Chiaroscuro
Rating: R/M
Genre: Hurt/Comfort/Horror
Summary: For hc_bingo, prompt "Minor Illness". The world exists in random periods of dark and light- the Watcher decides when. Extreme child abuse, neglect, essentially child-murder and allusions to cannibalism.
Author's Note: Urgh, I played Silent Hill 4 all the way through a few days ago, and the water-prison part freaked me out so much. The kids dying and then the holes… Eegh. O_O
Disclaimer: I don't own Silent Hill. It belongs to Konami/Vatra.
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RE: The cannibalism warning: In (what I assume is) Young!Walter's prison-journal- or the journal of another child who was put into the water-prison- he says that there's a "death chamber" behind the kitchen, and that the cooks "take the meat straight from the dead people". And given how sick the guards came off as in their own memos…
…I decided to be safe and warned for it.
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It's dark.
The bumps and bangs of the prison are scarier, darker, more foreboding than in the light. He can't sleep, wary of what lurks in the dark even though his cell door hasn't opened wide enough for anything but some meager food to get in for the last few days. And even if it's dark, there is a small, dim source of light: It comes from the watcher's hole, the peep-hole high above his head.
Someone is watching.
Someone is always there, maybe watching.
And so he must behave. And repent.
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It's light.
In the summer the prison is boiling hot. In the winter, it's freezing cold. As many days as he's spent in his cell, he's lost track of the seasons. It has to be winter; his nose is running with the cold.
He lies on his bed and tries to pretend that the light from above is the sun. He tries to remember what the sun looks like when it bounces of the snow, or how it shines through the leaves that still clung to the trees this time of the year. When the cold gets a little too difficult to ignore, he pretends it's the summer sun keeping him warm. It isn't much, but sometimes it suffices.
And he's learned to take what he can get when he gets it.
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It's dark.
He's coughing now, breath raspy and lungs stinging with pain.
It's not as bad as it could be, though: Somewhere on their level, a boy is making some very, very odd noises. It sounded a bit like a long, squeaking-groan noise he can remember hearing on the bus that took him to South Ashfield; it echoes off the walls of the prison amidst total silence and stifling darkness, which somehow makes it all the more unnerving.
He thinks this boy is either having a nightmare (not likely, else he would have woken up by now) or he's so sick that he doesn't realize he's making so much noise. Other children have made strange noises too- noises that eventually ended in a cold quiet. It's impossible to tell if they've simply regained their senses and stopped making noise so as not to agitate the Watcher, or if they've stopped moving and gone gray like that one child he remembers seeing pulled from her cell.
Sometimes he wonders if it's the other children making the noises at all.
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It's light.
He is limp, lying on his cot and not moving.
He wets himself, too exhausted to go to the small, dirty toilet in the corner of the cell. There could be punishment for that later, if someone notices the smell. Can the Watcher smell things through the hole? Can urine even be detected amongst the other stenches of the prison? The longer he stays away from the prison, the more he notices the smell when he comes back.
His head spins a little, and the light stings his eyes and strikes a deep pain in his head. His stomach hurts, and even when he can muster up the energy to eat keeping food down isn't always possible. Some of the children- particularly the new ones who haven't learned better- cry during their time in the prison.
But he has learned to stay quiet, to bury everything in the deepest part of him and comfort himself with the knowledge that one day his mother will be able to soothe all of his pain.
This time, he imagines the warmth of the light is her embrace.
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It's dark.
The Watcher is watching.
He can tell because the light is dim, and he tries to hold still and silent and not make any more noise than he has to. If he stays quiet (but can be heard breathing) the Watcher will move away in good time. There are other children to watch, and there is only one Watcher (he thinks); he surely can't spend his entire time watching one boy.
In spite of the fact that he's still tired and weak- less than before, but still significantly so- he manages to shuffle and adjust himself on his bed so that the Watcher can tell he's still alive. He's heard of the room behind the kitchen, heard where some of the meat they eat might come from, and doesn't want to be mistaken for dead. Not if he can help it.
The light goes brighter. The Watcher is always there, but not watching him right then.
He sighs, and sinks into a sleep with dreams of his mother.
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It's light.
He hears the footsteps before he sees the person. It's not time for food, and so it's likely that one of the children is being removed from their cell to be taken back to Wish House. He curls into a ball and prays, prays that he'll be let out and that he'll have a chance to show how good he is. Then he won't have to come back to the water prison and wonder when the light and dark will come and go.
Won't have to worry about the Watcher watching.
And joy of joys, it is him. The key clicks in the lock of his cell door, and a guard is standing there looking sour. He scrambles off his cot and stands up; his clothing is dirty enough from his extended period in the cell that surely no one will notice the fact that he wet himself when he was really ill (he's still a little sick, but not enough that he can't fake wellness).
"Come out. It's reading time."
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It's…
'Night' seems to encompass most of his world- never sunlight. He isn't completely certain why this is, though he suspects it may have something to do with God, or Valtiel, or some angel of God's association. Stone told him that the ritual would not only purify his mother but bring both he and her to paradise, and so he assumes that this is, perhaps, a precursor to paradise.
Maybe all will become brighter once he has purified mother and awoken her from her sleep. Maybe she will bring the light back to his world and, like a benevolent mother, give him plenty of light before forcing him to endure the dark again. And even then, how intimidating could darkness be when one's mother was watching over them, protecting them from the horrors of the darkness rather than watching them suffer from afar?
In the darkness, Walter hopes that she is watching him now.
-End