Till Death
Chapter 1
By Voodoo Queen
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Author's Note: This is my first Silent Hill fanfic. I have so many ideas rattling around in my head right now that it's hard for me to really focus on one thing at a time. So, I'm going to try something with this story that I haven't tried before. I usually just write chapters out for my stories as inspiration strikes. However, I am going to attempt to complete this on in its entirety BEFORE I post anything. This is good for two reasons. First, it's good for me because I can get this out of my head and off of my plate before focusing my entire attention on another story. Second, it's good for you, the reader, because you will get to (hopefully) enjoy an entire complete story without the fear of investing time and energy into reading something that has the potential to be abandoned. That said, I am going to try to post one chapter from the completed story each week on either Fridays or Saturdays. This will give me time to process any constructive feedback and allow me to tweak the story as we go if needed.
Enough of my rambling…I really hope you enjoy the story!
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Disclaimer: I only own my own original characters and plot. All the good stuff is owned by someone else.
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Louise Allen's life ended the very same day that she became Louise Shepard. What was supposed to have been a joyous occasion and the start of a new life had instead signaled the construction of a dark, lonely tomb she had no hope of escaping from. Though her heart kept beating away inside of her chest and air still filled her lungs she was most certainly dead in every sense of the word but the physical. Death had been a slow and painful process that had left her nothing more than an empty shell of the vibrant, living creature she had once been. Matthew had seen to it personally.
It had been little things, at first, which had contributed to her premature demise. An insult here, some harsh criticism there. She had never been too self-assured and what little confidence she did have was quickly stripped leaving her bare to Matthew's increasingly vulgar and violent assaults. She was hard pressed to say which was worse: Matthew's sharp tongue and hard fists or the way he would roughly and callously use her body for his own pleasure whenever the mood would strike despite her protestations and pleadings to please, for the love of everything Good and Holy, stop. While all of those things had certainly been factors in her death the isolation from her family, however, had been the final nail in her coffin.
Louise had always been family oriented and before her untimely mental, emotional, and spiritual death she had dreamed of having one of her very own. She imagined herself with a handsome, loving husband and two perfect, adoring children. Her dream family lived in a beautiful, old Victorian with a white picket fence and a Labrador retriever playing in the yard. They would have gone on picnics at the park and played old board games in the family room together on Saturday night. Her dream husband would have brought her home flowers for no reason other than to tell her that he loved her and hire a sitter for the kids so he could wine and dine her just because. The reality that she lived, however, was starkly, darkly different.
Matthew Shepard was certainly handsome and had started out courteous, if not loving, towards her. That had changed almost immediately after they had exchanged vows. Instead of a life partner she found herself bound to a violent dictator who cared nothing for her except for how she could best serve his increasingly more deviant needs. They, thankfully, had no children given the circumstances but it hadn't been for lack of trying on Matthew's part. Three painful miscarriages, mentally and physically, had only provided Matthew with more ammunition with which to degrade and humiliate her. He had never once thought that perhaps his rough and careless handling of her in her delicate condition had contributed to the loss of her pregnancies. No, he reiterated over and over again. It was all her fault that she was so inadequate as a woman that she couldn't keep her own children alive inside of her womb. She came to believe him.
She had been let down in other areas of their married life, as well. Instead of the grand Victorian she had always dreamed of, they had found themselves in a rinky-dink apartment situated above a local bar. Ironic, that was, given the fact that Matthew's drinking had been the catalyst that had forced them to move from a fairly decent condo in a good, or at least better, neighborhood into such a squalid location in the first place. Of course, it had been all fault when his supervisor caught him drinking on the job and fired him on the spot. If she were only a better wife to him, if only she fulfilled his needs as she was supposed to, he wouldn't have to turn to drink. She had accepted the blame and he had punished her for that incident also. Still, Louise was able to find some solace in the fact that she still had her family to turn to for comfort and support.
Her mother, Maybelle, was possibly the sweetest and most caring person on the face of the earth so far as Louise had ever met. Her mother was, however, very religious and believed wholeheartedly in the sanctity and permanence of marriage even though her own husband had abandoned her and their family long ago. Louise did her best to hide from her the extent of the problems in her life. She knew her mother and how worried the woman would be if she had the slightest idea what truly transpired between she and Matthew behind closed doors. She also knew that her mother would have been little help in terms of escape as the woman would have shouldered all the responsibility of rectification onto the religion she followed so faithfully.
She could almost hear her mother encouraging her to pray about her situation and ask the Almighty for guidance in her plight. Louise had prayed but perhaps wasn't using the right words as her situation only seemed to worsen as time went by. Louise had been raised to believe in God but was starting to fear that perhaps God didn't believe in her as she sank deeper and deeper into the grave her life had become. Louise was afraid for herself but feared harming her mother with her doubts even more. It was for this reason that, so far as Maybelle knew, she and Matthew were young, happy and head-over-heels in love with one another. Louise's brother, Nicholas, was harder to string along, however.
Whereas Louise's mother lived in a world where Divine Intervention could fix even the direst of circumstances her brother lived in a place where that sort of thing was simply smoke and mirrors that hid the darker face of humanity. Nicholas' career as a police detective had shaped his view of the world and attuned him to the smallest signs of violence and depravity in his fellow man. He had been the only one to notice her wearing long sleeves and jeans on an uncomfortably hot summer day and asked her if everything was alright between her and Matthew. It was almost as if he could sense the ugly bruises and fresh cuts hidden beneath the fabric. She could see the awareness in his eyes and realized he had probably looked into the eyes of hundreds of other women just like her: trapped, dead, and rotting from the inside out. He was the only one who noticed the way her husband seldom let her out of his sight and how she seemed to cringe ever-so-slightly away from him whenever he would touch her. Nicholas observed and Nicholas asked questions…too many questions for Matthew's comfort as it turned out. And so, Matthew had finally killed her by taking away the one thing she still had left to live for: Her family.
"I got a new job."
"Oh?" Louise had stared up at him, wide eyed, from where she sat cross-legged on the threadbare carpet of their bedroom folding laundry. She did her best to judge his mood and determine the best way to respond without sending him into a fit of rage. "That-that's wonderful, honey. Where?"
"Where?" Matthew smirked down at her. "As far away from this shithole and your white trash family as we can get. We're moving."
"Ma-moving? What?" An unprecedented feeling of dread filled the pit of Louise's stomach. "Moving to where?"
"West Virginia," Matthew stated a matter-of-factly. He unbuttoned his grey dress shirt and tossed it into the hamper at the end of their bed and kicked off his shoes. He plopped down onto the lumpy mattress and sighed. "I'll be doing some surveying for the state."
"West Virginia," Louise shook her head and did the mental calculations. "But that's like over 300 miles away."
"Exactly," Matthew murmured. "Far enough that your asshole brother won't be breathing down my neck every second of every day. I expect you to be ready to go by the end of the week."
"The end of the week?!" Louise rose from where she sat. "That isn't enough time! There-there are things I need to take care of. My family-"
"Can go straight to hell," Matthew finished for her. Rising from the bed, he stalked over to her, darkness filling his eyes with promises of things to come. He gripped her upper arms, squeezing hard enough that she gasped in pain. "I'm your husband and it's your goddamn duty as my wife to shut up and obey me. If I say we're fucking moving to West Virginia. We're fucking moving to West Virginia." He clamped down on her arms tighter, digging his nails into her soft skin. "Do you understand me?"
"Y-yes!" Louise nodded frantically. "I do! Please…you're hurting me"
"Am I?" Matthew smirked at her. Releasing her arms, he stalked around her seemingly sizing her up before grabbing her by the hair and pulling her back toward the bed. He shoved her roughly down onto the mattress and descended upon her quickly. "You ain't seen nothing yet, sweetheart."
Louise Shepard was dead. She just didn't know it yet.
End of Chapter 1
