Shuddering from the dream, Jessie pulled the stiff wool blanket tighter around her frail body. It was a useless gesture. The empty hospital room was colder than a meat locker, and smelled just as rotten.
It was always the same dream. The gleam of a knife, a rhythmic dripping, the bitter stench of blood, rust, and chemicals, a blinding light, and then darkness.
Realizing sleep had fled for the time being, Jessie threw off the wool blanket and pulled herself from the musty mattress on the floor. She stood for a moment and glanced around the tiled room. Shadows cast themselves in the corners, on the floor, on the ceiling, beckoning Jessie into the darkness that was Silent Hill.
She ran her fingers through her stringy brown hair and walked over to the small bedside table against the wall. She picked up her flashlight and fumbled to switch it on. It finally flickered to life and she scanned the room with it.
A bang erupted in the hallway. Jessie jumped and listening closely for another noise, heart pounding, pulse racing. When nothing happened, she walked to the rusted steel door, pulled it open, and peered out into the darkness. Her eyes flicked frantically in the pitch black. She stepped into the hallway and shined the light down the pathway.
Taking a deep breath, she began her descent down the broken tiled hall. She reached the last door, and held her breath, afraid to make a sound. She pushed the heavy door, wincing as it screeched open, and padded into the middle of the room. Her eyes fell upon the door across from her and her heart skipped a beat.
The steel frame had been busted down, fragments of metal scattered across the floor. Jessie shivered at the amount of pure power taken to break the door in, certainly not the work of the typical nurses she had seen. A shrill scraping noise echoed behind her and she spun around.
The creature that stood across from her was not completely man or beast. He was tall, frighteningly muscular, cloaked in a bloody butcher apron, wide gashes on his arms and chest oozing black fluid. Jessie's eyes scanned up to the massive steel pyramid helmet hiding his face. It was badly rusted, bolts holding it in place to his skull, and must have weighed a few hundred pounds at least. Jessie's breath caught in her throat as she caught sight of the desk sized knife gripped tightly in his blood smeared knuckles.
A heavy boot clad foot took a step closer to her. Jessie tried to move but found herself frozen to the spot. He took another step, pulling the great knife close behind. Jessie whimpered in fear and tried to convince her legs to move. The creature was close enough now that its steaming putrid breath caressed her forehead. The spell that had wrapped itself around Jessie shattered and she clawed out at the man. His free hand grabbed her wrist tight enough to grind the bones and he tossed her to the floor. She glanced up at his snarling figure. Her fingernails had slashed three jagged lines across his chest. Fresh black blood began to slither out of the wounds.
Jessie struggled to her feet and turned to run. The beast swung his thick muscled arm at her and Jessie winced as she crumpled onto the floor. Dazed, she brought her hand to her face and found a deep cut on her bottom lip. She pulled her fingers back and saw they were dripping with crimson.
She glanced up at the towering man and tried to force her pulse to slow. He took a step closer and Jessie scrambled to her feet. Before she had taken a single step, the man's long fingers had wrapped themselves in her hair and jerked her back. She let out a grunt of pain and had little time to think before he slammed her head into a dusty mirror on the wall. She heard the glass shatter and felt the warm blood trickle from the deep gash on her forehead. She blinked frantically, forcing herself to stay alert.
She fell to the floor and struggled to her knees. The creature had turned away as if searching for something. Jessie crawled desperately to the table a few feet away. Suddenly, the man was beside her. He reached out and before Jessie could move, he yanked the phone from the wall in a shower of sparks. Jessie crawled away as fast as she could, tripping over herself. She turned in time to see the man raise the phone over his head. He brought it down quickly and bashed it against her head. There was no pain, only darkness.
Jessie's eyes flew open and she grimaced at the white light above her. She tried to sit up, but found she couldn't move. She opened her eyes again, slowly this time, and glanced at her wrists and feet. She was shackled to the cold metal table. She looked around at the parts of the room she could see. Dirt smudged tiles, grated ceiling... her heart froze when she saw the wall of freezer drawers. She was in the morgue, at the belly of the hospital. She glanced over and her eyes fell upon a rod iron door. It opened and revealed the creature.
He looked different in the bright light, muscles more chiseled, more lethal. Jessie tried to say something but found a dirty rag in her mouth. She struggled against the chains as the man walked further into the room. The door clanged shut noisily behind him. As Jessie began to whimper, a deep masculine bark of laughter rumbled from the man's chest. It echoes against the tile and coursed panic through her veins.
"I am The Executioner." His voice echoed under the helmet, raspy and scalding like the fires of hell. Jessie flicked her eyes over to The Executioner and terror strangled the breath from her lungs.
"There is only one thing you need to know," he continued, walking over to the edge of the table. The helmet bent down towards her.
"I will kill you before the night is through." He finished in a thundering voice. Jessie turned her head from The Executioner and fought back her fear. He grabbed her chin in his thick fingers and yanked her face back to him.
"I'm going to remove the gag now. Don't bother screaming. There is no one alive to hear you, and you wouldn't want to attract the other beasts, now would you?"
He tugged the rag from her mouth and she stretched her aching jaw. He continued to watch her, waiting for her to speak. Her mind raced with questions and pleas, until she found a suitable one.
"Wha..." She took a breath trying to steady herself.
"What do you want with me?" she finally managed to choke out.
"I want to cut your flesh, feel it part beneath my fingers, taste your blood, watch you die, breathe in your fear. I want your life to crumble away beneath you. I want your tears, pleas, screams. I want..." He stopped and took a shaky breath, hands clenching into fists at his sides.
"Why?" Jessie asked.
"Your death brings me life... pleasure. Killing is what I was designed for, what makes me tick... Without your blood and flesh, I would cease to be."
Jessie couldn't help but let out a chuckle. The Executioner slapped her, knocking her head back into the cold steel. She clung desperately to her consciousness as her lip wound re-opened and fresh blood trickled down her chin. Before she could say anything else, the creature pulled a wheeled tray up next to the examination table.
He reached across the tray and picked up something, holding it up to the light for Jessie to see. A scalpel. Jessie's fear choked her, suffocated her. He brought the blade slowly down to her outstretched arm and slid it across the pale white flesh softly, careful not to cut her. He put the blade into the skin near elbow, drawing a single drop of blood. This time as blade tugged down, the creamy white skin of her arm parted, warm sticky blood gushing down.
Jessie gasped in pain and shock. The Executioner raised the blade up to the edge of his helmet. A serpent-like tongue slithered out and licked the from it. He dropped it back onto the tray and slid his hands over the other tools. His palm hovered above one, and then fingered it into his hand. He held it up for her to see, a wicked two bladed knife, rusted with gore from its last victim. She let her fear consume her, whimpering and drawing back against the table.
With his free hand, The Executioner raised her shirt to expose a thing line of stomach. Jessie wriggled away from his touch and a tear streamed down her dirt smudged cheek. Another bark of laughter rumbled from The Executioner and he brought the blade to her belly button. He ripped it through the flesh and blood poured down her waist. Jessie was now laying in a pool or her own steaming blood.
The Executioner took a few steps back and pulled the blade across his own stomach, thin black fluid mingling with her own thick red blood. He ran his hands down his chest, smearing the two bloods together, a sick blood pact.
Jessie's blood was now dripping steadily onto the floor, pain throbbing through every nerve of her body, the blood loss slowly lowering her mind into a fog. The Executioner gripped something on the counter next to the examination table. He pulled it up with a loud screech... the gigantic knife from earlier. Jessie struggled for a breath, choking on the bitter stench of formaldehyde and bleach and rotting flesh. The creature raised the knife and the light bulb overhead popped in a shower of glass and sparks.
And with one last fleeting thought of her dream, The Executioner plunged the knife through Jessie's chest in an splatter of gore and life.
There was no pain, only the darkness that was Silent Hill.