Megan

We were all there, bundled helplessly together; inaudible to the Sainsburys girl arranging the magazines and newspapers, or the giant shoppers shuffling blurrily past. They reached for croissants, for milk. For us! Browsing! Flipping and crumpling our corners to check smudgy headlines: nightmare-sized fingers, intimate but impersonal. Eventually, pink-tipped hands carried us through the air to the till. BEEP. We got scanned. “Fuck! It's Polly!”, came a new voice, from the newspaper’s puzzle pages. It was Amira, from the flat across the corridor. My wish must’ve also trapped her in our newspaper nightmare! Polly was the journalism student she shared with. "She brings home the papers every Sunday!", said Amira ominously.

Polly paid for us, folded us, and tucked us under her arm. She couldn’t hear our rustling, papery, desperate pleas. “Polly, help! We’re your newspaper! Wish us back!” She carried us home. Dropped us on the kitchen table. We watched helplessly as giant Polly made a vast mug of tea, and then in horror as her terrifying hands separated our vulnerable paper pages. Puja was the sports section. I felt her being ripped away. “Oh shit!”, said Amira, realising. "Polly's not into sport! She never reads..." We heard crumpling, and the soft thud of unwanted newspaper thrown away into a recycling bin. Puja was gone, and the rest of us were helpless in Polly’s hands. Her long nails could rip us, her spilled tea soak us, at any moment!

We were a messy pile of newspapers now, those of us that were left. Our owner scooped us up, her arms full of disposable reading material. Most of us were tossed casually onto her bed. We could only gaze up at Polly neatly creasing the puzzle pages; folding Amira's printed form to try her crossword. No idea she was scribbling in biro all over her flatmate! Oblivious that we were all lying there, trapped as fragile newspaper! And poor Puja, lost in the paper recycling, because of my stupid birthday wish and a cursed bracelet.