I couldn't believe I was back here. Again.
After so much that happened. A long and frustrating road of me trying to forget. Of so much therapy to help me forget. It was all a waste.
It was as if I was back at the beginning. As if I hadn't moved a single inch at all.
I remember at the start of college, me eager for a fresh new start. It was a poor attempt and I should have known it wasn't going to be that easy. They had asked me where I was from, my fellow classmates. And I had lied. The lie seemed to leave my lips too easily and I remembered feeling a twinge of guilt. But it passed when I told myself I was doing the right thing. I knew that if I told them my real hometown the familiar look of disgust and sorrow would cross their faces and the thought of having a normal life would vanish before it was ever achieved. No. I was doing the right thing. For me and them. I was protecting them. What was the saying? What they didn't know couldn't hurt them right? I was counting on that.
Somehow I had made it out and I was intent on staying that way. They had accepted my lie without any doubt and I remembered the flood of relief overwhelm my body. Was it really that easy? I was in the clear. But for how long? My paranoia of being found out took over my mind constantly. And the nightmares I had every night didn't lighten the situation at all. Dreaming of the disasters that plagued my little hometown, the bodies of the lost, was enough to keep me up at night. It was like I was reliving them all over again.
I was sleep deprived and it seemed as if my dreams were slowly bleeding through into reality. Or was I still sleeping? I couldn't tell anymore. Everything was changing. What I had thought I was seeing would turn out to be not there, I would fall asleep in class only to wake up screaming bloody murder. My grades were terrible and I was a mess and it was obvious. My classmates tried to help me the best they could but it turned out to be a waste of time. What had I been thinking? I thought now.
My eyes slowly scanned my surroundings. I looked upwards at the sky, it was a dark mixture of yellow and an orange-red. Red. The color that had been coated between my fingertips. And as if I was in a psychotic state, I was brought back to reality to realize what I had done. I couldn't believe it. I was just like them. Just like every single person of my hometown. The ones who had killed and preyed on the weak. Did I really think I was different? That I would leave and that the living nightmare I was in was going to suddenly turn out good? As I stared into the eyes of my former classmate, whose life I had just took, I couldn't for the life of me place her name. Frustrated, I closed her lifeless eyes. Sickened with myself, I fled like the coward I was to the one place I had never wanted to ever think about again: Silent Hill. The famous town of tyrants and murderers. The touch of the smokey grey ash falling on my face brought me memories. Memories I had fought to keep buried that I know let take over. My eyes find a withered old signpost not too far from my childhood home. Brushing the ash from my eyes, my eyebrows crinkle in curiosity as I read over the freshly made paint:
Silent Hill
Welcome Home
They had known I was going to come back. The how didn't worry me much. Of course they'd know. But it doesn't matter anymore. Nothing else matters. I'm home.