When it comes to the Board Game Club, old favorites like Monopoly and Charades often reign supreme. But once the members become tired of roleplaying a capitalist nightmare or embarrassing themselves trying to copy the mannerisms of a hammerhead shark, they begin to get dangerously creative.
That’s just what happened one fateful day when a young member brought in a very dusty old game that they had found buried in the mysterious sands of Jamesville Beach. It looked as if it hadn’t been opened since 1995. In other words, it was practically an ancient relic. None of the members had ever heard of the game before. It had a very peculiar title, “Jumanji.” What the heck does that even mean? Eventually, four curious players decided to give it a try with the rest of the club crowded around them.
Lizzie Van Buren was the youngest player in the game, so she made the first roll. Nervously, she read the first riddle that appeared in the center of the game: Don’t be fooled, it isn’t thunder. Staying put would be a blunder. Instantly, a huge stampede filled with every jungle animal imaginable ran through the Red Hall, squishing any unfortunate student or teacher that happened to be in the way. The club realized they’d made a huge mistake. They tried to remove their tokens from the game before they caused any more damage to their beloved school to no avail. The rules required the game to be finished once it was started. “To this day, I’m still not sure why no one read the rules on the back of the box before we played that stupid game,” Van Buren remarked. “That’s like the first law of board games.”
Over the course of the game, room R08 was bombarded with bats, assaulted with carnivorous apes and infested with venomous spiders and mosquitos. One player tried to cheat to finish the game a bit faster and was met with a special punishment. A law of Jumanji has been broken. You will step back even more than your token. The player shrieked as they began to transform into their token, the metal elephant. “I used to think elephants were cool, but now I hate them. That was so humiliating! Despite being deathly allergic, I STILL have an intense craving for peanuts,” cried the player, who wished to remain anonymous to avoid further embarrassment.
The game ended with a humongous earthquake that split the whole school in half. Who knew J-DHS was built right over a fault line? Now, not only will the Blue Hall need to be renovated, but most of the building as well. Construction will begin in the Red Hall, which is now overgrown with deadly plants. Rumour has it that a lion is still on the prowl in the large cafeteria, but no one has yet been brave enough to confirm or deny this theory.
Despite the illegal destruction of school property committed by the club, they’ve all learned a valuable lesson. They now read the rules at least 36 times before playing any new game to make sure there aren’t any ambiguous clauses that could lead to another unlucky incident. As for the game itself? According to the club’s leaders, they just threw it in the garbage can in R08 and left because they wanted to go home. However, when our reporters went to check this claim, the game was gone. Where will it end up next? Nobody knows.
