I own a weekend mansion in Scotland because I “robbed” a leprechaun

I know how insane this sounds. If I told anyone in my real life, they’d have me committed, but I need to get this off my chest because the double life is starting to wear on me. It’s not a fantasy anymore. It’s a slow-motion wreck.

About a year ago, I was hiking in a remote part of the Highlands. I stumbled onto something I wasn’t supposed to see. I won’t say I “fought” a leprechaun like a boxing match, but there was a confrontation—a bit of a trickery-based struggle—and I ended up winning. In the end, I walked away with a significant amount of gold that, logistically speaking, shouldn’t have existed.

But I didn’t just take the gold. When I had him cornered, I made a demand. I didn’t want to deal with airports or customs. I wished for a way to bridge the gap between my reality and his. He gave me the ball.

It’s heavy, cold, and looks like it was polished from a piece of night sky. The gold was easy to liquidate; it bought me a literal mansion in rural Scotland outright. It’s a massive, old-stone estate with more rooms than I’ll ever use. But because I have a regular life and a career back home that I’m not ready to quit, I’ve turned into a weekend ghost.

And it is absolutely destroying me.

Every Friday night, I walk into the woods behind my house. I hold that ball, focus on the Highland mist, and throw it. The world folds, my lungs scream as the air is replaced by the metallic tang of a mountain storm, and suddenly, I’m in Scotland. Then, every Sunday evening, I throw it again to land back home, just in time to show up to my job on Monday morning.

The physical toll is a nightmare. There is no “jet lag” for reality-warping; it’s a deep, bone-level exhaustion that caffeine can’t touch. I look in the mirror on Monday mornings and I don’t recognize the man staring back. My skin is sallow, my eyes are bloodshot, and I’m losing weight because I’m too nauseous from the “jumps” to eat.

My relationships are evaporating. My friends think I’m “really into weekend camping,” but they’ve stopped inviting me places because I’m never there. My coworkers think I’m a homebody, but they’ve started noticing the way I stare into space, or the way I’ve started smelling like peat smoke and ancient dust in a climate where those things don’t exist. I’m a stranger in my own house, and a trespasser in my mansion.

But the paranoia is the worst part. The ball is getting warmer every time I use it, pulsing with a rhythmic amber light that matches my own heartbeat. I’m terrified the “previous owner” is coming for his interest. I find small things out of place—the smell of damp earth in a locked library, or a single, perfect four-leaf clover sitting on my pillow in a house where no one else has a key.

I’m living a folklore-funded fantasy for 48 hours a week, but the other 120 hours are spent in a waking fever dream. I’m trapped between two worlds, belonging to neither, waiting for the moment the ball decides not to bring me back—or worse, the moment the “clover-dweller” decides he’s had enough of the game.

I got exactly what I wished for. God help me, I wish I had never found him.