A/N - I wonder what you'll all make of this, I really really do...
The air was cold and clear, but not clean. A bitter, sour smell hung in it, and got stronger and nastier the closer I got to the center of the plaza. My flashlight shone on the fountain, the source of the stench. As I approached it, the smell got almost too much to bear, the air got warmer and more moist, and I could see why the fountain had been dark on the black and white monitor. The thing was spewing blood out into the pool! Things were floating in there, too, an arm, a foot, what looked like someone's insides. I caught a glimpse, just a glimpse, of a child's forearm, tiny fingers with one of those stupid pink wristwatches. It bobbed on the surface, and I saw the second hand ticking quietly to itself, calmly measuring out the time its owner didn't have. And then it sank.
Footsteps behind me. Kate again, hand in hand with that other girl! Neither one saw me until they got closer to the fountain, and neither looked pleased to see me when they did.Kate spoke, the other one stayed silent.
"So you're still here. Having fun? You scared her," gesturing to the girl in the light top, "half to death, you know."
I nodded, wondering where she was going with all this. The mall was deserted and bloody monsters lay dead at our feet, but she wanted to talk about feelings. Just like a woman.
"We're getting the hell out of here." she continued. "I guess you'll want to do the same, but stay away from us, ok?" She pulled my gun out from the waistband of her skirt and gestured at me. She'd changed, I noticed, not just from her old clothes into the one I left at Fred's Fashions, I noticed. Pale and light, it flapped round her legs in the draft from the exit hallway, but I couldn't find the pleasure in that which I'd expected. I couldn't look away from her eyes, though I didn't want to look at them in the first place, either. Clear as ever, they shone out from her face fierce and hard. Something had happened since she'd last seen me, and if she pulled the trigger on me, she wouldn't miss. I pulled out the handgun I'd found and made the same motion to her.
"Ok, you wanna play cowboys, kid? We can do that. Except this time I'm armed, too. You aint got the advantage over me no more. I've already used this once, your new friend can tell ya how I took out the guy holding her prisoner" I waved the gun at the other girl, who yelped and hid behind Kate. Kate looked confused, but only for a split second, and then it was gone again, her face showing nothing she didn't want it to. Little ice-bitch like her probably had years of experience in fucking with men's heads, I figured, and she didn't want me to get any control over the situation again. Hell with that.
She rolled her eyes at me, you know the way kids her age get. Think they know everything and can just mouth off at ya.
"Look. Dick. We just wanna get outta here, ok? Now, I dunno what it is you're wanting, but I'm tired and wanna go home. I'm tired of devil dogs that try to eat you alive, I'm tired of insane burger boys who vanish into thin air, I'm tired of security guards who turn out to be monsters, and, dick, most of all I'm tired of you. Take your ego and shove it, cause I'm done worrying about you."
With that, she turned her back on me and started toward the exit hallway, her long loose hair flying out behind her on the incoming draft. I ran to catch up to her, and was halfway to her when something slid out from under my foot and made me fall real heavy on the metal ground, making me yell out in pain and shock. I guess she wasn't quite done worrying with me after all, cause she spun round, revolver raised, to see what had happened to me or... in that place, what had attacked me.
"Nathan! You ok?" She hurried over to me, the other girl had yelled at my yell and now stood there with her hand over her mouth, wide-eyed in shock.
"Yeah, kid, thanks. I'm ok." I grumbled, embarrassed. "I guess I just slipped up on..." I felt underneath me. "On a newspaper? What the..?"
In the weirdness of it, I guess we both forgot our grudges. She reached down, took my hand (no longer injured, thank God) and helped me up, then crouched down next to me, to read the paper. A big photo of some spotty kid took up most of the front page, with the headline "LOCAL STUDENT MISSING, SUICIDE SUSPECTED" underneath. Kate took a sharp breath, shocked at something, and stood up, holding the paper for me to see.
"Nathan, look! This is the burger boy! He's the one that I saw!" The paper was dated five years ago, I saw, which meant that the boy would now be a man would no longer be working at Happy Burger. I pointed at the date and Kate went white.
"So he's been stuck here? All this time? But he hasn't aged at all! Even the grease and burger blood on his clothes were fresh!" She was beginning to panic, and I felt the same. If he had been here for five years since disappearing, would we ever get out?
"Local student Jeff Brookman vanished without a trace during his shift in the newly-opened Lakeside Mall here in Silent Hill," Kate read aloud, "Co-workers said that he had been looking very depressed on entering the kitchens and had been lethargic, bitter and despairing throughout his first hour, prompting his shift manager to banish him to the back of the kitchens, out of sight of the customers. 'I told him we couldn't look ourselves in the mirror if we at Happy Burger were making our customers unhappy just by the sight of us,' Pam Estel, graveyard shift manager, told the Silent Hill Gazette, continuing 'I told him that I knew this isn't the best of jobs, especially for a bright young man like him, but that he had to smarten up. That's when he told me he'd flunked all his SATs. Girl trouble, he said. He was real cut up about it. After that, it was more a mutual agreement that he'd stay in the back for the rest of the night. He agreed that it might help him decide what to do from here on out. I hope he's ok, though, he was real cut up about it.' Ms Estel has since quit the Happy Burger chain in search of a more productive and humane employer, an anonymous source told the Silent Hill Gazette."
Kate looked up from the paper and into my eyes. Such eyes! I swear she could see right through me and see... but nah, that's crazy.
"There's more about his mom and his brothers, but it's not readable," she said, "It's as if the words just don't want to be read." I craned over her shoulder to try to read what the hell she was talking about, and couldn't read jack squat myself. Somehow it was like the words were fine when you looked at them outta the corner of your eye, but if you looked straight at them they just formed into blocks of black or ran away in all different directions. Why that scared me, standing alone with a young girl in a demon mall with undead dogs and evil security guards after us, I don't know. But somehow that scared me most of all. Something powerful enough to mess with both our minds and eyes was one thing, but something so malicious as to block us out from reading the whole thing about the kid's life and presumed death... That was something really worrying.
"He seemed real cut up about it..." I muttered, trying to ignore the stench from the fountain behind us. "Real cut up...Hey kid, pipe down, wouldjah?" This last was to the girl in the light top, who was beginning to whimper again, but getting louder and more hysterical as she went on. Girls have such pretty voices, why do they gotta spoil it by crying so often? Such a nasty sound. She didn't shut up, though, and when I turned to yell at her, the words dried up in my throat. Standing there, she looked like fear incarnate, I've never seen anyone so scared. Well, I hadn't then, anyways. Gibbering, she pointed at the fountain, looking just like some psychadelic sculpture. A study in terror, and it was infectious. My own heart began to beat faster, my skin crawled as I realised that the stench had changed, that the liquid bubbling was making thicker, more gloopy sounds. I grabbed Kate's shoulder, to get her attention, but she was already turned toward the fountain, eyes wide, jaw slack. As I turned, I saw the other girl shriek and flee outta the mall through the hallway. The door slammed behind her, though she hadn't touched it, and the bloody apparition that had risen from the fountain pool held its gushing wrists out to us plaintively, its Happy Burger uniform covered with blood, entrails hanging off its shoulders. It spoke, and more blood fell from its mouth, slopping over the claws that shoulda been fingers. It spoke, and I saw the gashes across its throat where it had been too slow for the devil dogs. It spoke, and a nailed nightstick fell from its battered chest. It spoke, and the walls closed in, trapping the two of us in with this abomination of desolation.
It spoke, and the world ended with every word.
"I'm very cut up about it"
A/N - Yeah, it's time for the first boss fight. Too bad they've got such crappy weapons, huh? This could end up as a very short story for someone, I guess. R&R, please? Thanks.