Chapter 3: ADDICTIONS
"Fucking phones! THIS IS BULLSHIT!" I scream and rip the telephone off the wall, slamming it hard onto the checkered floor and watching its plastic shell peel off and some internal parts fly out. That's the fourth phone I've checked in this town that hasn't worked. Right now I'm in some large general store that's open, but nobody's around. I catch my breath and smooth my rough hair. This town is as empty as they come.
I figure it must be some kind of holiday, town meeting, or other annoying function. The only thing you can hear outside is your own footsteps and the occasional wind whipping through the streets. Cars seem stranded everywhere and objects are just left alone. And I'm starting to get worried about the fog—it doesn't show any signs of letting up. It's a general store with that old timey kind of ambiance with no security cameras and 99 cent specials.
The only source of light in the entire store comes from the windows—you can only really see two of the aisles. The rest are cloaked in darkness. It's just row after row of hardware and groceries. I take my time strolling through each aisle and examining each one's contents. Instant noodles, canned beans, screws, bolts…nothing seems to be stocked with any kind of system or consistency in mind.
All the hardware and tools are unidentifiable to me—each one complex and looking very much without any practical purpose, save for a row of hammers. There are five of them and they're all cheap-looking, with dents and rust all over each one. I pick one up and feel that its handle is rough, unfinished wood. I swing it around jokingly and smile. I have the whole store to myself, at least until someone comes by and sees how much of an idiot I'm being. It's amazing the types of things you do when you're bored.
I throw one of the cans of beans in the air and swat at it, missing it and nearly falling forward. I go to pick it up and hear something clack in the back aisles. In the dark aisles where I can't see.
"Yo?" I ask in the general direction of where the noise came from. I take my time walking back there with the hammer raised. Someone's watching me, I know it. Somebody's looking at me from the shadows all wide-eyed and snickering about what they're going to do to me when I have my back turned, I can feel it. I can hear my heart beating irregularly and a sharp pain goes through my chest.
I watch my feet cross over from the light and into the dark aisles where I can barely see a thing. The shelves look like they're towering over me with all of the items in them are just formless sights. I stand in the middle of where I think the noise came from and a large can of paint rolls at my feet. I chuckle. This is always the "fake scare" in a part of a horror movie where the protagonist thinks they're safe, turn around, and get the bejesus scared out of them by a deranged killer or a monster of some kind.
But this isn't a movie and I'm not stupid. There is somebody in here with me. I spin around and swing the hammer. I hit absolutely nothing. So I turn around and take one more look at the paint can. My eyes shift to a corner and I see something pulsating in an odd way. It's a huge round chunk of flesh, with a tiny head attached to it convulsing in horrendous ways. It doesn't have any limbs to it and only has a vague outline of what a face should be, looking to me like a grotesque and painful grimace.
I rub my eyes hard, nearly scratching them and look back at the corner. There's nothing there. My eyes get fucked up sometimes and I get confused. Things will sometimes look weird to me and a little unfocused. My heart lets up on the adrenaline and I breath normally. Sometimes my sight goes a little grainy, it's nothing to be worried about. I make a mental note to look into getting my vision tested when I get back to Brahms.
Yeah, that's the mission, I tell myself. When I make it back to Brahms I'll track down the bastard that took my money and cards, or at least have the police do it. They've probably spent it all right now on liquor and hookers. I make my way back into light and to the entrance of the store. The fog's still thick, but now snow flakes are falling. Before I open the door I turn my attention to a torn poster that I hadn't noticed before.
It has a gorgeous, thin woman in a classy black dress giving a smoldering look. The part of the picture where her hair is supposed to be is ripped of. It reads "BE SOMEBODY. Red Rose Perfume." I stare into her green eyes for a moment and continue to walk out. I watch my breath freeze in the air and see it disappear. The odd thing is I don't feel the cold. Brahms isn't really a cold place, but it does rain quite a bit. Most people think that Brahms and Silent Hill are the same type of place—but they're wrong.
Brahms is pretty close to Silent Hill, that part's true, but a decent amount of hills (they're large, but not mountains) and overpasses separate the two. Silent Hill got the better end of the deal with a quaint piece of Americana. Forest, flat land, and a lake…everything to make it a semi-desirable place to live. Brahms on the other hand has shit. Unlike Silent Hill, Brahms is a small city that has all the appeal of a getting smashed in the face with a tire iron. Every major road, route, and highway runs through it so your only hope to get anywhere on time is to walk or take the subway.
Brahms is a depressing place with no where to go and nothing to do, so most people wonder why anybody would live there. There aren't that many job opportunities there, the only thing you can do for nightlife is drink at a seedy bar, so why? A friend, well…not really a friend but more of an acquaintance at my job asked me why I live in Brahms. He was a nice guy that was always smiling, even though I never once smiled back at him and I can't say I cared much for his breath. He yakked about his wife was born in Brahms and when they were living it up in some big city she just had a sudden urge to settle down there.
So they cashed out of everything and got set up in Brahms. Then he stopped smiling and turned his head away from me when he spoke, being very about not making anymore eye contact with me. This was the "sad part" of the story where times got tough for him. He got into some heavy shit like drinking, drugs, and fooling around behind his wife's back. He told me this story a lot, but I was always too polite to tell him I heard it before. He gave a forced chuckle and said when you get a certain age you just get tired of normal life and want some action.
"Sometimes you just get really pissed that the man upstairs didn't give you any real excitement in your life and you don't have any interesting stories to tell the grandkids." He'd tell me with a toothy grin.
Back to the story, his wife divorced him and got just about everything including custody of the children who are now grown up. Child support and his addictions weren't very kind to his bank account and soon enough he had to take a crap job just like me. Then he'd look back at me, his shame gone for the time being, and start acting chipper again.
"You know, son, I got clean of all that crap now. I called her once or twice to see if she'd have another go at the marriage. She told me it wouldn't be worth it and she's seeing somebody else." He starts leaning in close to me now.
"Well, hey, shit happens." I respond, throwing out a random response.
"It took a lot of help, and I'm a big enough man to admit that. You gotta fight every single day until you get rid of that shit from your system. It's like everyday you wake up and, boom, your demons are staring you right in the face telling you to do this and that. It's hell. Sometimes you just gotta tell your bad side to fuck off and shake it off for the rest of the day."
"No offense, but what does this have to do with me?" I blurt out while sipping some stale coffee.
"I was like you a long time ago. Not giving a shit no matter what. But lemme tell you a few years down the road and you'll be paying for what you're doing now."
"For Christ's sake, Stan, what the hell is your point?"
"My point is…sober up, 'cause believe me I have been where you have been."
"I don't have a drinking problem."
"It's never too early to quit, is all I'm saying." He gives me a serious look and then walks away, leaving an AA pamphlet on the table.
Good, sweet, gentle Stan the preacher man. He'd give those out to everybody else on the crew trying to get them to quit drinking no matter if they actually were alcoholics or not. He didn't particularly care either way. I don't even bother reading the article, I just tear a little piece of it off at a time and put it in my empty beer bottle until our break's over. Which reminds me, I wonder if their local bar is in the same state. I take out another cigarette and light it up, drawing a heavy breath. I can't be the only one here.
