Don’t Play This Game: Event 12: Sleepwalking

I don’t remember falling asleep.

One second I was sat at my desk, half-heartedly working through a mockup, and the next I was there.

In the ring.

Bright lights. Roaring crowd. Canvas under my boots.

I wasn’t alone.

Across from me stood legends. The legends—faces from AEW, impossibilities staring me down like I belonged there.

For a heartbeat, it felt good. Right.

Then the dream twisted.

The crowd shifted, faces melting into black smudges. The lights flared cold. The ring ropes stretched and writhed like veins.

Something was calling me.

A hum, low and electric, pulling me toward the far corner.

There, half-buried under the turnbuckle, I found it:

A guitar.

Old. Splintered. Strings loose and hanging like veins themselves. Blood already crusted on the frets.

The moment I touched it, the ring began to disintegrate around me, like it had been made of ash and false memory all along.

---

I woke up standing outside.

Barefoot.

Cold.

Sticky.

The guitar still clutched in my hands.

And blood—on my palms, on my arms, splattered across my shirt.

Not just mine. I could feel it. I knew it wasn’t just mine.

I stood outside a house two streets over.

A place I recognized.

The house belonging to the guy who, a year ago, had thrown a beer bottle into our garden, cutting my cat.

I didn’t think. I didn’t check.

I bolted.

---

At home, I shoved the bloodied guitar under the bed like that could undo what had been done.

I still haven’t looked at the local news.

I don’t want to know if someone’s missing.

Or worse.

---

I’m scared.

Not of what’s out there.

Of what I’m capable of, when the Entity decides it needs something done.

DON'T PLAY THIS GAME is a Solo TTRPG