Silent Hill: A Pale Reflection
by Elliot Bowers
"Red"
"Same"
lyrics and vocals by Dani Siciliano
Chapter 10
…
1.
…
This time, it really was going to be the hospital bed. There was no way around it, at least not this time. Rising into consciousness, the girl was becoming aware of her body. With that came the feeling of the cushion beneath her--the damned hospital bed. And the blurry flatness above her was the ceiling. Things looked blurry because the girl just wasn't feeling totally here yet. It didn't help that not much light was in this room. Above, the light fixtures were dead dark circles. Light was not a problem, though, because that ever-present sunset-colored glow from the dying daylight outside came through the barred and hard-glassed windows of this hospital-prison room.
Heather was...back in the bed-saddle again--riding that four-post cushioned platform, set in a room that was too hard to be one in a place of healing. This was a return to the living nightmare of this reality. This reality, this place, it was where they only wanted girls being made barefooted and pregnant…making one girl in particular barefooted and pregnant. Too bad for them, they only succeeded with the barefooted part. Heather would be bare-assed as well if the shirt-garment they let her have was any shorter. Damn thing just made it below the double-shape of her butt-cheeks in back while barely covered what was a girl was obligated to cover in front.
Meanwhile, back to now… As if sensing the girl's return to the waking world--least this waking world-- some nurse-things suddenly moved to hunker down over her. Their phony pale visages looking more fake than ever even in the low gloom of the sunset-toned light glowing through the barred window.
Of course the lights were out. That was why the unseen presence didn't allow electricity to flow through the lights just now. The unseen presence figured it would try to keep the lights off and let Heather get some shut-eye while things were done to her body. The trick didn't work last time, ending up with a certain doctor-thing not having an intact face anymore. Yet just because something didn't work the first time didn't mean that they wouldn't try doing the same crap again…and again some more. A doctor-thing was in the corner and doing something.
Never mind that for now, though. Face it, jerks, thought the girl. I'm not some darned parrot. Putting the lights out won't make me stay sleepy-bye. No way in Hell. So went Heather's thinking before shifting her thoughts into a more…dangerous mode. Thoughts became red as the hatred began to build.
It was easier this time. The girl just had to let her hatred for the nurse-things build, the hatred for this place build, all the things done to her. "Cra-a-at…!" began to squeal one of the nurse things before gagging and choking as the pain inside increased. Wait, hold on folks. The nurse-thing was trying to say something. "Cr-a-a-at… Ach-ach! Cra-a-at…" We are physiological difficulties, so please stand by. "Cra-a-a-at… Cra-a-at…!" Come on, now. We know the nurse-thing is special! We know it can do it… "Cra-a-a-at…spackle!"
There we go! Cra-a-t, spackle! Not that the complete statement made as much sense as the first half to those not knowing the lingo, but there it goes anyway. And there go the nurse-things, beginning to twitch and spasm as massively torturous bouts of pain began to fill their bodies, the pain penetrating the moldy dark mush they have for brains, their minds feeling suffering. This was assuming that the creatures had individual minds at all, being controlled by the unseen presence.
Well something in their heads was reacting to what Heather was doing. Now all the meat-puppet nurse-things wanted was to get the Hell away. The door squealed open a little bit, unlocked, and waited for them.
What did it feel like to come under attack by Heather's mind just then? Maybe the closest analogy would be their minds feeling as if being electrocuted, their bodies feeling like chopped-up glass being pulled through their muscles, good stuff like that. By the way, some slick meaty things were sliding their way up the walls from where the doctor-thing was doing its thing in the corner.
Heather's thinking shifted back to normal as the nurses' high-heels beat a hasty--yet shaky--retreat. Yeah, get outta here! Don't come back! The girl then got herself off and away from the bed, her bare feet on the hard tiles, walking towards the nurses--who were going the opposite way on hard hoof-like white heels. All the while was Heather thinking especially vicious thoughts in a certain way. Thinking in that certain way allowed her to send pain and suffering into others, which is what the sort of thing the girl did her best to avoid doing while living outside the walls of this hospital-prison place. Now it was perfectly okay.
Click-wham! So came the sound of triumph! And for now, triumph was the sound of a hospital-prison door being slammed shut after nurse-things had made a speedy getaway. The doctor-thing had preceded the nurses and had already left. Those creatures would be in for more of the same if they came back too.
Heather walked towards the door, her bare feet on the hard floor. And there the girl stood, thinking of how the situation was really changed now. When Heather first came here, those things could do whatever they wanted, whenever. Now they couldn't. Now it was Heather's turn to set things her way.
Not yet though, because Heather was feeling tired. Not that her fighting had cost her any physical effort, but using her abilities had drained her in some way. The girl was already half-starved from the questionable foodstuffs they barely provided and too tired by far. Just being here also sucked on a mental level.
Exhaustion was coming. A headache was starting to pulse pain behind her eyes as sleep threatened to close over her. That headache started to blur her vision a little and make it hard to see or hear well. Her own pulse and breathing seemed to fill her immediate senses, just keeping her body up and moving an effort. The bed was way over there across this darkened room.
It was her dazed-and-tired condition which kept the girl from seeing the wet warm blob-things that had since gone to the ceiling. So that was why the doctor-things made a recent appearance. Well, it wasn't here to swap juicy gossip with the nurse-things! Those doctor-things, those guys were always up to no good. Now that no-goodness had since gotten its way upto the ceiling and about to make trouble.
And when it comes to no good, those creatures attached to the ceiling looked just the part. They weren't good to look at--nasty, nasty things. Maybe the best way to describe them would be to think of a slug or a flatworm, if a slug or flatworm made it to being the size of a cat and colored like blood. These blood-colored slug-creatures also had little fist-sized heads projected from those round-meat bodies on wrist-sized necks, heads with beady little dark eyes that were darker than the darkness of the universe. Those eyes were on Heather's back.
Really, their eyes were on her back and not on her backside--not her butt, not necessarily certain other parts of her anatomy. They waited for Heather's staggering progress to take her a little farther along. Wait for it…
Okey-dokey-fanokey! Here we go, boys. Geronimo-o-o! Or…banzai-i-i-i! Heck, try oblamah if so inclined. Whatever. Just go for it, dudes!
Something about the size of a pit bull, if dropped from the height of the ceiling, would not have enough mass to bring down the average full-grown adult. Yet though Heather was a year beyond the age of majority, no one can say that the girl had the full height or mass of the average physically mature human being. (That's another thing. No short jokes for Heather, please. Goodness knows the girl got enough of those from some jerks at work.) Suffice to say that the meat-slug thing did land on Heather's back. It also did bring her down--not that it took much to bring down the tired girl anyway.
"Whoa!" went Heather, before going thud. Having fallen, the girl ended up lying sideways and reaching for her back as the warm wetness soaked through the upper back of her thin shirt--consequently upon her upper back near her neck. The soaking felt electrifying and hurt at first. Only for a little while was it like this. Then a warm and very delicious feeling began to flow through her body as it was starting…to maybe feel sorta…
Forget words like maybe, sorta and even possibly… No, this was definitely starting to feel good. It was a surprise at all that anything in this place could feel like this. The feeling wasn't unwelcome.
And as this sweet pleasure made its thrilling course through her body, as her body from the neck down began to relax, part of her was just a little worried. Had it been just a normal person, that person would likely have succumbed to the temptations of the creature. Lots of ordinary people loved sex and spent most all their time chasing it. And here this slug thing here was, making people feel sexed up for free? Hey, baby! Why chase hot-looking people who like to say no when the hot slug-thing can give you all the ass-action you need? But Heather was not a normal person.
Heather forced her own body to get up even while everything was still feeling just so damned sweet! Pleasured sounds resonated from deep within her throat, her mouth open and slack, feeling all loose and good all over. Yet her mind persisted even while her own body had surrendered.
Still the girl tried to get up.And in trying to get up, one of her bare feet stepped onto another one of the slug-things too, with even her slight weight squashing the thing. The little thing's eyes popped out its head while the sides of its own body split. Dark stuff came out.
Meanwhile, the slug-thing still on her back tried redoubling its erotic efforts--big mistake. It sent a fresh burst of intense pleasure through Heather. Mmm… That extra-intense burst of goodness made Heather's body react accordingly. And Heather let her body react--making it suddenly arch her spine and fall onto her back. Her back was exactly where the creature so happened to be positioned.
Splat was the word for what happened. Just like its foot-stomped brethren, that creature was suddenly not physically viable anymore. It was dead. Its death put a stop to that oh-so-good feeling as well.
Heather's head began to clear up from that feeling. Meanwhile, the last of those meat-slugs in the room was dumb enough to try dropping down from the ceiling--late to the party and everything. That was no excuse to not try at all, though. Yes, indeed! If at first you don't succeed, molest and molest again.
That last one came straight down and missed Heather completely--not lading atop her head of currently dark and shiny hair. Suffice to say that the meat-slug creature missed. It laid stunned on the floor from the drop, perfectly vulnerable for another well-placed right stomp of her foot.
Heather had killed three of those things. Three was all there were. Really, no more unseen lurking meat-creatures were around. They were simply too precious and rare in this world to be used in such a manner. Such a fact would probably explain why the unseen presence made its frustration known with a grow-w-w-wl that sounded out from beneath the floor and behind walls, mostly coming from the floor.
"Nice try, you scumbag-pervert," said Heather aloud to the unseen presence. "Your stupid crap didn't work, though!" Heather also would also have added a phony laugh to spice up her statement but was just too tired to do that. Instead, the girl toed one of those squashed meat-slug things. It was supposed to be a kick, but her body was still a little bit weak and shaky..
The dead thing crumbled apart even from that slight impact. Its insides were completely dried up and gone as well, leaving a crispy outside. Where its insides went, Heather didn't give a fork. All that mattered was that the nearest slug-thing was rapidly dissolving as if the air in this place was no good--good for human lungs but not for its dead corpse. The other slug-things were gone, and so was the patch of slime on her back--drying and even with a crustiness on the outside that was going away.
Whatever. "So now what?" pressed Heather. "Are you gonna try another set of those nurse-things? No? Why not send some more of those messed-up doctors? I'd like to give their brains the once-over, just to see how fast I can kill 'em. Anything you send to me alive can be made dead in two shakes of a lamb's tail! Just you watch! "
Yet Heather's confidence would waver when confronted with what the unseen presence actually did send next. The unseen presence had been holding back, but now it was going to try and play quite a mighty card against the girl. The door opened, and so did Heather's mouth. "Dad?" asked Heather. "Are you really here?"
…
2.
…
For a live-at-home girl of nineteen to recognize her father, living with her father for almost that many years, such was highly expected and very normal. Never mind if the rest of these circumstances were perhaps not so normal. This goes even if most girls of nineteen would prefer to not recognize their paternal parent--or either of their parents. Heather was that way in the days before her Dad had her sent away to get better. Being sent away made for her being sent here. As for that getting better part of things, that wasn't happening. And it was this place that Heather was trapped for too long, losing the life had before.
Still, it was her Dad standing there. Dad, he was the only other normal human being that Heather had seen here. Her father, a broad-shouldered clean-jawed sort appearing to be dressed as usual. What was the usual for him could maybe not be considered the usual for most—a in buttoned vest-top worn with…jeans-pants. A brown leather jacket was worn over the shirt and vest to keep off the chill, an outfit complete with boots on his feet. That was definitely a writer would wear, an eclectic clash of styles all in one outfit--mixing lawyer-looking professionalism with blue-collar working guy casualness, along with a dash of cowboy. Any number of metro-sexual fashion designers would be intrigued or insulted.
And there he stood, working-man-professional-cowboy-writer's outfit and all. How long did it take for him to get here? Through what did he have to go? The things running this hospital let Heather have books and writing materials, but they didn't let her have a clock, not that such a time-keeping device would work in this place anyway. Even the freakin' time-of-day itself was not right, so it was hard to tell the passage of time that way. Bad days, days gone wrong, these days had to come to an end at some point. This had to be the point. Her Dad had come to the rescue. He must have seen what kind of Hell-hole this place was and used brute force in getting to this room.
"Some dump this place turned out to be, huh?" voiced the girl to her father, standing in the doorway. "I'm guessing those things must've given you a hard time and all."
Her father began walking some steps into this hospital-prison room. Why was he walking, for crying out loud? More of those nurse-things could be along at any minute. That guy just couldn't go fast enough. Or maybe he was just tired and a little sore from having killed every single last one of those things. Heather imagined her father having to use his pistol to deal with some of them, and then using whatever bludgeoning weapon was handy if he ran out of bullets. By bludgeon and by bullets, he came for her.
On that point, some things need consideration, contemplation and recollection. Lots of things were the same or at least seemed the same with Daddy. Yet that did not change the basic and fundamental fact of this being an alternate reality--as in, a whole different universe. One of those same-but-not-really-the-same things going here would be laws regarding firearms. The Heather of one world lived in a country where they regulated the heck out of pistols, submachine guns, rifles, sawed-off shotguns, and whatever. In such a world, it took piles of paperwork and about a year to just own one weapon legally. (And about how the prices on those things could cost reach the four-digit dollar range, for-get it!) Yet the Heather of another world lived in a world where pistols, rifles, shotguns and the rest were more commonplace than pancake mix. Firearms were in fact so common then and there that careless jokers would drop spare boxes of bullets and shotgun shells like people dropping pocket change. People don't mean to drop pocket change, but it happens anyway--with people dropping boxes of ammo when fumbling for the keys in their jackets. Of course the police of such places generally did a good job of keeping the towns and cities from becoming scenes of shootouts worthy of any Western cinematography. (Dr-a-aw, caowboah!)
So, there would be no problem in bringing or finding a pistol here and go about one's business with bullets blazing. Nobody would try making any laws against shooting monsters! Most folks didn't even believe that they existed--least not anyone wanting to be considered normal. There we go again with that adjective, normal. Also, any politician proposing such a law during a legislative committee gathering would surely find himself bundled away to a place where the room's walls are soft and the doctors' opinions are hard. So if Dad had to get in some much-needed marksmanship practice with the live targets of this place--if the contaminated entities of this place could be considered alive--so be it.
And all this while, Dad still hadn't said a word. He was also still taking his good old time in making his way towards the bed where Heather was primly sitting--her knees together and hands folded on top. Her lost hazel eyes stared…
Whoops! Did he just stagger? "Dad? What's wrong? Are you hurt?" gently asked the girl. Heather could sound like such a sweetie…when not shouting cuss-words and making nasty threats against the physical well-being of others. The girl did have a temper. Yet now that temper was subdued, the girl sounding all like, aww.
Dad still didn't say anything. Heck, the dude wasn't even making eye-contact. His dark brown eyes were just staring straight ahead--looking towards and through the barred-window view of the sunset-toned world outside. Daylight was always of a dying sort hereabouts. Everything out there may as well not really be alive, at least resembling things alive, a landscape of shuffling and distorted creatures that only bore passing resemblance to what existed before along with things that weren't supposed to exist in this world at all--the way it was outside now.
Let it be known that her Dad had been living outside the hospital, living in that landscape out there for all this time—as had the others of the small city. Also let it be known that her father was just an ordinary guy. He didn't have super-strength like Superman or a magician's ability to fend off unseen forces. What Heather's Dad could do was point firearms in the general direction of targets and keep pulling the trigger until at least most of the shots hit their target. He was better at swinging a really mean pipe, actually, or some other bludgeoning tool instead of marksmanship. Good as dear old Dad was at swinging blunt heavy objects and pulling triggers (though not good enough to know that one squeezes triggers of firearms to get decent aim, for example), he could not hold out indefinitely. No ordinary guy can resist the forces of darkness forever.
Realization of what her Dad had become dawned slowly and shockingly to Heather, making her mouth hang open, a gasp sounding from her throat. It looked like Dad but wasn't her Dad. That was just a thing which wore her dead father's body--something not alive, but not something really dead either.
As he shuffle-stepped closer, more details became clear, like how bits of that dark fluid were at the corners of his eyes and from a nostril. The eyes looked empty and dead-lost as if nobody was really home behind them. The pastiness of his skin would have been more noticeable if this room was illuminated with normal lighting instead of the warm orange-red glow of the low orange-red light of dying days in a dying world. Dying too, not alive in the same way he was before, that was her Dad--being here in physical form only. The thing shuffle-walking into this room was not her father any damned more. Now it was just a contaminated, shambling former person made all full of the nasty ichor and darkness that filled all the creatures.
Dad, thought Heather, doing her best to tell herself the shuffling thing was not…not…not her father. A dead guy can't be anybody's parent. They'd have a hard enough time getting a pulse, let alone getting the means to be a breadwinner for a family. That would make him a dead-beat Dad in that case, wouldn't it? Get it? Get it, a dead-beat Dad! Haw-haw-haw… His dead shuffling feet beat out dead-shuffling beat in still making his shambolic slow-assed way over here.
You're not my Dad. You're just a thing. That in mind, Heather began to change her thoughts in the same way used to hurt and kill the doctor-things and nurse-things. It was hard at first in directing those thoughts at what was once her father. Then it became easy. Her thoughts…became red-tinged once more. These were thoughts of vicious and malicious intent, considerations of pain and spattered life-blood, mangled corpses, cruelty mixed in with laughter…
When Heather began imposing the pain, the thing that had once been her father reacted in the same way that the nurse-things and doctor-things did. Why not? After all, those entities and her once-Dad were made up of the same nasty stuff inside now.
The Dad-thing shook and shimmied, the head spasm-shaking once. Then the thing tried walking away, nasty gurgling sounds coming from the mouth--along with flecks of that nasty dark fluid. It fell to the floor as the intensity of the mental assault intensified, beginning to cough up great big forking gobbets of its insides, getting sicker by the second. If that thing had any semblance of being alive before, it wouldn't for long--wearing Dad's body like that...
When it was over, the door of this room clicked open. In came some nurse-things, pasty-dead legs beyond short-skirt hems moving, coming close enough to use those slender dead-flesh arms to reach for the Dad-thing's ankles. They dragged it out of this hospital-room that way, by the ankles. In leaving, the Dad-thing left a mouth-wide trail of the dark ichor in being dragged out of here. And once they were out, the door whamped shut once more.
Heather wasn't feeling particularly victorious after this latest using of her abilities. Nor was this feeling like a particularly broken and sad moment. The feeling probably hadn't sunk in just yet. Maybe tears and hurt would come later. Or maybe, Heather shouldn't care because Dad was the one who put her here in the first place. All the townspeople wanted her in here, thinking her a dangerous and strange freak of a girl. Even while the cityscape outside was getting to be kind of freaky itself, the fog, the messed-up animals, they still wanted to put her away… Dad didn't need her tears, not anymore, and neither did the town outside of this hospital.
Everything was going down and wrong. Everything in the town had already turned wrong, taken to this dying landscape. Nothing could be done about it. Heather sniffed aloud, blurry wetness coming to her eyes. Tears came after all.
…
The radio still sat there in a gloomed and shaded place between worlds, a place barely in focus and steeped in near-darkness. No way would the darkness ever lift enough to give a clear idea as to what kind of desk made home for the radio. And what little plastic jobber of a transistor-operated analog radio-wave receiver be complete without some static? Oh yeah, when it came to static, this thing had levels of the stuff that were just diabolical. Satanic static was how a rock-star would put it. It was a radio with the static of satanic panic.
Something burbled and hissed, a dead voice making a word that sounded like chermungus, whatever that was supposed to mean. Another voice said something like, chorkumbleff. The voices coming through the static were saying things in languages not heard on Earth before--at least not on the versions of the planet that were called Earth.
At one point came a voice that actually spoke in a terrestrial language. Never mind that the voice sounded as if it gargled a mouthful of highway-side gravel and tried rinsing out with the liquid stuff that leaked out of landfills. In short, it was a really, really nasty-sounding voice. And that really, really nasty-sounding voice said, "Tonight, dearest of all my friends, we will go a-a-all the way…" Indeedy-doo, buckaroo! Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, miscellaneous creatures in all phases of physical development, welcome to yet another…Silent Hill Radio Moment.
And what moment such as this would be complete without music? So without further ado, the static gave way just enough to let through some tunes. The song had some hop-pop-skip instrumentals going in the background as the sound of a woman's voice meditatively sing-chanting some words…
The sun-n-n…set.
The sun-n-n…set.
The sun will soon be set!
The sun-n-n…
The sun will soon be set
Your shadow will be 'round!
The darkness isn't yet…
Anticipation strong!
Sun-n-n…
I just can't…
Darkness!
Anticipate!
That faded out. Some sniggling and chortles bubbled into the static that almost totally washed out the women singing. That would be a strong almost. This time, the radio was not done saying what it wanted to say. Now we have a double feature. What sounded like an altered bass-guitar steadily strummed a beat as that same woman's voice sang and moaned another set of lyrics from another song.
Was a change…!
Was it di-i-ifferent?
Was it, same?
Was it go-o-one
….with you clo-o-osing
…the doo-o-or!
As you did
As you say
The other day.
As you say
As you did
The other day.
As you did
As you say
The other day…
And then everybody's favorite static hiss made its vengeful comeback, other-worldly voices chortling and making faint sounds just beneath the static. That's it, no more singing for now. No way was there going to be a triple feature. There's no such thing. Just the idea of it would be abso-freaking-lutely ridiculous. Reductio ad absurdum was how those Ancient Romans said it--the act of making an argument or statement seem so ridiculous that it can't be real. The Ancient Romans are all dead now though. Triple feature, hah! One may as well start believe in saucer-riding, big-headed space-aliens armed with zap-guns and bad attitudes. Speaking of weird beings, Heather so happened to be coming around right about now.