Don’t Play This Game: Event 9: The Pattern
It started small.
Layla worked from home three days in a row. Then four.
Odd, but maybe she had a big project. Maybe they needed her on standby.
I didn’t think too much of it.
Until I passed the entrance to the village—and the same blue hatchback was crashed into the ditch.
Same angle. Same dent. Same police tape fluttering in the same wind.
Every day.
Untouched.
And Graham—the weird guy from the assisted living flats across the street—kept shuffling in. Every day. Asking me if I’d seen the match last night.
Same smile. Same half-mumbled words.
I don’t even like football. He knows that. He’s asked before.
The first few times, I was polite.
By the end, I was ready to scream.
Day 1:
Told myself it was stress. Overwork. Blamed the Entity for making me paranoid.
I kept my head down and got on with it.
Day 2:
The wreck was still there. Graham asked again. Layla logged onto another conference call.
My Turkish restaurant redesign still stuck on page one.
I tried switching up my schedule. Drove to town a different way. Got coffee from a place I never use.
Didn’t matter.
Day 3:
Started to realise that even small things repeated.
Same cloud formation when I walked past the park. Same dog barking at the corner house. Same stranger laughing too loudly at nothing.
I tried shouting into the wind. Nothing answered.
Day 4:
Headache hit me like a hammer the moment I woke up.
Graham was outside again. Waiting. Waving before I even opened the door.
The blue car sagged further into the ditch, but otherwise hadn’t been touched.
My mind started to fray at the edges. I kicked the side of the bin so hard I think I cracked a toe.
Didn’t change a damn thing.
Day 5:
Tried staying in bed.
Didn’t leave the flat until late afternoon.
Didn’t matter.
Same call from work. Same argument in the stairwell next door. Same blue car.
Same Graham.
The smell of burnt toast that Layla never cooks wafted through the flat exactly at 8:13 PM.
Again.
Day 6:
Started writing things down. Dates. Times. Everything.
Post-it notes littered the flat like breadcrumbs through madness.
They didn’t help.
I even tried burning one. Thought maybe disrupting the pattern would shatter it.
Day 7:
It Didn’t
Went full ritual mode.
Circles of salt at the windows. Chalk sigils at the doors. The “Ritual” I learned from the Stranger felt like the only thing left I could trust.
It gave me just enough strength to hold on.
Day 8:
Collapsed at the kitchen table sometime after midnight.
I didn’t even remember sitting down.
The world had blurred into endless static, a broken tape chewing the same five seconds over and over.
I genuinely thought I was going to die in that kitchen, halfway through a Turkish menu I could barely read anymore.
Layla shook me awake.
“Come on, get up, babe. I need a lift to the office.”
She was in her work clothes. Laptop bag packed. No Teams meeting link on her phone.
I scrambled out of bed.
The blue car was gone when we left the village.
Graham wasn’t waiting outside.
And when I sat down at work, I finally—finally—turned the page on that restaurant menu and started designing page two.
The scariest part isn’t that it happened.
It’s how easy it was to accept it.
How close I came to staying stuck there forever.
DON'T PLAY THIS GAME is a Solo TTRPG
