plan being the goblin would enter the freezer, trip the wooden spoon and the door would slam shut locking it in there.

I felt quite smug about myself and my trap so that night I logged into the metaverse and entered one of the cinema rooms to relax.  I drank red wine from the bottle using a straw as to not get it all over myself and watched Spiderman 2 whilst people yelled all around me.  'Never alone' I thought with a little smile.  I had to zap block this German guy out of reality because changes his avatar to a giant Panzer tank and was blocking the screen yelling in his native tongue about something I couldn't understand.  He nearly made me miss the moment Peter Parker says 'Pizza Time' which gives me a little belly chuckle.

I slept soundly that night and the next day I jumped out of bed to see if my trap had worked.  And guess what?  The door to my freezer was shut and I was excited but also a bit scared.  I grabbed a frying pan and slowly opened the door, ready to batter the cunt if it was still alive in there.

Slowly the light illuminated what was inside... I first noticed the princess Diana plate in pieces before seeing a tiny figure in the corner, curled up into a little ball, knees up to its eyes covering its face.  A tiny little goblin person frozen solid in my freezer.  I prodded it with the pan but it didn't move, in fact the pan made a clang against the poor thing.

I did feel initially a bit sad but mostly relieved.  I took some photos of it on my phone to show people so they knew I wasn't insane and then thought about how I could dispose of the creature.  I thought about maybe smashing it up with a hammer and flushing it down the drain or toilet but that seemed a little too macabre.  But I needed it gone from my home ASAP, who knows if goblins can survive being frozen.  What if it comes back alive and uses one of these shards of princess Diana commemorative plate to slash my throat whilst I sleep?

the thought of that freaked me the fuck out so I put on some rubber gloves, grabbed the goblin and ran to the upstairs window and threw it as hard as I could.  I'd been playing a lot of wii tennis recently so my arms are pretty strong and I knew I would be able to throw it pretty far, plus it was pretty light.

I watched it sail through the air in slow motion which is when I noticed my neighbor had parked in front of my house instead of his own.  The frozen goblin twirled through the air tumbling towards my neighbors Toyota and it landed with a smash right on the windscreen.  It didn't even go through the windscreen it just jutted awkwardly halfway in the car and halfway out and then the car alarm started screaming, bringing attention to the scene. 

I closed all the curtains quickly.  Shit... There's no way anyone will suspect it's me right?  I wait a moment before going to my front door, opening it and staring at the Toyota, lights flashing, alarm blaring.  I put on a confused face as if to say 'I've come to see what all the noise is about' and my neighbor runs outside, stare at his car and puts his hands on his head.

"Everything alright Jim?" I shout

He looks at me and then at his windscreen, then back at me and yells

"Somebodies thrown a fucking goblin through my windscreen!" In utter disbelief.

"Oh yeah I think I saw that trending on Tiktok, kids these days huh?" I shout back at him, shrugging my shoulders.

He stares at me for an awkward amount of time before going back to gazing at his windscreen goblin.  He looks like how Britain felt when Brexit happened, just pure confusion and shock at the state of it all.

I close the door slowly and go back into my house, I've work to do.  There's a former marine who stabbed 4 people to death in Fallujah I'm interviewing tonight and his avatar is Totoro of Studio Ghibli fame.  It's going to do numbers on youtube I'm telling you.