Adelaide
Written & Performed by RM - Copyright (C) 2025 - rahim ladha - All Rights Reserved
“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.
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.
To play, register in the form below, after listening to/reading Pathway One, below.
Pathway One
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.
Choice Made: Left Passageway
Pathway One
“You’ve never fared well on the terms set upon you by others” & this somehow feels like you’re being manipulated.
How do I know this?
The light, annoys. The grade on which it is playing with your eyes seems foreign. Light strikes the retina (photoreceptors transform the light into electrical signals, which travel from the retina through the optic nerve to the brain) Your mind turns the signals into the images you see.
This light is lying to me – it feels like in the natural process, something is being played with differently, not so noticeable.
How do I know this?
You line your index finger like it were prayer to the centre of your face, pointing upward, the base dividing. This is your compass.
Close your eyes. Something within is telling you that this flickering of the lights is intentional, as distraction.
Instincts are telling you that your eyes will lie & you’ve always leaned in a particular direction without sight & though you are not familiar with yourself, you’ve felt a bit of familiarity in choosing to wander in the dark. This is not new to you. As you approach the left pathway, the blinking of the lights stop.
You are now in the dark, completely.
A thrum is beginning to play in your chest, like your heart is now being manipulated, as are your lungs. You feel connected to this pathway without memory, only instinct.
You are standing at the beginning of the path, and take one step in, and you feel the building beginning to breathe.
You take your right hand, blind, and touch the wall to your right & feel something sticky on your fingertips against the wall.
You hold it to your hands and it has a metallic aroma. This is not paint is what you whisper to yourself in your mind.
You begin to hear a whistling. It seems random but instinctually, you have a familiarity with music – rhythm.
And code. You seek patterns where what seems to be random is not so, if you listen long enough to what it speaks to you.
To feel your way, you put your hand now against the wall and feel it coated with this sticky, metallic substance.
And when you do, you hear a low, deep groan that resonates in your bones. This is a grounding sound, designed to pulverize.
The whistling continues. Is this an invitation?
A gentle breeze begins to flow from ahead of you, like it were an aroma. You are tasting something in the air, rotting, but not unpleasant so much as curious.
Something is coming closer to you. You begin to hear steps, heavy, slow. The notion of code in the whistling (which has not stopped) is fixed in your mind.
The steps are heavy, more a thud upon the ground that either is making you tremble, or the floor shake. There are seconds between each step & as whatever is this is coming closer, the whistling is becoming louder.
It’s a nasal pattern, the sound like a wheeze, but something about it is registering to you as something to interpret more than fear.
But whatever this is, is persuading you, that you should, be afraid. It’s coming, closer.
You have four choices.
Open your eyes and remain where you are.
Keep your eyes closed and remain where you are.
Keep your eyes closed and walk forward to meet whatever this is.
Open your eyes, and go further into the blackness before you.
Notes:
This is a sample pathway of the game. It is the path that one of our users is taking. As they continue to make choices, you’ll see pathways published here in both written & audio form.
If you wish to start the pathway at any point published here, simply fill out the ‘Choose Your Path’ form & note where you’d like to pick up the game & you’ll have your own personal narrative.