This story is rated K for brief thematic elements.

At three uploads in total thus far, 2012-the year of the world's supposed destruction-has proven to be my most active year on this site by far. Go figure. xD

Anyway! Here's a short little AU one-shot for you guys. Hope you like it!

FREE

It happened one night not very long ago. I was having another nightmare about big monsters with jerky arms and sad faces that were always crying in pain when a noise woke me. Outside the window was the moon, as big and white as it is in the school library books about princesses who escape their evil stepmothers, and standing in front of it, staring into my room, was someone. It was Alessa—and she was smiling.

Hugging my Robbie bunny to my chest, I got out of bed and opened the window.

"Get your stuff together," she said as she climbed inside. She was wearing her school backpack. "We're running away."

I poked my head outside. The top of Daddy's ladder was leaning against the window sill, and standing at the bottom of it, holding it against the house, was one of Alessa's friends, a big boy named Walter. Beside him was Alex Shepherd, holding his brother Josh's hand. Josh was hugging a Robbie bunny, too—and all three of them were wearing backpacks, just like Alessa.

I turned around to grab my backpack, but Alessa was already holding it. She had opened the top drawer of the little dresser that her mommy, Sister Dahlia from church, gave me for my birthday last year and was stuffing one of my good church dresses in it. I left the bible that Daddy gave me on top of the dresser and stuffed my other four good church dresses in along with my underwear and best church shoes. I couldn't believe it—we'd always talked about running away together to some place where no one could hurt us, and now we were finally doing it.

Alessa held onto Robbie as we'd climbed down the ladder. When we got to the bottom, Walter put Daddy's ladder back behind his shed, and all five of us ran down the street and into the woods behind me and Alessa's school.

"Run to the moon!" Alessa said.

So we ran and ran until we were all out of breath, but we didn't stop—we kept on running. The shadows around us started to scare me because they looked like the big monsters with jerky arms and sad faces that were always crying in pain from my nightmares, so I yelled Alessa's name and made her stop. Walter, Alex, and Josh all stopped, too.

"What's wrong, Claudia?" she asked.

"I'm scared," I said.

She bent down and put her hand on my shoulder. "I am too, but we have to keep going. If we don't, we might not ever get a chance to leave again."

"Alessa, if we want to get to the subway station before dawn, we have to hurry," said Walter.

"Okay," she said, then turned back to me. "Here, hold onto Robbie; he'll protect you." She handed him to me, and I hugged him tight to my chest. Then she held out her hand. "Grab my hand, and no matter what happens, don't let go of it, okay?"

I nodded and did as she said, squeezing it until I was sure I wouldn't let go.

We all started running to the moon again. I looked up at Alessa. In the moonlight, her face was as white as mine, even the places that were black from where Sister Dahlia had hit her, but she was still smiling. She looked so beautiful—so I smiled as big as I could with the black bruise on my cheek from where Daddy had slapped me and hoped I looked as beautiful as she did.

"Alessa, what are we going to do when we get to the subway station?" I asked.

"We're going to go as far away from here as we can—maybe to Ashfield, or Brahams, or even New York City. But wherever we go, I promise we'll be safe," she said.

"Will we ever come back?"

"Of course we will, Claudia, when we're bigger and stronger so they can't hurt us. There are still more kids who are trapped here. We have to help them."

I nodded and kept running.

We ran through the woods, towards the moon, and away from Silent Hill.

the end.

Thanks for reading; please feel free to leave comments/reviews/critiques/suggestions/gushing raves telling me what an amazing person and writer I am (haha, I should be so lucky)/etc.; and have a lovely holiday season! -xo AC