"When I open my eyes, I better be surrounded by a bunch of hot naked guys and just suffering from a sex hangover, not bent over in the driver's seat of my car with blood running down my head."
Jane went and opened her eyes. Of course, the situation she was really hoping against was really true. Her head was practically fused with the steering wheel, the blood from the injury in the process of traveling down the length of her body; it probably would've made an interesting painting. Well, obviously can't paint if you're dead, so she carefully lifted her head, being mindful of the sting and thankful it made the horn stop, and took a look around. Damn, even worse was the fact that they were still in the middle of the foggy forest, rain pouring down, and--oh hell, Daria looked out cold.
"Daria! Hey, Daria!"
"The number you are dialing is not in service."
The writer had pieces of glass in her hair and an apparently fake airbag in her face, that saved her life--well, sort of. "Explain to me why there's a half-empty pillow with suspicious stains, now forcefully applied to my face and threatening to smother me."
"Hmph, that's the last time I buy a car from Happy Herb's."
Jane helped pull her back to rest against the seat. She looked relatively unscathed, just with a bit of a knock on side of the head. Jane, on the other hand…
"Oh hell. Jane, don't move."
As Daria lightly fumbled around for something to wrap Jane's head in, the artist said sarcastically, "You, Daria, expressing emotion and worry?"
"It's always funny till somebody gets a massive concussion."
Daria found some art cloths stuffed in the glove compartment and pressed them to Jane's head injuries. "I'd use my shirt to tie them down, but then we'd be bleeding and naked." Jane forced a smirk. "You'll be fine after you keep pressure on it for awhile."
The artist took a few looks around, frowned at the rain which fell at a reduced rate under the thickness of the trees, and announced, "I'm guessing it's futile to even try to start the car, but here I go anyway."
She turned the key; not even a sound. A few more furious clicks of metal and key chains, and Jane gave up. She reclined and mused with her eyes closed for a few moments, then got out of the car, with Daria right behind her.
The missing piece of car was what made them more nervous than anything else; cars don't exactly come apart like jigsaw puzzles. Even a really, really big dear running at speeds beyond normal deer speeds couldn't have done this; at least they strongly hoped not.
Grumpy, standing with one hand on the cloths and one on her hip, Jane muttered, "I should've just let Trent take my car."
"Then we would've driven Trent's car and been incinerated in a flaming ball of death instead of just getting whiplash, all the family fun we could have."
"Hm, you got a point there. So, what now, oh wise one?"
Daria took a glance down both directions, each looking exactly the same except for the broken glass. "We could either go back to the highway and hope there's a working car within fifty miles of here, or we could go to Silent Hell and hope it's not comprised of cannibals or Jehovah's Witnesses."
A loud crack of thunder; Jane looked both ways quickly and said, "I vote for the quiet place."
The path was plain, no signs that there was even a town to soon appear from this damn fog. As far as they knew, the town could have disappeared decades ago, which wasn't exactly a pleasant scenario.
An untold amount of time later, Daria noticed Jane let out a sigh of thought, which broke the silence between them. "Out with it, already."
Jane grunted, then explained, "I'm not sure, but the more I think about it, the more I swear I've heard of this Silent Hill place. Probably on 'Sick Sad World' or something, but the name sounds faintly familiar…"
The sound of a distant buzzing caught their attention. A quick thought jumped to Jane's attention: "Daria, please tell me that's not a chainsaw maniac coming to kill us."
"I'm sure it's just Satan pissed that someone messed with the thermostat."
Another minute of walking brought them out of the thick forest and finally onto something of a more conventional road. Unfortunately, the area to the right was blocked by even more damn garbage construction equipment things, though there happened to be a 2X4 and a running chainsaw beside each other among the mix, just laying on the ground without a user in sight. While Daria started walking off to the left, Jane instead went towards the various items.
"Um, Jane, what are you doing?"
The artist knelt down by the equipment, saying in a contemplative voice, "I dunno, I just feel compelled to look at this stuff."
So Daria went and stood beside her. "Are you saying we should take this stuff in order to protect ourselves from the untold horrors of the night?" She bent over and picked up the 2X4, then put it down just as quickly. "Yeah, I don't think so."
Jane agreed and started to walk with her down the road, saying, "I don't think I'm up for a night of mass murder anyway."
The sounds of rain colliding with huge puddles was their only companion down the lonely walk towards civilization. The only glimmer of hope so far was a street sign at a small intersection: Brown Street and Harris Road.
"Um, Daria, can I tell you this place gives me the creeps?"
"Only if you're not expecting psychological counseling." Something caught Daria's attention. "What was that?"
"What was what?"
"That noise. It sounded like a wolf's howl or something."
"I hope you're just getting paranoid."
"Me, too."
A house finally formed in the fog, off to the right on the side of the road. The walls had no siding, just that paper stuff with the brand name on it; the lawn was only disheveled mud; and the windows were cracked near the point of breaking. The house looked like it was still in the process of being built.
"Jane, I don't think anyone could be living here, so let's keep walking."
"Hey, no one there or not, I'd at least like to get out of this damn rain."
Jane approached the door while Daria continued standing in the street. Two knocks, waiting, pounding on the door, waiting, then checking the doorknob.
"The lock's broken. This door can't be opened."
Daria gave her blank stare. "Excuse me?"
"No, look."
The writer came over and checked where her friend was pointing. From the doorknob hung a small little note, reading what Jane has said just a moment ago.
"Cute," the artist muttered before ramming her shoulder hard into the door. Wood snapped and splintered under the attack, opening the door about halfway. One more hit should--
"Jane…"
"Huh?"
She turned to look where Daria was staring, out into the street, just past the extent of the lawn. Jane would've called it a dog, if not for the fact that its skin appeared to be missing, and that its eyes appeared to glow red through the fog, and probably because of the fact that its teeth seemed highly exaggerated, like the kind of ridiculous fangs one might see in a children's drawing. And let's not forget it was staring directly at the two girls and growling like it had a squirrel stuck in its throat.
Daria muttered, "Looks like Benji's off the leash."
Jane didn't take the time to make a pithy comment, instead quickly resuming her break-in tactics and shattering the doorframe with another shoulder hit. As smoothly as she could manage, she grabbed Daria by the arm, pulled her inside, and proceeded to put pressure on the door to hold it closed. Daria didn't see the need until the fragile generic door shook with the force of a Lawndale quarterback, not a sickly dog; that was all she needed to see before giving Jane a little extra force. The sound of nails carving up the door continued for maybe thirty seconds before finally stopping.
Another moment passed, and Jane finally breathed a sigh of relief. She took a quick look at their surroundings before pulling over the dinning room table and having Daria help her prop it up against the door.
The writer quipped, "I told you to start keeping milkbones for just such an emergency."
Jane sat down on the floor, leaned back against the table, and wiped the sweat from her forehead; hm, still a little blood; she had completely forgotten about the cloths once she saw that dog--or whatever it was. "Um, Daria, have I ever mentioned I have a fear of dogs, the big scary bitey snappy kind?"
"I never would have guessed, what with the running and screaming."
"Daria, this isn't funny."
"Who's laughing? We were almost just eaten by Lassie's evil twin."
Jane sighed. "So what do we do now?"
"We look for an alternate exist while wishing we brought that chainsaw with us."
The artist shivered at the thought of turning that dog to beef jerky and got up to look around. All in all, the house looked very plain: simple wallpaper, apartment-sized kitchen and bedrooms, practically nothing of any value or distinction whatsoever. Silent Hill must be an old persons type of town or something.
Daria listened to the mostly muted rain while searching the fridge for something to eat or at least drink; hm, nothing but some small brown bottles that read "health drinks." "I think I'll take my chances without the drugs."
And then she caught sight of the kitchen knives, sheathed in their block of wood. "Let's see: something rips metal clean off the car, skinless dogs prowl in the open, and there's no one around to help us. Maybe I should hang onto one of these."
While not exactly a fan of knives under any circumstances, the thought of being cornered by that dog or any kind of strange beast or person and having no means of self-defense was not the most comforting scenario. What could be the harm in hanging onto a giant knife capable of killing a man with a single stab? As long as she didn't start saying "redrum."
With slowness matching her reluctance with this idea, she grasped the handle of one of the ten knives in the set and carefully pulled it out of the block--until she saw the blood on the blade, conveniently left almost entirely on the end of the utensil. Daria let out a surprised "eep" before letting the knife drop to the floor, just barely missing her feet.
Jane called out from the next room, "Hey, what's the matter?"
Deep breath… "Only my fear of elderly cooking."
One more try, with a different knife. She followed the same routine, this time with a knife that came out clean. Not wanting to freak Jane out, she hooked the knife onto the inside of her jacket so that it would be hidden from view.
"Yo, hey, Daria! Come look at this."
"Let me put on my unhappy face first."
Daria went looking for Jane and found her in the bedroom. She looked with her usual stare at what caught her friend's attention, then raised her hand to her ear, like a phone, and said, "Yes, Silent Hill Insane Asylum? I'd like to make a reservation."
