Mario Paint Time Capsule

I used to be someone who played video games. It's a habit I've fallen out of a long time ago due to needing to focus on my studies and career as a forensics scientist. The work is good and in time, I've left all of those video game consoles behind and replaced it with reading. But recently, I had a nostalgic phase of my life. Remembering my old hometown and the family and friends I made there. Even remembered when I used to own a nes and snes and spend hours of my life playing them. Got me nostalgic enough to use up some vacation days and to make a trip back.

I wasn't exactly living far from where I used to live as a kid but it was distant enough for me to not wind up there by accident. Just a few hours there by train, at most. Once the train came and I finally made it back home, I was really surprised by how much things had changed. Old buildings and takeaway places I used to hang around with classmates were replaced with new and clean places. Anything that did stick around had been spruced up a bit as well, feeling familiar but strangely sterile. Like someone did some spring cleaning to memories but the dirtiness had become a part of the charm, in a sense. Even made a visit to some neighbors I used to know. Although, a few of them had either left the neighborhood or passed away. But I eventually made my way to my parent's place and surprised them with a visit.

They looked smaller than I remember. We usually kept up in talking to each other on voice calls on Skype (as per their insistence) so I always knew how they looked. Guess the camera makes a world of a difference compared to in person. They moved more slowly too, a side effect from time doing its business I suppose. Dad was a lot hairier too, with thicker glasses as well. They showed me around the old house, which hadn't changed much since I was last around. While they did convert my old bedroom into a guest bedroom, they let me know that I still had all of my old stuff kept safe in the attic. And in letting down the ladder and letting me get up, I managed to have a look around.

There were all kinds of things that they had left over from my childhood, kept within a corner of the attic. All kinds of old comic books were kept in some grubby cardboard boxes and some Lego sets had been gracefully brought upstairs since the old boxes for them were thrown away. Even some old blankets were still around, albeit ruined through time and bugs. But one box had caught my eye and managed to get me excited again. It was a box of all of the video games I had once owned, along with the consoles for them. Looking at the snes, nes and the nintendo ds brought back all kinds of memories of being a little kid and enjoying the time spent with them.

Brought down the box to the guest room and got the snes set up on the old tv. Wanted to play Secret of Mana first but when I plugged that in and realized that all of the save files from when I was a kid were still around, the drive for it died down. It was nice to go through the completed world but since there wasn't much else for me to do, I moved onto the second game in the pile. That game ended up being Mario Paint. At the time I thought it would've taken less time to play since it's more of a general "time waster" than a game like Secret of Mana which tells a story and fights. But since I wanted to go through the collection in the order of the pile, Mario Paint was going to be played.

The intro and title screen brought back some fond memories, alongside playing around the easter eggs on the title screen by clicking on the letters within Mario Paint. Brought back a memory of when I first got the game from my parents, a good decade and a half ago from what I can remember. They just plopped it down in front of me as a reward for getting an A in chemistry. Couldn't remember how much of the game I played but after checking inside, I found myself surprised to see all kinds of stuff that was saved over.

In the composing part of the game, there were some half-finished songs that were pretty poor translations out of the stuff I used to listen to at the time. Still can't believe I had a Beastie Boys phase in my life, eugh. And straight after that, I checked out the animation section. Nothing saved over there but I still decided to indulge myself with some silly blobs doing walks. But once that was done, I finally decided to check out the Art section. There was an old canvas that was saved over from before so, without thinking much, I decided to check it out.

I wasn't expecting much aside from a stupid drawing. But it was something more than that. It was a message, from myself back when I was a kid to...myself in the future. Never remembered making something like this for myself but it was quite the strange surprise. The message blathered on at times and was hard to read due to writing being pretty hard to do with a mouse but the gist of it was that I hoped I managed to become a talented "book writer" at some point. The ending of the message was pretty strange though. Quoted verbatim from it, I had written down the following:

"i hope youre doing okay me! youll defintely be doing better than me."

That struck me as odd. Never remembered having much of a bad time like that. Not bad enough to write it down at least. It had been decades and years though, so I just chalked it up to probably having a bad day. After that was a dinner with the parents where what we talked about wasn't at all that interesting to me at the time. My mind was still on that drawing in Mario Paint, despite having a pretty logical explanation right there in front of me. Then a little idea popped up in my mind. I remembered an old magazine I used to read that hosted a Mario Paint contest where you'd have to tape the pictures you made and then send them in. Never had the postage stuff necessary for it but I figured I must've at least made a start on it. So after dinner and wishing my parents good night, I made another trip to the attic.

While tapes weren't around in my section of the attic, I did find a box full of them that had an aged sticker on the side saying "HOMEMADE." Once I snuck back downstairs and dusted off the tape player, it was time for me to go back through memory lane. Played some of the regular homemade tapes at first to ease myself in. They weren't in the best condition but they did the job well enough to retell the times of my first few birthdays and the first day of school. I seemed to have been a lot grumpier back then, or at least under the surface I was.

Scouring through the rest of the tapes after that, I found one that had a little mario sticker on it. I judged that to be the tape I was looking for and so I slotted it in to see what was inside it. It started off simple enough, just a recording of myself drawing some pictures. Watching me draw a goomba on the TV reminded me that I had borrowed my dad's camcorder for this video. He was the one that usually recorded me in those tapes, usually playing around with me behind the camera and telling jokes. But for this tape, I was the one that recorded myself. I drew some goombas and then tried to draw Mario and Luigi together.

On the tape just as I was filling in the colors, there were some footsteps. They headed up to my room and out came my dad. Wearing a white vest and barely buckled pants. He asked me where his camera was. Must've been in a panic back then because I said I didn't know. He looked a bit angry on the tape and started to shout a bit but calmed down when I said I didn't know where it was again. After that he told me that I'd just need to come along with him and "write down" what happened next. Gave me 10 minutes to get dressed and ready for going outside. Once I had gotten dressed, my younger self took the time to quickly draw something on Mario Paint. A message.

go to mr peters garden shed

Mr Peters' shed? I barely remembered Mr Peters as I was now, why did I need to visit his shed? I scrubbed away the message before leaving and turned off the camera. I guess if anyone was going to go to that shed now, it'd be me. I told my mom and dad that I was going out for a quick night walk. Found myself walking a familiar path down the street. Didn't really know where I was going aside from the garden shed. Was mostly relying on muscle memory at that point since this was unfamiliar to me as I was now. Stopped myself when I saw a house that had been left alone for a long while. There was a foreclosed sign on the front lawn, with some graffiti sprayed onto it. A part of me believed in this being Mr Peters house.

Looking both ways to be sure I wasn't being watched, I jumped the fence to the backyard and looked around to find a garden shed. Overgrown grass and scrap metal plagued the place, which wasn't helpful in getting through the place. The shed was out near the back as well in a corner so I had to carefully walk through so as to not scrape myself with some rusty metal. Once I got there, I was almost disappointed to see that it had a lock on it. But because it had been rusted to time, all it needed was a quick slam with a nearby rock and it was open. Didn't feel all that bad opening it since nobody owned the shed anymore. What harm would there be in satiating some simple curiosity?

Inside the shed was the skeleton of a young girl.

She didn't have any feet. Wherever the bones for them were, they weren't there anymore.

Her skull had been broken too. There was a large hole where her eyes should've been.

Handcuffs were been built into the shed. She was kept here.

On the table beside the skeleton was a simple cardboard box. On a dirtied sticker, it simply said "Homemade." And inside the box were tapes.

Along with the tapes was a piece of paper. Signed by me. It was an account of what had happened the day I was taken to the shed. Here's what was written:

dad took me to mr peters shed today i met a new friend called jane at the shed jane is very quiet and very cold mr peters didnt know that she was cold he said i could warm her up with body because my body was warm dad didnt want me to do that though it was his job after all he told me to leave after a bit but to slip this paper under the door once i stop writing so this is where i stop i hope jane will be okay - andrew

I took as many photos as I could and booked it as soon as possible. Could barely look my dad in the eye when I said goodbye. Currently getting some police friends of mine to look into this case and try to get some justice for Jane. I'm getting those two into custody, no matter the fucking cost.