Welcome to the total re-write of Resident Evil: The Price of Normalcy. I've decided that I wasn't going to just replace the older version but put both of them up to let the readers decide upon which was better. It would take up too much time anyway.

I'd like to apologize to the authors whose characters I borrowed to use in the earliest reincarnation of The Price of Normalcy. I liked how I had used them and made the first version but it still wasn't quite up to my standards looking back, and I doubt that it was up to yours as well. So about five months ago I had begun the re-write of Isaac's trials and tribulations in Raccoon City. Totally revamped it. I had tried re-writing the as a separate and totally independent story apart from the events of Noctorro's and HHOD's stories but I found that it didn't have the same impact.

So I would once again ask Noctorro and HHOD for permission to use their characters in Resident Evil, The Price of Normalcy.

Diclaimer: I don't own Resident Evil. If I did, a few choice annoying characters would be dead and gone.

July 14th, 1998

I closed the door to my apartment after I stumbled in, exhausted and hung over from all the partying I had done the two nights before. I was BEAT! I wobbled into my bedroom and collapsed onto the twin sized mattress, buryng my face languidly into my pillow. I yelped in discomfort as I realized that I hadn't washed the styling product out of my hair, which was coiffed into what some of my friends called 'sex hair.'

I let out a sigh and glanced at the clock as I sat up. It was six in the morning. I walked out of my bedroom and into my bathroom, ignoring the constant shouting coming from the upstairs tenants. I knew their pattern. It was 'yell, yell, yell,' then a whole lot of moaning and bedsprings creaking. The first few months living here were really funny because of how ridiculous those two were. Then the hilarity of it ebbed away into completely infuriating at how they'd carry on, sometimes well into the night when I had to work early in the morning.

My bathroom was my pride and joy, since I decorated it nicely with light tones, and had a beautiful shower stall that was in excellent condition. I kept this part of my apartment the cleanest. I grabbed an ivory towel and hung it on the holder near the shower stall door. I shrugged off my clothes and jumped into the shower, turning both the cold and hot water knobs and sighing at the feeling of the warm water running over my body.

I closed my eyes and began to ponder as I squeezed some shampoo into my hand. I, Isaac Seth Brown was a waitor at Raccoon City's own 'Pianti's' franchise as well as the "head Custodian of Records" for Feldman's Life Insurance. I wasn't making as much money as I'd wanted to be making, but a cool four thousand dollars a month was good enough to live comfortably in this city. Despite that, I literally had no free time for myself at all.

Rubbing the shampoo into my wild, uniquely dark red hair I began to think about where I was living. Raccoon City, the small little mesa bordered by high mountains all around. To some of the tourists that came to the city, it was a really big town, to others it was a very small city. No one really knew what to call it when it was in development, so it seemed like some cockamimie idiot strolled by the city founders and named the city after an animal known for its ferocity and rodent-like behaviour. Not too classy, that's for sure.

Not that I hated the city...no, I just feel like this quaint little mountain city was just waiting for something big to happen that would really put it on the map, so to speak. I felt trapped in the city, not just because of the mountains that locked people inside, or the stifling heat in the summer or the muggy, mild winters. It was all relative. I felt trapped because my father, the man who helped create me was here, living in the city just a few miles from where I lived. I felt trapped because despite my many attempts to escape from him, he was always able to find me and bring me back here.

I had the worst fear of my father...something he instilled in me all those years. His "parenting skills," for lack of a better word, had left my mother timid and submissive, almost to the point of being numb. His beatings left me nearly unreceptive to feelings of intimidation. His hypocrisy caused me to hate my roots. I had been part of a rich, accepting subculture of humans. I had lived in the prestigious uptown district of Raccoon City, surrounded by wealth and comfort. Until my fifteenth birthday I hadn't realized how dark that place really was, how intricate the web of lies the people in that area spun. That was why my father seemed to target me. His own son, his flesh and blood.

The image of my father, fornicating with one of the older sisters of one of my "best" friends at the time was forever etched into my mind. I was disgusted, filled with hatred for my father and his little mistress and sadness for my unknowing mother, and eventually I drew back from that comfortable lifestyle. I spent little time at home, spending extra hours at school, spending more time training in Tae-Kwon-Do and Jiu-Jitsu at the gym and working extra long shifts on the weekends. I dressed differently, hung out with different people, and shrugged off the friends I thought were absolute poison.

When confronted about it by my father, I revealed his little trysts with the barely legal hag from two blocks down right in front of my mother. She was not livid, she was not angry, or irritated, or anything. She remained placid as my father began to yell at me, screaming about how what he did was none of my business. It was only five minutes into our screaming match when my father threw the first punch. I had been so stunned after the first hit that I wasn't ready for the rest of them. When he was done and tired, I was bruised and sprained.

It was forty-five minutes of limping through hellish pain and freezing cold weather before I got to the bus stop and bought a bus ticket to Winnipeg. Nobody asked me any questions about my appearance, with my Sex Pistols tee and black denim pants, dried blood at the corner of my split lip and my left eye slightly swollen. I got on the bus, sitting in the back curled into a ball with a small blanket that was packed into the overhead compartment. I slept most of the way to Canada, showing my birth certificate when asked and staying silent.

When I reached the frigid city of Winnipeg, I had nowhere to go. I literally spent six hours sitting in the same seat in the bus terminal, trying to figure out what I was going to do next. I was homeless, had barely any accessible money, and had no connections whatsoever. I was reduced to a sobbing ball of teenage angst until someone tapped me on the shoulder.

I had never met anyone with such hospitality. Kristopher Matheson. He had known me for only a few moments and offered me a place to stay. He shrugged off his thick blue parka, handed it to me and carried what little provisions I had brought with me all the way through the freezing cold of Downtown Winnipeg in winter to the transit bus stop. I followed him out of courtesy and curiosity, not expecting the rest of his family to welcome me so readily as he did.

I had been proven wrong. There was a small discussion among his family, and upon his return to where I was standing, waiting for them to turn me away, Kris removed the coat from my shoulders and led me upstairs to the second floor of his house. We sat and talked as he cleaned the cuts and scrapes on my face, bandaging them as well as giving me an ice pack for my eye. After cleaning up, he inflated a twin sized air bed and set it up as another place to sleep. I was shocked and confused, and even at my refusal he smiled and told me to lie down. I did as he said, quickly falling asleep the instant my head hit the pillow.

The four months I spent living in the Matheson household were the best times of my life. Kris' parents had adopted three boys and had three children of their own, Kris included. They were so open about everything, and laid no judgement when I told them why I had run away. They were so loving, and I made it my mission to not be a burden. They enrolled me in Kris' high school, and I insisted on doing chores to earn my keep. It was a complete culture shock to me, how readily everyone accepted everyone.

The love I was showered with by the Matheson family made me so happy, but inside it was so painful. More than once I cried to sleep, wishing my family was like theirs. They had only enough money to get by, but they made no complaints, and were the happiest people I had ever met. They were happy, and that made me happy but it ended all too soon. My father found me, sending the police to retrieve me on the grounds of credit card thievery. I refused, telling them my side of the story, as did Kris' family. Their reasoning behind their refusal touched me so deeply that I left. They thought of me as one of their own. I was part of their family, they had said. They loved me like one of their own.

I went without a fight, the police putting me in handcuffs and shoving me into the squad car. I gave the family one last smile from the squad car before driving off. Once I was back in Raccoon, I immediately tried to file restraining orders against my father but were denied the first year. I was dragged back home where I was immediately beaten and locked in my bedroom for three days. The days went by, year after year, beating after beating.

Of course, I had escaped once again right after a lost fight, heading straight for the R.P.D. with my fractured collarbone, cut lip and black eyes. I was finally awarded a restraining order. My mother was forced to emancipate me, and I used my savings, which had reached a cool eight thousand dollars to rent and furnish my East downtown apartment. When my real story began, I had walked away from the most difficult time in my life...

Chapter One felt like a liberation to me. After writing it I felt like this made more sense, more clear than the old version, and I liked how Isaac's history was neatly rolled into one chapter. No more vague instances, no more confusion contradictions.

Tell me how you like it.