"Christopher!" Thomas Gucci cups his hands and shouts, listening to it echo off the littered streets and desolate buildings, repeating his name over and over with desperation.

Damn you, Chris, he thought, abandoning me for a dead wife. I fed your little obsession, helped protect you from all the evils, but you brushed it all off to save somebody you possibly couldn't.

After all these years, Thomas's first time really caring for a victim of Silent Hill and it happened to Chris twice.

If he heard anyone it should be Da Silva, for he has never seen the cult in view before, and the drug dealers held their business on the other side of town. He listens carefully. His patrol car is open behind him, pouring out statics of a woman's voice as he dialed Christopher's number to no avail.

"Tommy..."

Thomas hears his name being called but nobody is in sight, a familiar tune sweeps the air. It must be Da Silva, he told himself. He follows the music into the next street, in front of an ashen stained barber shop.

"Tommy..." the voice echoes again.

Gucci catches a figure moving inside the shop, in a rush he bursts in there.

Then before his very eyes, his feet shakes under the transforming shop, the lights flickering on and debris and ash disappearing to a more magnificent and grand looking room, in the corner a jukebox plays an old time tune. In the middle of the room is his father, his dark hair slicked back old-fashionably, wearing an apron and holding hair clippers. He smiles at him.

"Tommy, what are you doing? Come on here, sit down. Your mother wouldn't want you to look like that, now would she?" He gestures for him to come sit.

Thomas shakes his head and steps back, unable to utter a sound, then looking down at his own hands, he's astonished to find it tiny and weak. Replacing his civilian clothes and coat was a child's striped t-shirt and shorts, he was now in the body of a small child.

What was happening, why was his father here and why was he a kid again? It must have been the fumes poisoning his mind and causing this hallucination.

Then suddenly, his father unexpectedly swings him into his huge arms, cradling him, and carries him to a chair. He stays limp in his strong arms, couldn't struggle free even if he tried, and leans his head on his broad chest, hearing his quick heartbeat. He was so small now. His father then gently sits him down on a chair then goes on to trim his long, silky hair. Both their features were identical, same hair, blue eyes, it was clear that they were related. But the elder Gucci had died years ago...

"Dad." Thomas's voice comes out as weak and tiny, his voice could hardly be heard.

"Now, don't complain. We're having a big dinner tonight and your mother wants you to look your best. Remember, I have to get a haircut too." He says, always with assertiveness but softly.

He stares intently at the reflection of his baby self and his exceedingly handsome father. Just what was happening here? Thomas never remembered having dinner with both his parents. What age was he right now? Too young to have any recollection of it, he guessed. "There." His father finishes and removes the white blanket off of him. He couldn't help but blush as his father admired his work.

"Aren't you a handsome little boy? All the girls are going to go running after you."

Then in an instant, he replies, "To blonde hair and blue eyes, right?" Thomas sounds innocent, but in his heart he says in an accusing tone. Now he remembered. His father was the reason why he never attended church and was practically forced to join the police force and why he was intent on marrying Allison, in pursuing Christopher.

His father loses his warmth as he frowns. "Of course, do I have to repeat myself? What else have you forgotten?" He steps forward threateningly and shakes the chair.

Even though Thomas didn't want to feel intimidated or show it, he flinches and stares frightfully at his father. Then in an instant his father backs off, appearing shocked at himself as he glances down with remorse at his small son.

"I'm so sorry, Toms." Thomas's father almost breaks down in tears, holding his small shoulders before wrapping him in his arms in a tight embrace. "We're not the greatest family but try to understand, understand that I'm only doing this to help you live a happier life. Things are going to change for you, for me, everybody, and I just want you to be ready for it."

Change...People now days are so obsessed with appearance, they buy products worth hundreds of dollars, they glamourize their ideal image of beauty above all else, and just as it was centuries ago, social status meant everything.

"Just promise me one thing, Tommy, promise me this one thing even after my death: think of someone else before yourself." An obvious command, coming from his father, to gain a good reputation and social life.

"Okay." Thomas hears a voice answer, the voice of the child, of himself.

The son tears up, stinging Thomas's eyes as well, as his father continued to squeeze him passionately before his huge arms ceases.

Thomas finds himself kneeling in the middle of the old barber shop, his cheeks wet with tears, everything now gone. He never remembered that conversation ever taking place, but a vivid hallucination that helped him realize his most rooted problem.

Years ago, when Thomas Gucci was just a rookie starting out in the police force, he never thought about taking the career seriously until the case of Alessa Gillespie took place. Just a little girl that he actually saw in the news a few times -once with a Claudia Wolf- in the Silent Hill Gazette and once in the Good Shepherd. Most of the people who attended their school had English accents and so after the Gillespie case, years later when he moved to the next town and was plagued by nightmares of those days of the fires, he received calls from a woman that would be the same age as...her. The same age and that accent, those very characteristics haunted him. Could it be Alessa?

"No..." Gucci sits on the chair and sighs deeply. What a fool he was. "It was Claudia. If only she told me-" He thinks aloud. If only Claudia had told me her name I wouldn't have doubted her a second with the missions, if they had mutual respect enough for trust to be in their relationship. Her fear of him tracking her down and quitting his job was what prevented it. If only. Then he wouldn't have let it come this far as to falling for a victim and letting him run blindly into danger. Perhaps he would have even killed Christopher Da Silva himself. Not out of cold orders, but of human desire to allow this tragic man to die peacefully, even if he didn't fall madly in love with him.

Sitting silently in thought, Gucci hears the same tune drifting away, the beat turning sharp and clear now sounding more and more like a beeping heart monitor. Feeling the cold doorknob of the large door, he tries to see through the frozen shut windows, he then swings it wide open. The air is frigid cold and where the streets should have been is another room, a hospital room with an older man lying still on the metallic bed. It was his father again but aged decades more.