I was sitting on a stool, hunched over in front of a canvas with a painting pallet held in my hand a paintbrush in the other. I mixed a little more white into the tan and got a perfect color, then applied it to my half-finished painting.

Usually people paint flowers or humans or landscapes or other expressive things, but me? I painted monsters. This time I painted a beautiful canvas of Pyramid, who faced the viewer with his menacing sword held in one hand. In the background were cages with bodies hanging from them loosely with a rope around their necks. I made the bodies just mere silhouettes, so I didn't have to be detailed with them.

My room had changed in the past seven years. It was not longer as bland as it used to be. I had pictures and paintings of my world- which I named Underground -hanging on the walls. I had painted the monsters and the machines, but the thing that stuck out most was Pyramid.

There was a three by four foot painting of him next to my bed, then another above my desk. My corkboard was dominated with sketches and drawings (both graphite and charcoal) of him and I had several canvases hanging in random areas of my room. I even dedicated an entire sketchbook to him.

I set my pallet down and walked over to the bathroom. I closed the door and proceeded to wash my brush of the paint on it. As I did so, I turned my head up and looked at myself in the mirror. No longer was I a weak, little girl. Instead I was seventeen, tall, and had quite a bit of muscle. One of the reasons was because I worked my invisible tail off to get stronger and faster. Playing Pyramid's instrument helped in that, but climbing all around Underground made a huge impact. Running up those seemingly endless staircases that led to nowhere in the black abysses allowed me to go on for hours and hours until my legs just couldn't climb anymore. Using just my arms to pull myself up ledges and ladders aided me greatly with my strength, and so did learning how to use Pyramid's sword. I couldn't swing it like how he could, but at least I pull it around with me.

I must admit that I had been tough on myself. I felt like I had trained to go into the army or something, especially since I would crawl around in the mud and force myself to go as fast as I could. I often ignored my body's plea to rest because I was so determined to get better, to get stronger.

Now I guess I didn't really need to work on that as much. My arms and chest were well-built and I was thin, which helped me to be fast. Swimming around with Wormy helped me to develop a good form and, since we always played hide-and-seek, I was good at figuring out the best places to hide and I could still fit in the tightest of crawlspaces. I was never claustrophobic, anyways.

I was happy to be as strong as I was. I could do two hundred push ups without ceasing and I could run and swim indefinitely because my stamina was (pardon my bragging) extremely high. More importantly, I was intimidating. I was five feet and eight inches tall and I was strong.

Through the seven years, I had also discovered something by the name of "college;" a place that's my ticket out of Silent Hill. I just needed to study for four years and that was it. I planned to get a major in art, and after that, I would move to Seattle in Washington, all the way on the other side of the country, and be an artist. That was my plan and those were my goals.

Pyramid was the one who had really told me about it in the first place. Go to college, he would tell me often. He said that it would do me good, but when he told me that I would be able to leave this town, I had my mind set on it.

I had ever since, so I got a job at fifteen. At seventeen, I still had the same job. I worked at an arts and craft store in the Silent Hill Mall and got a discount on the supplies, so I was relatively happy with it. It allowed me to help develop my skills as an artist.

I put my painting supplies away and put my running shoes on. I walked out of the house and began to run down the road towards my workplace. As I ran, I took long strides and timed my breathing to pace myself. The day was sunny and warm there were few cars on the streets since it was three in the afternoon and most adults were still at work.

When I reached the mall, I slowed my pace down and caught my breath. The two-story mall was quite a huge place with a total of two hundred stores that got quite a bit of customers from the neighboring towns. I personally thought that the shopping mall was a neat place. With its many restaurants, jewelry, and clothing stores, I almost always had something to be interested in.

Besides, I made twelve dollars an hour.

I opened up my locker at my workplace and grabbed my clothes. I was quick to change, fixed my shortly-cut hair (I should mention that a woman once mistook me for a man in the bathroom because of the way my body's built and my hair. "This is a lady's room," she said to me. When I looked at her and gave her a quizzical expression, she turned red and walked away. After that I wanted to kick her in the teeth), and walked out into the store.

I passed one of my coworkers and she avoided me purposely. She hated to be around me, and one of the reasons was probably because I had scared her a few years back when she pissed me off. People were also superstitious of me because whenever somebody messed with me, they always seemed to have disappeared. They were afraid of me, so what? The customers didn't know, therefore they didn't care.

I got up to the cash register and smiled at the first lady who came to me. She had her arms filled with oil paints and a package of canvases. I ran them through the scanner and she merrily went on her way after she paid, completely ignorant of the fear people had towards me. Not just fear, but the hatred, and the ignorance.

My break came several hours later and I walked out of the store. I liked to look at the shops that I passed, but I especially liked Bar Neely's Restaurant, located right across from a shoe store. The inside of the restaurant was rather quaint. There were five tables and ten booths lined up against windows that looked out at the rest of the mall. Off to the left was a bar, and to the right were empty countertops with red stools placed in front of them. The entire restaurant was Tuscany-styled and they had the absolute best pancakes.

I smiled at the waitress- who was probably the only person that I personally knew who had no clue of other people's behavior towards me -and she immediately took my order. I got my favorite (the buttermilk pancakes) and I looked out of the window to watch the passing people. Such a lovely day, I thought to myself. So many people with smiles on their faces.

The waitress returned and gave me my meal. I smothered them in butter and then poured the sweet syrup all over them. Then a man dressed in a black tuxedo sat down at the other side of the booth and smiled at me.

At first I was dumbfounded. I knew that over in Germany and some other countries, it was expected to sit down with other people and families in restaurants, but in America? People didn't really do that. The stranger thing was that he was alone. I automatically thought to myself, If he is going to hurt me, I will personally kick his ass and stuff him in a dumpster.

"Hello," he said to me and took off his black hat to reveal his gray hair. "You're Tetsu Morris, correct?"

I gave him a puzzled visage. "Do I know you?" I asked. His face looked familiar, but if I had seen him before somewhere, he had changed a bit. Maybe he aged or something.

He laughed and said, "Sorry, allow me to introduce myself first. My name is Tom Roberts, from the police department? I visited you a few years back to see if you knew anything about a couple local murders?"

"Yeah, I remember you," I replied. "You're the guy who told me the story about when you were visiting a school or something and a first-grader thought that a tampon was a stick of dynamite and made the school panic."

He laughed heartily and he held out his hand to me. With a friendly, broad smile on my face, we instinctively shook hands together.

"Is there something that I can help you with?" I asked and let go of him.

"There is, I suppose," he replied.

I immediately didn't like where this seemed to have been going. The local police and the FBI have been involved with the murders for the past seven years but they still had no leads to who or what had killed them. However, I was still a main suspect. Several years back, they had questioned me, but there was never any evidence to prove that I was guilty of anything.

I figured that they never would have, anyways. Even though their intent was to bring some measurement of harm to me, it really didn't matter because I knew that they were just doing their job and that was it. Besides, if they were killed or went missing after they met with me, then that would look very, very bad for me. Pyramid had the same logic towards that, too. Instead, I just acted friendly around them and answered their questions to best of my knowledge, without saying anything that wouldn't help me.

"Remember that teacher of yours, Mrs. Thacker, who went missing about six years ago?"

I nodded my head.

"Well, her aunt, who is in a nursing home, strongly believes that you're responsible for her death. I'm not saying that I agree with her, but she's been repeatedly telling us some odd things."

I swallowed a bite of pancake and asked, "Like what?"

"She keeps on saying that the red-haired girl did. She also says that the triangle-man killed a lot of kids. She even said to me one time that "The Cult" would come and "replace the sin." I think that she's just crazy, but I just wanted to ask you if you know anything about a 'triangle-man,' since we one time found a picture of something like that. It was after those three boys were killed in an alleyway. I'm sure you remember that, right?"

I nodded my head again.

"Yeah, well…there was a picture of a girl and a triangle-headed man. The rain had soaked the paper so there weren't any fingerprints or footprints nearby, but since it was in close proximity to the murders, we've just got another damn mystery on our hands. Do you know anything that might be related to it?"

I felt my feet and hands go a little cold. I remembered the day Mrs. Thacker caught me in the bathroom by myself while I avoided class because of the other students. She had beaten over the head continuously with a cane, over and over and over again until I just lost it and wrapped my hands around her neck. I recalled the uncontrollable urge to hurt, to strangle, to batter, to kill….I remembered being so infuriated and so scared that I choked out every single last breath of the sixty-year-old lady.

Only when I had killed her had I stopped.

I remembered letting go of her and she thumped onto the ground. I had just stood there and stared blankly at the corpse that had scratch marks and huge bruises on her neck. Then some monster from Underground had crawled out of the wall, mumbled a gurgle to me, grabbed onto my dead teacher, and dragged her away. I never saw the body again.

"A…triangle-man?" I asked. "That reminds me of Pythagoras, but other than that, no, I'm afraid not. How old is this lady?"

"She's seventy-five years old. I wouldn't have bothered you, buuut…I have to follow my orders."

"Like a soldier, eh?"

"Yes, soldier's orders. Sometimes my chief has some odd reasons to give us assignments, but I'm just doing my job. Well anyway, thanks for the information. I'm pretty sure that lady is just crazy, but I'm afraid that I need to do what my chief asks me to. Sorry for bothering you."

"It's fine," I said. "I don't mind. If I happen to find out anything about those murders, you know I'd tell you guys."

"That's what I figured," he replied. "You have yourself a good day."

"You too," I said and watched him walk away.

Once he left, I thought to myself. That was a little strange. An old lady in a nursing home talking about a triangle-man? That must have been Pyramid, but she didn't see the murder scene, right? How could have known about him? And what was that about a cult? I knew that Silent Hill had some sort of ancient dead religion that was practiced a hundred years ago or so, but other than that, I didn't know anything else.

With the new information in mind, I continued to finish my meal before I returned to work.

HOLY CRAP TETSU KILLED HER TEACHER. Well…she was getting beaten by her and went a little berserk…

Let's not kill our teachers, m'kay? XD