She woke up when the pins-and-needles sensation left her leg and was replaced in her head.
She wasn't quite sure of things at first. Shadows and light danced in front of her vision, some blurred familiarities, some abnormalities from the blood rushing to her cranium. She picked up odd noises all around her. Unearthly giggles, like a Thalidomide child's glee at the horrified expression on its new mother's face. The image cleared her vision for her, and the noises abruptly stopped.
Arelia was rightly confused at the scene before her until she realized she was upside down. She reached for the clasp on her seat belt and unhooked it, falling a short distance into the steering wheel. The horn honked loudly until she could kick out the window and roll through into the street.
The first thing that occurred to her was that it was snowing. The pale, cold butterflies fluttered down from the sky, tinting the blonde of her hair with sheer white. It never seemed to pile much or remain, just leave a light blanket on the ground before disappearing. She brushed it off her hair irritably.
The second thing that occurred to her was that it was snowing out of season. In the middle of summer, to be exact. Weird.
She looked herself over briefly, patting herself down for injuries. She found nothing. Arelia, you lucky son of a bitch, she thought, the Marine mentality sticking like a love-sick squid to the nodes of her brain. She glanced over the damage of her pickup and sighed remorsefully.
"Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio," Arelia mused. She tried to push over the hulking vehicle, but it would not turn upright. Her mind screamed torrents of obscenities, the worst of which she kept to herself. Eventually, she crawled in the broken window, ever-careful of the shards of glass, and searched around for her pocket flashlight. She groped through the glove compartment, found her Colt .45, two extra ammunition clips (although the gun was fully loaded), and a survival knife. She slipped the knife into her boot and the gun and clips into her pocket for a moment, taking a long second to make certain the safety was on the firearm.
Another grope of the glove compartment turned up her pocket flashlight. Arelia removed it and clipped it to the low collar of her black tank top and glanced absently at the "LOADED WEAPON" print across the middle. She'd need more than a tank top to stay warm if it continued snowing. She retrieved a jacket from the back seat and slipped it on, then crawled out of the capsized truck and sat beside it. As she took out her gun and tossed it carefully from hand to hand, she looked over the town.
It was much as she had expected it to be, save for the dense fog that blanketed the area like the breath of a thousand freezing urchins. There were small houses and two-story houses, some with porches, some with balconies, some with both, and some without either. It reminded Arelia a little of the Italian slums when she had visited two summers ago in early July. Only Silent Hill was cleaner and without the bright colors that were reminiscent of safety cone variations.
Every so often, between a row of three or five houses, there would be a chain-link fence and gate leading to an alley. It was all Arelia could see through the fog, but she recalled what alleys usually led to in Italy. Clotheslines hanging from windows, garments drying without a sense of shame or discretion. The homely, pudgy faces of the old Italian women, their jowls hanging, cheeks folded with lines of age. Creaky voices calling to one another, seeming to be angry, but then crackling into a grainy laughter that spread contagiously throughout the apartments. Arelia recalled how difficult it seemed to speak angrily in such a beautiful language.
The third thing that occurred to her was the lack of people. The town seemed deserted. No one had come when her truck flipped. She had no idea how long she had been there. Well, that wasn't true. She hadn't been hanging long enough to get a nose bleed, so she had awoken pretty quick after being knocked unconscious. But now that she surveyed the area, no one at all seemed to be present. No children playing in the snow. No adults peeking out of windows to see if the driveway needed to be plowed. No one jogging. No one walking. No one.
Under the circumstances, Arelia took the safety off the Colt.
She stood and brushed the snowflakes off her head and out of her ponytail as best she could. The best thing to do, she imagined, was to try and find someone and better ascertain the situation. She checked the pocket of her camouflage pants for the clips before proceeding.
The streets were easy to traverse without traffic or snow build-up. Arelia felt a little silly walking about like a reconnaissance scout, her handgun safety off and held at her side with her finger caressing the trigger guard. She was not certain which direction she walked in, but a fourth and final thing occurred to her: It was daylight. It had been night when she crashed. She stopped thinking about it when a gate creaked to her right. She waited silently as it closed, latched, and silence followed. After a few moments of deliberation, she walked toward it, caressing the trigger guard a little faster.
Arelia unlatched the gate and left it open, following the alley's twists and turns, sloshing through puddles of ankle-deep water. Must have rained here, too. Or else the snow melted. She kicked her feet a little as she trudged along.
It got darker and darker the farther she went, until she had to turn on the flashlight. Dark already? Wasn't it light a few minutes ago? It sent a beam in front of her, illuminating the shadows slightly. She found she was sorry it did.
The alley walls were painted crudely with splattered blood, as if a great struggle had occurred every step of the way. For that much blood, it would have to be many victims. The puddles were large amounts of blood filling the small dips in the concrete. A shudder of wrongness crawled up Arelia's spine. This was wrong. This was terribly, terribly wrong.
Sirens in the distance. Her pace quickened as she passed through, her flashlight finding new things to play upon, finding new shadows to chase away like frightened animals, toying with her vision and making her see things that weren't there. She made a sharp turn and nearly slammed into a gurney in the middle of the alley. The creak of the rusty metal made her jump and pull up her gun slightly. Dammit! She shoved away the gurney and turned instead to the crucified body on the chain link fence, covered with blood and IVs, stark naked and milky-eyed. The obscenity her mind hurtled at her mouth now was stifled by the stillness of her heart and jaw.
The Marine in Arelia hissed battle instructions at her, but they fell on a shocked muscle system. It was only when something scuffled to her left that she was able to move, a dumb turning motion accompanied by the lack of tension in her trigger finger. Two small, humanoid-esque creatures limped, shuffled, and loped toward her, each holding a short but efficient knife. Their blades gleamed. Their eyes did not. The mutilated faces of the children were twisted like a deranged Picasso attempt that had gone too far for even modern art.
The numb mind of Arelia finally decided that anything coming at her with a weapon was a target. She screamed aloud as she fired round after round into the creatures, frequently missing, bullets ricocheting off the bricks and causing small sparks in the eyes of the demons. She backed up into the gurney and toppled over, cursing herself for panicking in the first place.
As she struggled to get up, she was pushed down by the demons, and stabbed to death in the blackness.