"Letter From A Lost Self"
A Silent Hill Inspired Fan Fiction
Summary: People seem to be receiving letters from Silent Hill a lot. However, the one Bronwyn James receives is a little different. It's dated a week from the day she receives it – and it's signed from herself.
Chapter One
She had heard a lot about the town of Silent Hill, yet she still didn't seem to know much about it. She knew bad things tended to happen there, knew that it was mentioned in the local papers a lot, but either the reports had been vague or she simply just didn't pay much attention. Either way, she knew it was a bad idea to attempt to travel there the minute she stepped on the bus heading out of her hometown of Westwood Arch. Yet here she was, sitting in the back of a cramped and smelly bus, considering herself lucky to have snagged a window seat.
Her fingers closed around the crumpled envelope, and she looked down at it again, for what had to be the hundredth time since she received it the day before.
From: Bronwyn Jones
Room 208, Alchemilla Hospital
Silent Hill
To: Bronwyn Jones
Apt D2, Willowtree Lane
Westwood Arch
The stamp in the upper left corner was scratched away and faded as if it was decades old, but the postmark was there in clear, red ink. "Silent Hill USPS, September 30th"
Which was impossible, Bronwyn told herself yet again, because the current date was September 23rd.
The letter inside did nothing to help the strangeness of the situation. In fact, it made it even…well, stranger.
"Dear Bronwyn,
I suppose it's weird to begin this letter in that fashion. After all, I'm Bronwyn. I'm writing a letter to myself. But I guess I don't want to be rude. However, I won't bother asking how you are, because I know. I'm you, after all. But you don't know how I am. Things are bleak on this side. Lonely. I wish you were here. I wish you would come and see me. It's been so long. And I'm so tired …
Maybe you'll get this and decide to come. It's September, you know. Fall. Our favorite. Maybe we can go out on the lake and watch the leaves fall on the water. We used to love that, didn't we? Before…
I hope you decide to come.
I need you.
I think you need me, too.
Love always,
Yourself
PS. He comes to see me sometimes, but he doesn't stay long. He knows I'm not you. He knows I'm the wrong one. He just likes to pretend."
Reading the words over again made her stomach turn and she quickly folded the letter up and shoved it back into the envelope, tucking it inside the pocket of her jacket. She had wrestled with what to do ever since receiving the letter. She wanted to throw it away and shrug it off as a prank.
But it was her handwriting. It was her way of wording things. It was, as far as she could tell, a letter to herself. From a week in the future.
She closed her eyes against the impending headache. She didn't know what the hell she was thinking. Who receives a letter like this and just decides to travel two hours by bus to some middle of nowhere town that's nothing but bad news? She knew that old saying curiosity killed the cat and she also knew it was true.
But there was something tugging her there. Whether it was curiosity, intrigue, the need for answers, or the desire to find whoever had set this up and kick their ass. She had to go. Deep down, she knew she had to.
She tried to open her eyes again, but found she couldn't. She felt tired and heavy all of a sudden. As she sunk down in her seat and let sleep overtake her, she guessed there were worse ways to kill time on a bus ride.
Xxx
She looked down at her reflection in the lake, at her 12-year-old features, the awkward stage between childhood and teenager. Summer sun freckles dotted her nose, her smile was a little crooked and her teeth even more so. She reached up to push her long dark hair out of her face and left dirt and grass between the strands. She dipped her hands in the lake to cleanse them of the dirt, and watched the ripples she caused distort her features. Her childhood innocence warped into an unrecognizable beast that she should have been afraid of.
Instead, she laughed.
That laugh woke her up.
Bronwyn awoke with a smile on her face that quickly subsided once she looked around and realized she was alone on the bus.
She frowned. It seemed like she had only been asleep for a few minutes. Yet her dream felt as though it lasted for hours, and now she was alone on an empty bus. The thought made her angry. No one could have bothered to wake her up? What if she was supposed to catch a different bus? What a thoughtless bunch of assholes.
She muttered a string of curses as she got to her feet and headed for the exit, but she stopped in her tracks as she reached the front of the bus.
The entire front end of the bus was smashed into a concrete partition on the side of a road in, from what she could tell, was the middle of nowhere. However, it was hard to make out much of anything due to the dense fog that seemed to have overtaken the area. Her breath caught in her throat as she stumbled out of the broken door and took in the sight of the wrecked vehicle.
How could she have slept through that? The impact alone would have sent her and all the other passengers skyrocketing forward, not to mention the screams of confusion and chaos that had to have followed.
And where the hell was everyone else?
She turned around in a panic, trying to see anything besides the wreck she had apparently just slept through. She walked around the bus, out into the middle of the street. There were no cars, and as she stood still and listened, she found there wasn't much of anything else, either – no birds, no cicadas…strangely, the first word that came to her mind was "lifeless."
She felt the brush of a small breeze as she stepped forward, the wind clearing away a bit of the fog. She could make out the shape of a sign on the opposite side of the road, and she narrowed her eyes in an attempt to make out what it said as she walked towards it.
As she drew closer and the sign became clearer, she felt the same nausea in the pit of her stomach as she had reading the letter for the first time.
Welcome
to
Silent Hill