SILENT HILL- Obsession

Noah woke up in a stone cold sweat, gasping heavily for air.

The nightmare had been fierce and more horrid than usual.

"They're getting worse every damn night..." Noah whispered

hoarsely to himself, letting his head rest against the pillow.

It was no good, there'd be no getting back to sleep for him tonight.

He shifted his gaze to the right, squinting at the luminescent hands of the small clock

atop the dresser. It was almost 5 am, on his one day off from work the whole week.

And he couldn't even sleep, all because of that damned ghost town.

Noah slowly rose himself out of bed as a vampire would from it's coffin, moving

as if invisble strings slowly pulled his body upright. His lightweight form

slinked through the darkness, discovering the switch in the bathroom and flicking

it irritably with his index finger. Noah shut his eyes as the light came on instantly,

the harsh brightness threatening to blind him for good. The next half an hour consisted

of Noah's normal wake up ritual, splashing cold water on his face and slapping it hard

across the cheeks while muttering things only he understood. His thoughts burned along

the highways of his mind, driving him mad. Or more so, he'd never been right in the head.

He'd broken two of his foster mother's ribs at the age of eighteen, spending years in prison

prior to that and never regretting a single day. She was a whore, a filthy little whore.

Every night she'd come home with a different man, doing different dirty things with each one.

She would always come to his room, after he had been subjected to hearing the cries and moans

of her sinfuls acts. She would come and ask him the same questions every night, was he hungry,

was school fun, did he see his friends today. He'd never answered a one of them, always

turning away from her as he lay in his bed and feigned sleep. He didn't need her coddling.

When he was hungry he'd buy food, or steal it. He never enjoyed school, and had no friends.

The studies interested him enough, but the other children were all so ignorant and below him.

They used to hit him, in the beginning. Corner him in the locker room or sit around him

during lunch and tease him. He tolerated it until his freshman year, when a particularly

unnecesary one of the arrogant jock types had dropped his lunch tray to the floor.

He'd thrown the poor idiot a marvelous beating then, slamming his head into the table and

stabbing him through the eye with a fork. Off to juvenile prison he'd gone after that,

all manner of psychiatrists and baffoons calling themselves doctors trying to figure him.

Trying to make him say why he'd done such a ghastly thing. And he'd told them right and proper

over and over, that he simply put the oversized gorilla in his place. They all disagreeed with him

of course, making all sorts of theories and having all kinds of ideas about him. But Noah knew,

for no one ever so much as called him a name ever again. And that was how this wicked world

was survived, by taking all you need and toppling those who try to climb over you. It was at that

time that his foster mother had come to see him in the prison, in tears and whining like a stuck

pig all about how disaponited she was and what had she done wrong and every other damn thing.

He distinctly remembered laughing out loud once she'd finished, standing up and leaving the

visiting room without so much as a glance back. He wasn't terribly bothered by prison,

once he'd asserted to all the killers and rapists and so forth that he was not to be trifled with

it was rather like what he'd wished school would be. Peaceful, plenty of time to read and study

various things of interest. Then came that horrid woman who called him her son, paying his

way out for him as if she was dong him some great service. But he didn't really want to leave,

and he knew that he'd be put back into her care. He wasn't yet eighteen however and couldn't

legally be allowed on his own, so away he went. He applied himself to the loathsome task of staying

with her until his eighteenth birthday, striking off on his own that very night. She had tried to

keep him there, using words and tears to try and appeal to him. Two of her ribs were broken when

he'd pushed her aside, walking out the door without even thinking about how badly she'd been hurt.

She never called the police however, or they never came for him at the very least. And some part

of his heart had held the slightest bit of tenderness for that. That tenderness took root,

as his independant life went on. It spread throught his body like a plague, infecting him.

Every blessed day it poisoned him more and more until at last he realized the truth,

that he was indeed sick. Mentally and emotionally, and he needed help.

Unfortunately he couldn't afford such help by normal means, having a single job that

underpaid him for work that insulted his intelligence constantly. Therefore he sought

to help himself, reading all he could find about mental condtions and what caused them,

how doctors went about curing them. He was in the library every second he was not at work,

desperately searching for an answer. Noah gave a goulish grin to the mirror, turning from

it and leaving the bathroom. In the dawn's waking light he found his way to the pantry easily,

taking a bottle of wild turkey from the liquor cabinet as he sat down in his favorite chair.

It pointed towards the living room window, allowing him to watch the gorgeous sunrise in all

it's spendor. As his lips drank from the bottle, he watched that pretty scene and was reminded

of the answer he'd finally found. The day he'd met James Sunderland, the man who'd shown him

how to live. James had always been a troubled, sad wraith of a man. They'd first met while

in the library, hunting for the same book dealing with emotional trauma. It had been out,

long overdue by some imbecile most likely using it as a coaster. He and James had both been

disinheartened at that, until later that evening when Noah had shown up at James' apartment.

The very book they'd both wanted in his hand. He'd told James that he'd stayed late after their

parting at the library and that the book had been dropped off during that time. And that he'd

found James' home on pure coincidence, finding the wallet James had dropped while at the

library. Neither of which had been true of course. He'd taken a peek at the records while

the librarian was using the restroom, found the address of the tardy bookholder and gone

to his home directly, taking the book back and managing to avoid a confrontation or any

serious harm to the slovenly man. Then he'd examined the wallet he'd swiftly

taken from James' back pocket earlier, and proceeded to his house. James never suspected a

thing, believing in fate and luck and all other manner of silliness. It was in that long

night of talking that Noah found out why.

James' wife had died several years ago, and the

poor man was so hoping she'd somehow return. As if by miracle. The entire buisiness made

Noah feel ill, but over time he and James came to rely on each other. They were best friends,

only friends as a matter of fact. Though Noah was only twenty three and James in his thirties,

their intellgence seemed fairly equaled and the things James took an interest in..Talks of

the mind's innermost workings, the ignorance of other people, doctors most especially.

The general sad state of the world and the duty of men like them, to rise above it.

They walked, they talked, they played sports outdoors during day and shared drink and

deep talkings of philosophy at night. Ever so slowly, Noah began to understand that he

was not as superior as he'd thought. That it was better to give than receive, better to help

then to push aside. Noah felt himself becoming almost as a normal, happy man might be.

Every day it grew a bit stronger inside him, every day he spent with James melted a bit more

of the ice surrounding Noah's heart. He would drink too much and talk of things that he

didn't wish too, reveal the secrets of his childhood, the lonliness of being abandoned

and looked down upon. James seemed to identify with it all, understanding and never thinking

badly of Noah's foolish drunken despair and sobbing confessions. When James lost his job,

and later, his apartment. Noah insisted James stay at his, gladly making room for his one

true friend. He'd talked to his employer at the docks and arranged work for James as well.

He was more than suited to the task physically, and he loved the open sea. James almost seemed

to see something in all that vastness that Noah could not. And then, it had all fallen away.

A letter had come for James during his day off, and when Noah had arrived home James was gone.

Gone to a little town called silent hill with no explanation of why, after a week Noah began

to feel peculiar. He stayed up all hours of the night on the internet, learning all he could

about the town. There were rumors of people vanishing, never heard from again. The town

itself had a grisly history of mysterious and gruesome happenings, people going insane

and the like. Noah let his tears fall freely, watching the sun rise higher into the sky through

the window. It had now been a month, but it felt to Noah like James had been gone for years.

Noah drank deeply from the bottle, throwing it at the window suddenly and watching it crash

through. Glass fell everywhere, as Noah staggered to his feet. He made his way slowly to the

computer and went about securing a plane ticket. "By God's own wrath James..." Noah spoke

out to himself, "I won't leave you to that beastly place and have it claim your soul."