Don’t Play This Game: Event 4: The Video Tape
I didn’t want to play it.
The package arrived with a hollow thud as it hit the floor. Nothing on the outside but an address and just enough tape to imply someone wanted it to stay shut. Inside: shredded newspaper, yellowed and brittle. Smelled like mildew.
Buried in the middle—an old VHS cassette.
Unmarked, except for a white label across the top. The words PLAY ME scrawled in jagged black ink.
No return address. No postage label. Nothing.
I left it on the side for a day. Pretended I could ignore it. I didn’t touch it. I didn’t look at it. I left the room.
That night, everything in my fridge turned.
Every. Single. Thing.
Bread moldy. Eggs gone sulphur. Chicken wrapped in plastic like it was embalmed, and still it stank like open graves.
I looked at the tape, it let off an energy that told me it was responsible, and more would happen if I didn’t play it.
Tonight, I caved. Plugged in the old combo unit—I’d had it for years. Same TV I used to play my PS1 on. I kept it because Dragonball Z just didn’t hit the same in 16:9 DVD widescreen—those old 4:3 VHS recordings from Cartoon Network? Perfect. Somehow more real.
I pushed the tape in. Pressed play.
The screen flickered into life with that soft static hum I haven’t heard in over a decade.
And then…
My old house.
The timestamp said 1998. I was 9.
The camera, shaky and hand-held, moved through the house like it knew it. Familiar steps, purposeful angles. It crept room to room, lingering. Filming. Observing.
There was me—curled on the carpet drawing Pokémon.
Scott, age six, asleep on the sofa.
Sheri, barely three, laughing at something in her hand.
Mum in the office. Dad in the garage. Unaware. Unbothered. All of us, just… captured. Like deer in a trophy photo.
And then came the interruptions. Spliced between the home footage were flashes—symbols, sigils, fractured images that jolted the eyes. One shape repeated:
An origami bird.
Almost my freelancing logo. Almost. But off. Wrong in subtle, whispering ways.
I didn’t take the tape out.
I unplugged the entire unit and walked it straight down to the bins behind the flats. No drama. No flames. Just a cold disposal, like it might follow me if I made a show of it.
It’s gone now. I think.
This game isn’t just watching me now.
It’s watching who I was.
And if it can reach back that far…
Then it’s already inside.
DON'T PLAY THIS GAME is a Solo TTRPG
