I might actually continue this - idly write a few chapters here and there as things go. There's probably not going to be an overarching plot, just incidents with Henry and his new roommate.

Post SH4, Eileen's Death.

Mottled

Henry unwrapped the damp bundle he had hurried into his apartment from the storm outside. The kitten mewled and wriggled its stubby paws in the free air. It was wet and dirty from where he found the poor thing underneath his car. Its pained squeaks caused him to look underneath until he found it huddled against a wheel. Figuring that it must've crawled there during his shift at work, Henry carefully picked it up and wrapped it in a towel before the rain started pouring. Now that it was here lying dazed on his kitchen floor he didn't know what to do.

He had moved away from Ashfield the first chance he had got once the nightmare was over and the serial killer was good and dead. At first he had moved back to Portland, giving himself a temporary release with his parents as he looked for apartments further and further away from Ashfield and Silent Hill. He found one, northeast of Portland into Washington state on the cusps of the temperate rainforests. That was where he was now, far from the horrific memories of South Ashfield Heights, Room 302, and his repeated failures to protect the ones he vowed to protect.

That being said, he had very few contacts here—less than he had had in Ashfield. At least with Ashfield it was close enough that he could give his parents a call if he needed something like, say, could you take care of this cat that I found underneath my car because I don't know what to do with it. He was fine with money but it was a paycheck-to-paycheck life and he didn't know if he could handle caring for a pet. Carefully helping the kitten to its feet, he rubbed its wet head, causing his fingers to become slightly muddy.

He was about to get a clean towel to help wash the rest of the mud away when he saw that the kitten was limping.

Henry opened the local phone book and dialed the veterinarian office. It was minutes away from closing, so he made his story quick. The woman on the other side asked him to see if he could figure out why the kitten was limping, so he gingerly turned it onto its back. It mewled in distress, waving its working paws but refusing the move its front left arm. Henry could see red, raw skin. Dabbing at it with a kleenex he confirmed on the phone that it was bloody. The woman sighed, and he could vaguely hear clicks of a mouse as she ran through appointment files. After telling him to come in first thing in the morning the next day she gave him gentle instructions for how to care for the kitten for now, telling him to make sure it didn't move much and definitely didn't try to jump anywhere.

He thanked her and hung up, watching as the kitten gave up wriggling and simply lied on its back, staring at him with alert green eyes. Wondering if it was simply stubbornly waiting for him to right it again or if it was avoiding righting itself due to pain, Henry called his superintendent.

She came up fifteen minutes later, a kindly, rarely intrusive woman living alone and approaching her fifties. Generally the tenants didn't keep pets unless they paid an extra fee, and after carefully petting the kitten she reminded Henry of this. Due to the injury the kitten had she gave him an ultimatum of a week to either find another owner, give it to the shelter, or sign the form to keep the cat here. She then left Henry and the kitten alone.

Plugging the sink and filling it with warm water, Henry gently lifted the kitten from the floor and into the small pool. Draining some water so it didn't have to struggled to keep its head above it, he gently began to bathe it with a clean washcloth. The water was tinged brown when he was done. He didn't have a blow dryer but he had a small space heater, and, using that instead, he placed the kitten on a bundle of blankets in front of it, making sure it didn't try to climb out and away. When it was warm and dry it perked up its head and mewled at him, sniffing the air curiously. It was dark-furred, mottled with various russet colors and deep browns.

Petting it though it flinched away from his hand, Henry left it sitting in front of the heater while he made a quick dash across the street, braving the rain to the small corner grocery store. Picking up kitten food the vet had suggested and grabbing a small meal for himself (he had almost forgotten that he needed to feed himself as well as the kitten) he returned to find it asleep on the blankets. Leaving a small dish out, Henry followed suit some hours later.

The next morning he scooped the kitten up in the blankets it had slept in, wary of the small blood spots as he took it back out to his car and drove to the vet's office.

"It's a girl," the vet had told him, "And she's relatively healthy. Looks like she was attacked though, probably wandered too close to a nest of some sort. The good news is that she's okay for now, the bad news is that her front paw is infected."

The vet then looked at Henry's distantly calculating expression, "Part of her arm here looks broken too. I'd like to take an x-ray, but I'm afraid that the only thing to do at this point is to amputate the arm. Antibiotics won't work fast enough and it's already too far gone, I wouldn't want it spreading anywhere else like the lungs or heart. You got insurance?"

"Not for pets," Henry admitted. The vet nodded without commenting. Henry had money in the bank that he was stashing away; donations from anonymous strangers wishing to help him back on his feet after he had emerged beaten and bloody from room 302 and the media took hold of his situation, extra money as a springboard from his parents when he was moving, and parts of his paycheck that he was able to put away. When the vet gave him the estimate he figured he was barely able to pay it—so long as his car didn't decide to break anytime soon.

Two days later he returned to the vet's office. The kitten had stayed there for the surgery and the recuperation. When Henry saw her again her left arm was cut just below the elbow, mended into a fleshy stump. Black stitches marked the left over scar. Pity swirled deep in his gut, and as the kitten deliriously awoke and snapped her eyes to him the pity turned into a stone. Yes, he felt like he had been in a similar situation before. He poked a careful finger through the cage. The kitten flinched away and only stared at it oddly.

Henry thanked the vet and took the kitten back to his apartment. The superintendent knocked on his door soon after he got back, wanting to know how the kitten was doing and bringing a small, inexpensive toy for her to play with. She casually reminded him of the deadline again before leaving.

Henry didn't know what to do. None of his co-workers could take the cat even if they wanted her, and some of them still were interested but shunned the idea that the kitten was missing a leg. Somehow he wished he had the guts to berate them for it, but he didn't push it.

That left him with precisely nobody he could call to bring the cat to that was worth the trip. Henry stared at the kitten as it pawed the toy around. There would've been one person he would've bet could and would take the kitten at a moment's notice, but they...they were long gone.

Sighing, Henry planned to take the kitten to the shelter before the final day.

He had fallen asleep on the couch, a rare but not unheard of occurrence. Sometimes he would work himself up so much that he couldn't bear to move from his spot—he knew the room around him was safe but what if the bedroom was infested with ghosts or monsters? Normally that would've been a ridiculous, child-like way to think, but after the trauma of being thrown into an alternate world where ghosts and monsters reigned supreme from his own apartment, room 302, it happened much more often than he would like to admit.

Sometime in the middle of the night he felt something press up against his neck and jaw. Waking up with a scream, he scrambled up until he was almost sitting on top of the couch before he noticed the small ball of brown fur clutching the side of the couch cushion. His sudden movement had knocked the kitten off him and almost off the couch after it had somehow clambered up. Henry tried to force his racing heartbeat to calm down as he gently lowered himself back onto the couch, cupping the cat in his hands. They almost dwarfed the kitten. Runt of the litter, the vet mentioned as he was inspecting her. The kitten mewled curiously and reached a paw out, barely scraping his lips.

In that moment where his heart was still racing, the room was dark, and the only thing he could really make out was the kitten's big eyes, something clicked in his head. A strange familiarity seemed to wrap itself around the kitten and, though he would call himself crazy later, the expression in the eyes was as recognizable to him as a next-door neighbor.

Feeling stupefied, Henry relaxed his tense muscles. At any other time in his life he wouldn't be so quick to suggest the supernatural, but this was too uncanny for his mind to pass on. Hell, even the kitten's left arm was useless—practically gone—just like her left arm in his last memories of her.

And even their eyes were similar.

Henry laid back down, mystified. The kitten rubbed against his shoulder and purred, hitting his face lightly with her tail as she turned around.

Sure, maybe it was stupid, superstitious and idiotic. Henry laid still as the kitten climbed onto his chest, momentarily rubbing her face against his coarse stubble before settling down and curling into a tight ball on his chest.

Henry signed the form the first chance he got after dawn broke, trying to ignore the superintendent's tired smile.

Eileen.

He was going to call the kitten Eileen.