Don’t Play This Game 39:54

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My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big ROAS man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend.

My friend's still laughing at me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn, you'll be able to reach people who do. Get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to LinkedIn.com slash results to claim your credit. That's LinkedIn.com slash results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn, the place to be, to be. Hey, everyone. It's Pacific, and I'm here today with a very special episode of Mayfair Watchers Society.

We've teamed up with Parable Games, the makers behind the popular horror tabletop RPG Shiver, to create this episode. A special episode to promote their new game, Don't Play This Game. Don't Play This Game is currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter starting today. But let me tell you what it is. Imagine this. It's 2006, you have a shiny new flip phone, and ding, you get a text. But it's one of those chain messages.

Send this to seven people or you die. You all know what I'm talking about, right? But what if it was real? What if ignoring meant death, but playing meant getting tangled in a web of increasingly distressing and disturbing events? Don't Play This Game is just that. Journal, document, create, explore, and scare the shit out of yourself in this unique experience that takes horror beyond the tabletop.

Like I said, Don't Play This Game is currently raising funds on Kickstarter. You can learn more and even play the demo by visiting bit.ly slash don't play this game. That's don't play this game, capital D, lowercase everything else. You can also find a link to their website in our show notes below.

But telling you about the game isn't quite enough. So Trevor, Kale, our showrunner, and myself, we all sat down and played the game. And then we created this episode to give you just a glimpse of the horror that awaits you in Don't Play This Game. Enjoy! We are The Watchers.

Observers of the strange, paranormal, occult, unwelcome, unspiritual, horrifying, mystical, secret, transcendent, repulsive, captivating, unwelcome, appalling, gruesome, unseen, magic, weird, revolting, horrifying, unseen.

Welcome to Mayfair Watchers Society. We can't keep doing this, Oscar. You can't keep doing this. We're not kids anymore. I'm an adult. I have a job. A real job. I've worked full-time in an agricultural testing lab for the past four years. I just made supervisor. Did you know that? You should. It's not like I haven't mentioned it in my emails, but...

Yeah, I'm not convinced you actually read anything I send you. Given how and when you choose to respond, I'm starting to think that maybe, just maybe, you interpret my reaching out to you as an open invitation to tell me whenever something goes wrong with your life. Because that's obviously more important, isn't it? I would have liked to have this conversation over the phone. I tried calling you.

Multiple times. At this point, it's become pretty obvious you have no intention of picking up. Because that would ruin your little game, wouldn't it? So I guess we'll just have to do this here. Did you actually read what you sent me, Oscar? Did you read those words out loud to yourself first? Somehow, I don't think you did. Let me repeat them back to you so you can take another shot at it.

Did you read it? Out loud, I mean. Did you hear yourself? Did you hear how fucking childish you sounded? I'm done, Oscar. I'm just done. No.

I genuinely do not know if this is better or worse than last time. At least back then you actually made an effort to sound convincing, didn't you? I'm not even sure anymore. Was it my fault? Was I just too young at the time to realize how ridiculous and infantile your lies were? Have you always been like this? Are you stupid or do you just think I am?

I honestly don't know. I don't know. Anyway, you forgot to take like 90% of your playlists off private. I'm sure you had all these big ideas about what was going to happen and how I would react when I watched the videos, but the link you sent me just led me to eight dead videos and a five-minute monologue of you rambling about how you're cursed now and there's no escape except to share the curse.

If I'd been able to watch any of your other videos, I'm sure I would have found them very impressive. I'm sure it all would have come together in something really powerful and imaginative. You've always been quite the actor. Maybe one of these days you'll even use that big, beautiful imagination of yours for something people can actually enjoy. Like writing or painting or, you know, photography.

I kinda thought that was what you wanted the Polaroid camera for. Y-you know, an outlet. A way to express yourself that wasn't harmful or self-destructive, but... I guess not. Maybe that's on me for assuming. They were right about you. Fish. Quirky. Lemon mime. They were right. I should have left when they did. This is the last time you'll be hearing from me, Oscar. Don't try to contact me again. I hope you're happy, Oscar. You got your wish?

Something bad happened. It hasn't been seven days, but it is 11.45 a.m. on a Thursday, and I'm at home in my pajamas, which is pretty strange for somebody with a 9-to-5, don't you think? Yeah. It's 11.45 a.m., and there's a box of wine in my fridge, and I'm thinking about breaking it open. You want to take a crack as to why, Oscar?

I'll give you three guesses. And the first two don't count. Four years. Four years of hard work and dedication and for what? For our lab's entire workload to get reallocated to some big city testing facility? There's a job waiting for you if you're willing to relocate. Yeah, is that what I'm supposed to do? Just move away from the town I grew up in? The town I...

The town I've dedicated my entire life to making better for people to live in? Okay. Sure. I know none of this is actually your fault. You just happened to send me that stupid fucking email yesterday, and then I just happened to have that weird fucking dream last night,

And then I just happened to get that text from Minera this morning, which was really cool, by the way. I love finding out that I was losing my job by getting a text message telling me I could take a long weekend about how we don't need to get started transferring over the samples to the new location until Monday. That was a really fun conversation.

Four years, and they didn't even bother CCing me on the original email. I didn't mean it when I said I should have left with everybody else. And I didn't mean it when I said not to contact me again. I... I was just frustrated. And not just at you. I... I think maybe on some level I knew this was coming. Management hasn't been communicating with us. The past month has been all questions and no answers. And I...

I shouldn't take that out on you. But it is frustrating, Oscar. Not hearing from you for months and months and then having you send me this weird email out of nowhere. It felt a little too much like last time. When you said you were sick. When you pretended to be someone else on your account. When you let us fill your page with all these messages we thought you'd never get the chance to see. It felt like that.

And it wasn't a good feeling. But you're still one of my oldest friends, even if you make me fucking crazy sometimes. Email me back, okay? Aya. My mom's dead. Brain aneurysms. They said it was instantaneous. I thought you might want to know. I don't... I don't know why...

I know it doesn't make sense to think this way, but I can't stop thinking she's dead because I didn't tell you about that dream. Maybe it's just because it's been seven days since you sent me that email and you said I had seven days before something bad happened. I don't know. I just can't stop thinking that this is my fault. That I should have just... I even wanted to tell you. It just...

doesn't feel good. It feels bad to talk about it, Oscar. And I don't understand why. Every time I try to put it into words, it feels like something's getting its hooks into me. Like there's something crawling under my skin. I have to talk about it, don't I? If I don't, it'll just get worse. There was something there.

A figure? A voice? It sounded like you. And you were beside me, and you were at the end of the hall, and it was just both of those things, but you were only at the end of the hall. Nothing about where we were looked like the old Connolly place to me, but for some reason, I just knew. I don't know why I was so sure. I have no frame of reference for what the inside looks like.

broke my promise. I never did it. I never snuck in like I said I would. It wasn't a coincidence that we got caught. I told myself that since you were flying in from halfway across the country just to come and see me, that the least I could do was make sure we did everything you wanted while you were in Mayfair. As soon as you said you wanted to go into the Connolly house, I chickened out and told my mom. I never told you that, did I?

You thought she figured it out on her own. And then, when you were leaving, I promised I would find a way in on my own, since we couldn't do it together. I broke my promise, Oscar. I still haven't been inside the Connolly house. But for some reason, I knew that was where I was. I kept getting lost, somehow. In the dream, I could see you there, standing at the end of the hall, and...

That's when I realized you weren't beside me. But no matter how much I walked, I never seemed to get any closer to you. And you just kept calling out to me, asking me to help you. I don't know exactly when I realized that the voice I was hearing wasn't coming from the person at the end of the hall. I just remember suddenly knowing it wasn't you. It was something else.

I stopped and I looked at it and the longer I looked at it, the less like a person the shape of it seemed. It was like staring at a stain on old wallpaper. I kept getting the edges of it all mixed up with the door frame and the wood paneling on the walls and kept losing track of what it was that ever made me think it looked like a person.

It was one of those things, one of those moments where you're so sure that the second you look away, it'll start looking back at you somehow. I tried to draw it when I woke up, but this is gonna make me sound crazy, and you know what? Maybe I am. There was just something about it, about the way it looked, that I couldn't stand.

I couldn't even stand the idea of tearing it up, because then there'd just be a dozen pieces of it, and if I lost one, I couldn't be sure where it went, so I... I... I ate it, Oscar. I tore the paper off the pad and crumpled it into a ball, and I put it in my mouth, and I just started chewing.

For some reason, that just felt like the only way I could get rid of it. Like, if I didn't, it'd just keep coming back somehow. No. Mom is dead, and I can't convince myself that's unrelated. Email me back. I miss you. Aya. I got your picture. I'm glad to see you're using the camera I bought you. I don't know if I should be relieved or terrified, or both.

Maybe you already know this, but I've been trying to get a hold of you basically since you emailed me. I remembered that you had given me your girlfriend's full name at some point, so I tried reaching out to her through social media. If I'm being completely honest right now, I kind of expected to find out you'd been making her up. I kind of wish you'd been making her up. Lisa's sister got in contact with me after I sent a message to the account.

She said she's been missing for over a month, and that you had been looking into it, but she stopped hearing from you about a week and a half ago. I got this... I don't know why, but I... I checked your playlist again. I watched those other videos now that they've been taken off private, and... And I don't know if I'm... I don't know if it's wrong of me to find it so touching that you took so long to pass it on to me. This sounds fucked up, but...

I've never been more sure you really cared about me. I really hope you're okay, Oscar. I really hope you're okay. And it's you who sent me this Polaroid. That place. I woke up there this morning. The place in the picture. I woke up there. My arms were caked in dirt and clay and almost up to the elbow. I was soaked and covered in mud and leaves and twigs and...

numb from the cold and... It took me a long time to figure out where I was, to get back home. It took me even longer to realize I was holding something. My hands were so numb, I just never... I didn't even feel it until I was already inside. And now I can't stop looking at it. It looks like what I used to think cancer looked like back when I was a kid.

Something rotten and twisted. Some kind of a maggot or a worm. Something that would crawl down your throat and make you sick. So sick you might never get better. That's how I thought about it when you said you had it. I thought about how you had this worm wriggling around inside you, making you sick. And I know now that that's not how it works. That's...

That that's never how it worked and that you were never even sick in the first place, but somewhere deep down I guess there's still a part of me that thinks of cancer that way. The thing I was holding when I woke up this morning looks like that. Like a cancer. I think I might have made it in my sleep. I'm attaching a picture of it to the email.

I don't know if it'll help. It just feels like something I'm supposed to do. I just don't want things to get worse. Email me back, Oscar. Please. Aya. I think I made a mistake. I didn't know who else to turn to. When things like this happen in Mayfair, you go to the Watchers. It's just what you do. It wasn't... I wasn't... It never occurred to me that... I wasn't...

I wasn't thinking about the consequences of exposing other people to the game. I wasn't thinking about how that might make them all a part of it. Not at all. There are so many people who read the forums. Not even just people in Mayfair. Other people too. I deleted the post, but I don't know if that'll change anything. If it's already too late, I don't know. I just don't know. I guess I really can't say I'm better than you here.

At least you only sent it to me. The people who saw it before I took it down, they... They reached out to me. They found a resource for me. A message board full of posts from people just like us. Or just like me. Are you still a part of this, Oscar? Did it free you when you passed the game to me? Some of the people on the message board seem to think that's how it works, but I... I just don't know.

It's hard to tell what happens to people after they stop posting. And the only thing anyone seems to actually agree on is how the game is played. It's always, first, you're sent the game and you become the player. Then, second, you start getting messages, demands, experiences. And third, it wants you to... Not catalog them, that's...

Not the right word. It's not really about the things it sends you. It's about you. It's about your reactions. It wants you to react to the things it shows you. Tells you. Gives you. To review them, I guess. To show you've been listening and looking and feeling. It wants you to turn your reactions into tangible things. Things it can keep. Like these emails.

They're not just for you, are they? Maybe they never were. Like the drawing. That's why everything went so wrong. I wasn't playing the game right. It was worse than if I'd just been ignoring it. I gave it something and then tried to take it away. It doesn't want anything taken away. Like the cancer. The thing I made. It should have fallen apart by now.

It's just made of sticks and moss and clay. It should have dried up and fallen to pieces, but it's still wet. I have to leave it in a bowl and empty every few hours or the water overflows and starts soaking into the wood of the table. It wanted that from me. It wanted me to make it, and it wanted me to keep it. It wants you to respond to it.

The game. The thing that is the game. Everyone agrees on that. Nobody... Nobody seems to agree on how it ends. Some people on the message board say they played through all the way to the end of the game and survived. That it's hard and horrible, but it can be done. And then other people say you can give it away. That giving it away is a part of finishing the game.

That you have to give it away or the game goes on forever. And they argue about it. Call each other things like Avatar of the Entity and... I just don't know. Did you play the game all the way through to the end, Oscar? Your videos make it seem like you did. Did you make it? You should have made it, right? You did everything you were supposed to. You sent it to me and you played it to the end. You did both. But if you made it...

Why aren't you answering me? And if you didn't make it, who sent me the game? Who am I sending these messages to? What did I do to deserve this? How did your game end, Oscar? How will mine? I'm scared. Who wants me to go to the Connolly house? I should have known. I should have realized. All the signs were there. Did you know?

Did you know that when I thought you were gone, I couldn't stop thinking about how it was my fault you never got to see what was inside? Every time I passed it on the way to school, I felt sick. Like you'd given me your cancer. Like I'd inherited it from you when you died. Because I deserved it. Because I was a liar. That's why I never went in.

Not because I was afraid of getting hurt or getting in trouble, because that place got you so tangled up in how I felt about you being gone. It was part of why I stayed, Oscar. Why I didn't go with them. You were a liar, but so was I. It felt like a relief. Like we were even. And I know the things we did were very different, and nobody else would have thought they were the same, but they felt the same.

They felt the same to me. So maybe it is you. Maybe that's what winning is. Maybe you're a part of it now. Part of the game. Not just a player. Piece of it. Maybe to get through this, both of us have to make good on our lives. You needed to disappear. I need to go to the Connolly house. Maybe that's... Maybe that's how I find my way to the end of the game. Maybe that's where it all comes together for me.

I never told you that was where I woke up, did I? But I didn't have to. You knew. You took that picture. I didn't recognize it at first. Not from that angle. We never got the chance to sneak around behind the building, so... I couldn't have known until I saw it for myself. But when I woke up there, looked up at the back of the house, I knew. And I knew. Even if I didn't want to admit to myself, I knew.

You would have to have been there to take that picture. Here. In Mayfair. And I... I know you're not. Some part of me is still clinging to the idea that this is all some elaborate practical joke. Another web of lies. Just like before. Part of me still thinks I'll walk to the door of the Connolly house and you'll come springing out of it, laughing.

That you'll tell me everything that's happened as an explanation. And if I just looked a little harder, I would have seen through your tricks. I want so badly to believe you're safe here somewhere. And if I could only... I could look you in the eyes and call you a tasteless piece of shit who'd deserve it if I never talked to it again. But I know that's not true. I know. It's not you. Not this time. There's something else here, Oscar.

And it's waiting for me in the Connolly House. There are places that seem so big when you're a kid, and when you go back as an adult, they're so much less impressive than you remember them being. The shadows they cast are a little less black. A little cold. And empty. The Connolly House isn't like that. I could be 11 again, and nothing would feel different about being here. This place is exactly as terrifying as I remember.

The ivy-choked brick. The boarded-up windows. The way the porch overhang casts a shadow so deep that the stained-glass window in the front door glints like an eye in the dark. I don't know how it never got broken. Maybe it did, but it healed somehow. Stranger things have happened here.

I remember you running up the stairs to the porch, shouting at you to be careful because the sound they made when you stepped on them had me so sure they were about to break under your weight. That was as far as we got before Mom came. But it was farther than I'd expected. You got one foot on the porch before she caught up with us. They're worse now. The stairs. They're not even pretending anymore. The wood is rotten. Every step sags down in the middle like it's melted in the sun.

I can see the tiny pinprickles in them from here. And I know that if I try to use them, my foot will go right through. And then all those tiny burrowing things will come crawling up my leg. But the porch has always been covered. And it looks dry. I think if I could jump and make it to the top without having to put any weight on the steps, the porch will hold me. I can do it. It's only four steps. It's not a big jump. Just a big jump for a kid.

And we're not kids anymore, Oscar. I'm an adult, and I can make that jump. I can make that jump. I can walk across the porch to that door. And I can finally make good on my promise. I can finally put an end to this. I'm sorry. I think this might be the last time you'll be hearing from me. I miss you, Oscar. It would be... easier to just leave this here. But it wouldn't be right. I need to address the possibility. I can't just ignore it. If you're reading this...

I'm sorry. I'm sorry I brought you into it. I'd like to think that I would never choose to do that to someone, but I don't think Oscar thought he would either. I'm less and less sure it's something you have to choose. I think you can choose it, but even if you don't, that doesn't mean it won't happen anyway. I could try to stop it, but... Even if I deleted every message in my outbox and tried nuking my account...

We all know that nothing on the internet is ever truly gone. It wouldn't stop you finding them if you were looking hard enough. And I don't think it would stop them being sent to you. So if you're reading this, I'm sorry. I can only hope that what I've written down will help you. But if you're reading this, you must play this game in seven days or something bad will happen. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

Thanks for listening, and if you liked this episode, please remember to visit bit.ly slash don'tplaythisgame to learn more and even play a demo of the game yourself. Mayfair Watchers Society is based on the works of Trevor Henderson. Don't Play This Game was written by Cale Brown. Aya was Bailey Wolfe. Our dialogue editor and sound designer was Brad Colbrook.

Our music was by Matt Royberger. Our showrunner is Cale Brown. Our creative director is Trevor Henderson. I'm your producer, Pacific S. Obadiah. And our executive producers are Tom Owen and Brad Miska. And this is a Bloody FM show. For more information, visit bloody.fm.