Don’t Play This Game: Event 1: Tragedy Strikes
It began with a phone call.
Not from the book, though I half-expected the damn thing to ring after how it’s been looming in the corner of my desk, waiting. No, it was Mum. Real voice. Real grief.
She told me Aunt Margerie’s gone. Disappeared without explanation. They’re calling it “presumed dead” because no one wants to say vanished, like that makes it less unsettling.
Margerie wasn’t my blood, but she may as well have been. Nan’s oldest friend, her constant shadow. A nurse like her, a companion, sometimes a busybody with a gift for awkward timing—but she was family. Full stop.
I didn’t think this thing—the curse, the Entity, whatever it is—would start so soon. The book arrived just a few days ago, still warm from the parcel. I read the first page. It told me not to play. Told me I had to play. Told me something bad would happen if I didn’t.
Then Margerie vanished.
So yeah. I guess we’re playing.
The memorial was rough in that weird way where it doesn’t feel earned. There’s no closure. No urn, no service photos, no wake slideshow. Just an empty space and unanswered questions.
Scott came with me. We fell back into our usual deflection—jokes, whispered quips about the suspiciously green sandwiches and how Margerie would’ve left passive-aggressive notes about the flowers. It’s how we get through things. It worked for Nan. It worked here.
But there was a moment, sitting at the back of the room, when I looked down at my hands and noticed the book had made its way into my satchel. I don’t remember packing it. I don’t remember bringing it.
It wanted to be there. It wanted to see.
Three days later, the envelope arrived. No stamp, no postmark, just my name written in a way that felt… deliberate. Inside were keys. Cabin keys.
Apparently Margerie owned a holiday cabin—news to everyone. I always thought her world was the bungalow around the corner and nostalgic stories about camping trips with Mitchell. Canada maybe, but this? This wasn’t something she ever talked about.
The keys are old. Cold to the touch.
They reek of the book.
I’ve added them to the Record. I don’t know where the cabin is yet, but I can feel it pressing at the edge of my thoughts, like a place I’ve dreamed of but never been. Maybe the book will show me. Maybe it already has.
DON'T PLAY THIS GAME is a Solo TTRPG
