Adelaide

“You’ve awoken in a building, on the ground floor lobby, bloodied, boarded up from the outside, falling apart in the dark, with no memory of who you are, the dark passageways breathing with dissonance, all elevators at ground floor waiting, possessing in equal parts, a desire to investigate & to escape.”

Presenting audio drama in a more intimate format, constructed as a role-playing game where as the player/protagonist, you determine the outcome of the story by the individual choices you make.

All pathways & scenarios will be published in the coming months, but if you wish to share the game with those you know, I encourage you to do so.

Written & Performed by RM - Copyright (C) 2025 - RM - All Rights Reserved

To play, register in the form below.

 Open your eyes.

There is a certain kind of trauma in waking up from a dissociative fugue state that you are presently experiencing.

Cold. Your face is cold.

You are lying, left side of your face down upon a jeweled marble floor, first sensation upon awakening is to feel a stinging at the left corner of your lip, which has been cut open, the blood trickle is still fresh but not overwhelming, you know not how. You touch your hand to it as you roll over and even in the dark, you are quite aware of the blood.

Your eyes are still adjusting to the phosphorescent light of an unknown origin that occasionally flickers so everything is still a blur, momentarily illuminated. You can’t tell that it is at least the appearance of night or the possibility of day as there is a dark patch floating betwixt the strobe effect & the shadow on your ocular nerve. Are my eyes damaged or is it something else.

Though you find nothing familiar visually as your eyes do begin to adjust, you sense the faint aroma of bleach, like the floors were recently cleaned.

You roll over again and push yourself up to a seated position. Though you are not familiar with yourself you recognize this as some kind of an apartment lobby? Office building? There are no signs upon the interior walls for you to ascertain pinpoint location. It’s a building, a blood tone to the wall from what little you can see, but more, what you feel. You have a sense you know the colour of this place.

Breathe for a moment.

Your eyes are beginning to adjust to the occasional flickering light and as the picture comes clearer into focus; you time the flash of the light to be every ten seconds, sustained for one. Without the light, everything is more intuitive shade, not so much pitch black, but a dark enough haze that compels you to be careful in your steps.

Ascertain.

You can make out that the light fixtures are dangling, faux Victorian from the ceiling, a new building parading half-relics. You don’t know your name, you don’t know this building, but the style & tone is familiar. You are certain of one thing – I've been here before.

You look down to see that your right hand is taped, like a prize fighter. There is blood on the knuckles, but it’s not your blood – it's caked and cracked on the outside.

Stand.

What is the nightmare of anonymity to the self? Have you ever woken up from a dream and for a moment not known your immediate surroundings, disassociated from your own being?

This is like such a feeling, but for the fact that you’re stuck in that moment of awakening & actualization. You’re trapped. How do you get out?

You touch your face and discover you are also cut above your right eye, the entire length of your eyebrow – bit of a gash, but it does not sting or bleed – it's merely an open wound.

You look around, trying to get your bearings. You’re about twenty feet away from the front doors and the lobby windows, but the glass is boarded up, twenty feet high, from the outside. Though you can’t tell the number as it appears to be a stencil scratched out, you can see through the glass and make out the word ‘Adelaide.’ backwards.

You have a satchel around your right shoulder. Open it.

Sparse contents, save for a flashlight that fits comfortably in your hand, a smaller penlight, a batch of keys of all shapes with no designation, threaded on a metal keychain, and a tiny red book that appears to be a journal, weathered by time.

You open the book & though the exterior has been weathered & it feels like this book has a history, there is not a single word written on the interior, as if the ink simply disappeared. There is nothing save for a tiny business card tucked away in the centre of the book. It has a rough feeling to it of a thick stock but there is nothing written on it – but you feel something etched on the front and the back of the card & you can’t make out whether it’s a pattern, or a series of words. And then you realize & look to see that there is no pen in your satchel.

Close the book.

You have no memory of the world you are presently inhabiting. You’re not necessarily frightened as you don’t have any familiarity with your surroundings, more an intimate curiosity. But you are clearly in some kind of building boarded up from the outside which somehow still has power, however faint. Aside from a light periodically flashing and sustaining for a moment, you’re in the dark.

You take out the flashlight & click on it but it does not work. You shake it and try again to turn it on, but to no avail, so you pocket it back in the satchel. You try the penlight & it too, does not work. You open it up and see that there is no battery in it, so you place it back in your bag.

You look behind you and see that there are four elevators. Though you can’t tell the designation in terms of freight, or public, as the lights are flickering, it appears all four of them are at ground/lobby level. The ‘G’ is an orange contrast in the black above each vessel. On each side, there are dark hallways that lead into the unknown, moving out in a 45-degree direction.

If you are caught unaware in an unknown place with only the book and the name Adelaide, and your amnesia has removed any sense of panic, it makes sense that you get up and walk to the one thing that feels intuitively right – the elevators.

From left to right, iridescent, as if they were roughly painted recently (the stench of lacquer giving it away) is a number on the door of each elevator. One, Two, Three, Four. You have your dark passageways stretching out into the unknown on your left, and on your right.

There are muffled sounds coming from each hallway, dissimilar, like the walls were mumbling & the building breathing. You’re fixated on what you feel like is a sentence being periodically repeated, like a chorus, but you can’t make out what is being said.

A sensation at the back of your neck tells you are not alone. I wouldn’t say it’s paranoia or fright – merely awareness & bit of a curiosity. Like the intuitive understanding of the blood-toned walls, your body feels familiar to this spot.

Who is watching me, why am I here, what is this place, how do I leave?

You stand here, back to the front entrance of whatever building this is, four elevators before you, two pathways ahead.

Choose your path.

How to Play

To play the game Adelaide, enter your email address, username & the selection of your first path (One of the four elevators, or dark passageways) You will be then provided your own page & password where you can play the game.

Each selection leads to an episode - run/reading/listening time of about ten minutes.

Adelaide is part of the ‘Play a Game’ series that will officially launch on March 20th, 2025 that combines traditional RPGs with Audio Drama.

A Quick Word

As I’m wure you’ve seen elsewhere on the site (specifically at Emergency Fundraiser for Salim — VMH) for the past year, my brother Salim has been dealing with Stage 4 Liver Cirrhosis. Without a liver transplant soon, he will die.

His work has now moved him to long-term disability and that affects his benefits as well for very expensive medication. The financial strain on him is only exacerbating his condition.

We’ve been running a fundraiser for him, but it’s going pretty slow lately. We’ve also set up a campaign to help find him a living liver donor, but there are layers of bureaucracy that make it challenging to receive a transplant from a living donor in this country

The fundraiser is for his rent, food & medication but more, it’s to buy us enough time to find him that living liver donor to save his life.

I know it’s hard out there. I know of the financial uncertainty of things. But if everyone reading this donated $25 or more to him, it buys him that time for me to find him that living liver donor and we save his life.

If you’re willing to help us, you can visit this link - Emergency Fundraiser for Salim — VMH or simply click on the ‘Donate’ button below (& if you do, on behalf of my brother & my family, thank you)

r.