Crawling…

Chapter 1 – The Itch.

People aren't born monsters, they become them.

They say that even Hitler might have been a decent guy to start with. You can just imagine him sitting there burning up with envy and anger at the world around him. Trouble is…there's only so much any guy can take before he snaps.

I guess I'm any guy. Well, I was, anyway.

My name's Nathan Crawley, and I've been living in South Ashfield all my life. Never even set foot in Silent Hill till last week. Figured it'd be a holiday, that I might get some rest, get my head back on straight, fix my…my distractions. Or something. We've been married for about 8 years, my wife and I. The first 3 were bliss, the next 3 very good, and so on. Just lately, though, it's been getting hard. I could swear there didn't use to be that many hot chicks on the subway, nor that Lisa, my wife used to be so fucking dumb. Christ, the number of times these past months I've had to tell her to just shut her fuckin' trap. She never used to whine and cry so much, neither. It's fucking difficult to keep my temper, especially with all the provocation.

Take the day before I got here, for example, the dumb bitch was bringing me my dinner (late, as usual) and spilt it all over my lap. Well, I admit I lost my temper a little, and I may have slapped her a little harder than I shoulda. I…I can't quite remember what happened after that, but we had a helluva fight, I know that. When I left the apartment I had tomato sauce all over my shirt, so I had to go out of my way to buy a new one. After I walked about the town for a bit, I decided I needed a break to clear my head, sort myself out a bit. So I came out here for a few days off, ran into some religious freak on the way out of the station, she wanted me to take some flower or other, as a token of 'God's love' for me. Apparently she wants to save us all, take us to Paradise or some such mumbo-jumbo bullshit. God, that is, not the freak. Though I could probably have taken her to Paradise too, she was cute enough.

The flower, though, the flower was a weed. Completely out of proportion to how good the religious girl looked. Smelt terrible, too, and I musta got some of the sap or something under my fingernails, cause my lunch just did not taste right.

Lunch at the Happy Burger… that's where it all started to go wrong.

The monsters didn't make my day much better either. Let me tell you about my day, it seems like it was only yesterday, though it was probably the better part of a week ago. Time doesn't seem to run normally in this town. Almost as though nature Herself has abdicated in disgust. Sounds stupid, right? Just wait till I tell you about my time here. It won't sound so stupid then.