Linoleum
by Plug

Is everyone this frightened?
Are there more like me?
There's just got to be.
—Tweaker

I had this dream again. I dreamed that I was in love with this girl. We met in this town called Silent Hill, but we didn't stay there for very long. We might've met somewhere else, actually—but we were there. I don't remember why. Anyways, her name was Mary. After that Mary got sick and then I dreamed that Mary was dead and gone, and that I was the one who killed her.

Silly, huh?

x x x x x

This fog is hard to breathe. I don't know... maybe it's just something about being unable to see more than three feet in front of your face walking around a town of empty, shadowed streets that makes it tough to breathe. Or maybe I'm just a little scared.

She certainly is.

It's really quite something else. I don't think I've ever met anyone like this Angela girl. I found her lying on the grass with dying leaves scrunched up neatly in little broken, lifeless shards on her jeans and in her hair, and she was caressing this gravestone like if she stopped touching it, it would disappear. Vanish.

(swallow her)

Maybe it really would.

She tells me things, then, about her past, her home, but it's all so garbled in her little world of paranoia I don't really absorb any of it. They're just words, really; I can't seem to focus while I'm here. Maybe it's the air. I feel sweat cold and slick and something else down in my stomach sliding and slithering like fear, but it's not fear because I don't want it to be. So it isn't.

But I can see fear in her.

Angela tells me she's here to find her mother. I guess she's just like me, only that can't be true because I'm not afraid. My legs are numb and watery and far away, but that's okay, because that's just me trying to regain my balance from running. And it's just so cold, and I really don't know why I'm here. Mary can't be here. Mary's gone.

Angela stopped talking, so I vanished.

x x x x x

"James, I think this is too sweet," Mary said.

And here I said: "I guess."

Mary smiled at me, but I could see the shaking illness beneath her eyes and underneath her smile. She pretended it isn't there, though—she acted like she wasn't sick like she has to deny it to the world that she was fine, she was healthy, and everything was going to be okay. I hate it when she does that. Can't she see that she's not well? Can't she see that she's rotting away?

Can't she see that she's dying?

I think I was dreaming.

Rain pattered on the window in front of us, casting strange, dancing shadows over the linoleum. Her hair was done up in a small blond braid, and it lingered behind her with each and every one of her perfect, subtle movements. I couldn't stop staring at her. I don't think I'd ever stopped looking at her since I met her. I've just met her.

She's going to go away.

Mary brushed me aside as she tried to get at the kitchen sink, and her touch was beautiful in that it was from her, and obscene in that it was wearing the disease she denied existed. I hate myself for being weaker than she was. I hate that she was so weak.

"I'm sorry for being an inconvenience to you, James," she said softly.

What could you ever do wrong? Look at you.

"Ah, I—" Mary broke off as she began to cough. "Ah, I'm sorry, James."

I took her hands in mine. "No, it's okay. I love you."

I hate you.

x x x x x

His name is Pyramid Head.

I feel something in myself quiver and just fall down simply looking at him. He's like a man made of burnt flesh and scraped bones with a rusty, bloody triangle on his head. But more than that. There's something inside of him for me, just me, that only I can see. And it's terrible.

He brought that huge knife of his around, the light glimmering off its surface like another sun—I feel like I'm caught staring at it, paralyzed in my last moments, waiting for it to flash down and down and down down down down and then nothing I felt something of mankind in myself when I tried to fight back—something dark and horrible, something that should never have existed in the first place. The part inside of me that slithers with cold blood and is savage and reptilian, scraping against my heart with scales and talons. It hurts. It hurts, it hurts more than anything it hurts dear God it hurts.

I fire the gun.

Nothing.

Nothing.

NOTHING.

When you come to the realization that death is with you—his cold hand is taking yours, he is perched on your shoulder and his breath is the rattling silence in your ears—you feel emptiness. A man becomes nothing when he knows that he is going to die. I can't remember what I felt then, because I was running.

He chased me, I think. His footsteps were clunky and inarticulate, like he was drunk or senile or simply re-animated flesh. I don't know, I don't really remember looking back. There was darkness everywhere in that apartment building, so it was hard to tell where I was going. I think I saw light somewhere, so I ended up running towards it. The air was hot and cold at the same time and my sweat felt like fingers of ice that were searing my skin off.

I thought of Angela for some reason.

x x x x x

Mary was a really special girl. I loved her. I mean... I really loved her, more than anything.

But she died.

I don't think that sort of thing happens in the real world.

x x x x x

The line between right and wrong faded when I stepped foot in this town, I think. It melted over me like its own fog, wrapped itself around me, saturated me, and then burned everything that made me myself away. Why am I telling you this, you ask?

Because I think I'm a monster.

She's writhing, now. This horrific demon in a box that has her face. Mary. Maria. I don't know. It doesn't matter. It isn't her. It's me. This place is me. I can understand that, here, in this moment of brutal clarity.

I am God in this body of devils.

I loved Mary. But I hated her. I didn't want to believe it, but it was the irrevocable fact that prevented me from being what I wanted and instead becoming what others knew I was. I am.

(James)

A monster.

She's crying out now—her face is torn and shredded, teeth splintered into a red ruin of blood and mucus. Her words are coming out faster as she dies, choking on nothing in nonsense sounds, waves of life drowned by stars of emptiness. I guess I am a monster, because this is what I made.

I point the rifle at her face.

I'm sorry, Mary. I love you.

(hot fog inside my thoughts)

Thunder cracks the sky from within my hands.

x x x x x

It's raining again. That's all it ever does anymore. I've never felt so numb, broken, distant before than I did driving home from the hospital. The way she cried, yelled at me, threw me away—and then begged me to come back. She didn't want to die, but I knew she really did and I loved her more than anything so I gave that to her.

The house is different now. It's seeping with black shadows that shake at me with words I can't understand. Maybe I'm going crazy.

Maybe I'm dreaming.

Something vanishes in my legs, and I can't feel them anymore so I fall down. My hands, clammy and dirty, fall onto the linoleum, and I can tell I'm crying. The sea of reality pouring out of my eyes. She didn't say goodbye, she didn't say I love you, she just stopped breathing she didn't even resist she just lay there and let it all go away and I was the one who took it away from her and fuck I hate myself for it. I didn't want this. I loved her. I want her back. I want her to come back. And...

(the red in the sky is mine)

Mary...

I've made horrible mistakes.

Do you understand?