SILENT HILL- Victim
The fog grew thicker and swirled around Estelle's ankles as she knelt down.
In her mind's eye she saw a lone piece of paper fluttering in the breeze, and knew it was to be her map.
A small stone kept it from being blown away, and Estelle knew that it could not have just simply
happened to fall or roll onto the map in such a way. He had placed it there just for her, the one
who governed the otherworld and all it's sinful workings. "Oh, oh God.." Estelle
whimpered as she picked up the map and unfolded it, seeing a basic design of a building circled in red.
It was a restaurant located on the other side of the town from where she now was, but Estelle knew
the spirits would see that it wouldn't take long. "Oh please, please God don't make
me go there.." Estelle begged softly, as she stared at the Super Burger's rough outline on the map.
The wind howled past her well trained ears, as if God was whispering an answer for her.
'Fine. Go back. Leave him here to die and go back to that filthy awful hospital, run away and
never leave this place as long as you live.' No such words were spoken, not even in her head,
and yet the message was painfully clear. The path was supossed to be hard, supossed to make you face
all the things you try to forget, that's the point. And that was why she'd never made it before, because
it had been hard and she had been scared to death. But now that Noah was here and would be waiting for her,
since she'd met him she'd felt...And all at once Estelle's own fears became a haevy burden that needed to be thrown away.
She knew that she loved him, she didn't doubt or question it. She just hadn't wanted to believe it, to realize it
and be given hope by what it could mean. For so long she'd been there in the hospital, afraid to try again, afraid
to leave the town. Afraid that she wasn't a good person, that she was evil like her family and deserved to be trapped
in that horrible place forever. Now she had to level with herself, she had to let everything she felt and hoped for
be exposed. The only way she would ever see Noah again was to beat this place once and for all, and it terrified her.
"Please God.." Estelle prayed softly as she began walking. Her christian faith a secret no more. She'd always believed
in it, and hidden it from her family out of fear. The things they would of done to her if they'd found out,
the torture and eventual death they would have brought upon her. She would be one of those monsters stumbling about,
hopelessly lost and tormented for eternity. "But haven't I been lost and in torment all this time?" Estelle
asked herself, feeling a chill at her own words. The fog was so heavy now it would have blinded her if she'd seen
the town with her eyes. Yet with her gift, she could see everything clearly, every turn and corner was bright as day.
'You'll be blind if you leave, you know.' A voice in her head told her. It was a young voice, the voice of the child
she used to be. Estelle shut it out, walking faster and then jogging as if she could outrun her own thoughts.
She saw the restaurant loom in the distance, the squared Super Burger sign swinging back and forth as the wind pushed it.
Estelle stopped outside the door, feeling suddenly like she was going to vomit and did. Another fear of her childhood,
she hated to be sick. It was the most awful feeling in the world to her. She choked and gasped as bile spilled on the sidewalk,
staining the cement with greens and yellows. It was already starting, the town was making her come to terms with herself
one phobia at a time. "Ahhh!" Estelle cried out, as the last drops fell and she could breath again.
She took big slow puffs, falling to her knees. "I won't give up.." Her raspy voice whispered through the naseua,
as she stood upright and threw the door in front of her open. She could almost feel him, his strength and courage
bleeding into her. She didn't just love him, she adored him. The kind of person he was, his kindness and stubborness.
His steady refusal to stop or turn back, and his love for someone like her that he shouldn't even trust the way he did.
He shouldn't love her, he should have ignored and hated her like the others all had. As Estelle entered the restaurant,
she made up her mind to think of Noah, and try to discover why he cared for her so. Thinking about him made her
less afraid, almost calm, and she would rather feel the confusion her love for him brought than the fear she would have
to endure now that she was at last going to leave Silent Hill.
Inside the Super Burger there was a slimy kind of grit on everything. The tables and booths which she'd known so well.
On a wall to the right someone had traced their finger or some kind of thin tool through the dirt.
'YOU KNOW YOU CAN NEVER ESCAPE US
WHY NOT JUST GIVE UP NOW BEFORE YOU DIE?'
Estelle knew it was just him again, as surely as he'd placed the map under a rock for her to find he'd also written that
on the wall in an attempt to scare her off. She kept her thoughts on Noah as she explored around the restaurant. Everything
looked so dirty and old. When she had turned fourteen, her first job had been here. Her parents had insisted that she
start contributing to the family, taking her paychecks week by week. Since she was still underage they had come to collect them
for her, giving her only a few dollars to spend and keeping the rest for what they only ever called 'God's share'.
"Oh God!" Estelle cried, stopping in place as she held her head in her hands. She had the worst headache, remembering
all those times pained her head so badly that she had often passed out from it before she'd simply blocked them
all from her mind. 'Don't stop, 'Stelle.' Noah's voice spoke to her from somewhere. He'd never used those exact words
in her prescense, that she could remember anyways. It was just her mind, dredging up her thoughts of him to keep her from
turning around and running right back to Brookhaven Hospital again. "Noah.." she whispered, and took a deep breath.
Suddenly she imagined him next to her, standing in that casual way even though his clothes were torn and his wounds
still bled. "I have to keep going, I need to see him." Noah's voice echoed in her mind. Just as Noah had been searching
for James, she now sought to be reunited with him. Was that all it was? The need to see someone that was so strong
fear ceased to be of any consequence? Estelle wasn't sure about that, but accepted it temporarily as she passed
the Super Burger's front counter. Behind it was a flashlight, shining a single beam of light into the blackness and
seeming so small that she could have put it in her shirt pocket. Except that she was stil wearing the same black
woolen sweater, devoid of any pockets above the waist. She hesitated, her hand freezing inches from the flashlight.
Estelle knew quite well that as soon as she picked it up something would happen, either a monster would appear or
something unimaginable and frightening would occur. Realistically, she didn't need the flashlight to see anything.
But she was on her path now, and something like this was a trigger that would bring her to the next step. Without it
she would never get out of here.
Estelle took out the handgun, feeling it's heavy weight in her palm as she reached for the flashlight. She snatched
it quickly, turning behind her and shining it as a heavy thud shook the floor. Someone was there, she could hear the
light clicking of heels on the floor as the shadowy form hobbled closer. Estelle knew right away who it was.
After she'd been working here for a little while, and sometimes a wrinkled old lady would come in with her son.
She'd been very sick, and had with her at all times an oxygen tank that made a slow hissing noise as she sucked
life from it's depths. Estelle heard the same sound now, as the figure was now close enough to see in detail.
The old lady was missing her skin, bleeding from her exposed muscle tissue at the arms and legs as she came closer.
The wheels on her tank squeaked away as she walked, one wrinkled and decrepit hand dragging the tank behind her as
her other hand was clenched angrily. She had been so mean to her, Estelle remembered. She's yelled at her, saying that
when she was a young girl she'd worked in many a restaurant and had never spilled coffee on a poor old lady's lap
or dropped a plate with someone's dinner on it. She'd thrown a handful of change at her, insisting that such a clumsy and stupid
little brat didn't deserve anymore than that for such awful service. As Estelle remembered pt, the old lady coming
towards her moved her hand, throwing an overly large quarter at her. Estelle shrieked and ducked behind the counter,
as the oversized coin flew by and left a crater in the wall before clunking to the floor beside her.
The old lady moaned, her oxygen tank hissing as she advanced on her prey. Estelle shot up from behind the counter,
firing the gun three times and gasping as the bullets bounced harmlessly away from her attacker. More moaning,
as Estelle could here the old woman's tank wheels squeaking. In a moment she would come around the counter and kill her,
and Noah would be leaving here alone, if at all. Estelle stood up again, this time she aimed for the tank.
Four bullets sank into the metal casing, as another huge quarter was flung at her head. She ducked down behind the counter
again, screaming as an explosion rocked the building. A round shape hit the wall with a splat, falling to the floor and rolling
to where Estelle knelt behind the counter. The old lady's face leered at her, saying nothing as her nostrils still sniffed at the
plastic tubing from the oxygen tank. Estelle screamed again, rage rushing ahead of her fear as she punched the head.
Blood spurted from the old lady's face, as Estelle stood up and kicked it away, screaming with contempt for the old woman
as her head sailed through the air and broke open agianst a table. There was a metallic clank, and Estelle saw a small piece
of something protruding from the old lady's braincase. Estelle almost vomited again, as she approached the head and
plucked a metal key from it. The first step was cleared now, as Estelle breathed a sigh of relief.
Normal human eyes could not have spotted it, but as she looked around at the two other doors leading away
from the dining room she could somehow feel which one the key belonged to. She moved hastily to it,
inserting the key and sighing as it clicked and the door opened.
"Noah.." She whispered again, as she stepped through the doorway. If she had run, or even walked just a little faster
into the next room she would have died. The door had opened into nothingness, and not in the sense that nothing was there.
Because Estelle realized quite quickly that something was indeed there, in that very room with her. Harmonic gibberish
echoed through the blackness as Estelle took a cautious step forward, it sounded like a low hum mixed with faint whispers.
Estelle pulled her top up over her mouth and nose, protecting herself from the nasueating smell. Even with her mind's eye,
she saw nothing but dark. About two feet in front of her, the floor had simply ceased to exist. Beyond the edge of the dirty
tiles it seemed almost as if she was inside some gigantic hole, a hole with no beginning or end. "This is some dead end.."
Estelle observed, looking around her as she wondered how she could have chose the wrong door. The key had fit..
Suddenly Estelle saw that she hadn't met a dead end at all, although turning back and trying another door would have been
the saner choice. As she happened to look down around her feet, she saw something move sideways from below.
Walking up the wall, if there actually was a wall here. More likely crawling up it, and in bending down to investigate
she saw something odd. Indeed there was a sort of invisible wall, and as Estelle brushed her hand along it, she could feel concrete.
It was bumpy and rough in a most familiar way, and of course she knew why. It was why the town had led her here, after all.
"If I'm wrong.." Estelle mused, frightened to try it even though she knew it would work. She turned the flashlight off and
slowly reached out towards the wall, moving slowly to keep from alerting whatever she had seen down there.
Just as she'd thought, her body was drawn to the wall . She was now on her hands and knees facing downwards, crawling
along without the slightest noise. She could feel the atmosphere changing, as the wall she moved along slowly became
the floor. Sirens wailed faintly in the unseen distance, as Estelle kept thinking that Noah was right beside her,
reminding her not to give up as her lips silently chanted the mantra. She couldn't let herself give up now,
no matter what she found. Her attempt at stealth failed, as whatever she'd seen in the darkness earlier
was now follwing her, and catching up quickly. As she rose to her knees with the handgun drawn, the wall did
finally become the floor and a sudden rush of inertia made her stomach turn. Estelle turned the flashlight back on,
gaping in horror as she saw the monster bearing down on her. It scampered wildly on furry paws, hissing as it
neared her. Estelle fought to keep from turning away in disgust, the monster looked like..
No It WAS a cat whose fur had once been a steely grey-blue.
It's coat now dripped red and smelled terrible, as wet cats always do.
When she was not quite ten, her father had lost his temper over her not tending to the cat she'd found and
brought home. He yelled at her for when she'd had no time or just forgotten to feed it before school,
he'd cussed over her not always being there when the litter box needed to be changed, and he'd gone on and on
about how irresponsible his little girl was. And when she'd come home from school the next day, her cat was waiting for
her on the front steps. Drowned in the lake by her father, a small paper bag pulled over it's poor head.
And there it had stayed, as the creature yowled and leapt at her. The bag had since bonded with the cat's body,
now seeming more like bread dough and forming to the cat's sideways head. It jittered and swung crazily as Estelle
brought the gun across her attacker's side, falling to the floor with it as she pulled the trigger twice.
The fog grew thicker and swirled around Estelle's ankles as she knelt down.
In her mind's eye she saw a lone piece of paper fluttering in the breeze, and knew it was to be her map.
A small stone kept it from being blown away, and Estelle knew that it could not have just simply
happened to fall or roll onto the map in such a way. He had placed it there just for her, the one
who governed the otherworld and all it's sinful workings. "Oh, oh God.." Estelle
whimpered as she picked up the map and unfolded it, seeing a basic design of a building circled in red.
It was a restaurant located on the other side of the town from where she now was, but Estelle knew
the spirits would see that it wouldn't take long. "Oh please, please God don't make
me go there.." Estelle begged softly, as she stared at the Super Burger's rough outline on the map.
The wind howled past her well trained ears, as if God was whispering an answer for her.
'Fine. Go back. Leave him here to die and go back to that filthy awful hospital, run away and
never leave this place as long as you live.' No such words were spoken, not even in her head,
and yet the message was painfully clear. The path was supossed to be hard, supossed to make you face
all the things you try to forget, that's the point. And that was why she'd never made it before, because
it had been hard and she had been scared to death. But now that Noah was here and would be waiting for her,
since she'd met him she'd felt...And all at once Estelle's own fears became a haevy burden that needed to be thrown away.
She knew that she loved him, she didn't doubt or question it. She just hadn't wanted to believe it, to realize it
and be given hope by what it could mean. For so long she'd been there in the hospital, afraid to try again, afraid
to leave the town. Afraid that she wasn't a good person, that she was evil like her family and deserved to be trapped
in that horrible place forever. Now she had to level with herself, she had to let everything she felt and hoped for
be exposed. The only way she would ever see Noah again was to beat this place once and for all, and it terrified her.
"Please God.." Estelle prayed softly as she began walking. Her christian faith a secret no more. She'd always believed
in it, and hidden it from her family out of fear. The things they would of done to her if they'd found out,
the torture and eventual death they would have brought upon her. She would be one of those monsters stumbling about,
hopelessly lost and tormented for eternity. "But haven't I been lost and in torment all this time?" Estelle
asked herself, feeling a chill at her own words. The fog was so heavy now it would have blinded her if she'd seen
the town with her eyes. Yet with her gift, she could see everything clearly, every turn and corner was bright as day.
'You'll be blind if you leave, you know.' A voice in her head told her. It was a young voice, the voice of the child
she used to be. Estelle shut it out, walking faster and then jogging as if she could outrun her own thoughts.
She saw the restaurant loom in the distance, the squared Super Burger sign swinging back and forth as the wind pushed it.
Estelle stopped outside the door, feeling suddenly like she was going to vomit and did. Another fear of her childhood,
she hated to be sick. It was the most awful feeling in the world to her. She choked and gasped as bile spilled on the sidewalk,
staining the cement with greens and yellows. It was already starting, the town was making her come to terms with herself
one phobia at a time. "Ahhh!" Estelle cried out, as the last drops fell and she could breath again.
She took big slow puffs, falling to her knees. "I won't give up.." Her raspy voice whispered through the naseua,
as she stood upright and threw the door in front of her open. She could almost feel him, his strength and courage
bleeding into her. She didn't just love him, she adored him. The kind of person he was, his kindness and stubborness.
His steady refusal to stop or turn back, and his love for someone like her that he shouldn't even trust the way he did.
He shouldn't love her, he should have ignored and hated her like the others all had. As Estelle entered the restaurant,
she made up her mind to think of Noah, and try to discover why he cared for her so. Thinking about him made her
less afraid, almost calm, and she would rather feel the confusion her love for him brought than the fear she would have
to endure now that she was at last going to leave Silent Hill.
Inside the Super Burger there was a slimy kind of grit on everything. The tables and booths which she'd known so well.
On a wall to the right someone had traced their finger or some kind of thin tool through the dirt.
'YOU KNOW YOU CAN NEVER ESCAPE US
WHY NOT JUST GIVE UP NOW BEFORE YOU DIE?'
Estelle knew it was just him again, as surely as he'd placed the map under a rock for her to find he'd also written that
on the wall in an attempt to scare her off. She kept her thoughts on Noah as she explored around the restaurant. Everything
looked so dirty and old. When she had turned fourteen, her first job had been here. Her parents had insisted that she
start contributing to the family, taking her paychecks week by week. Since she was still underage they had come to collect them
for her, giving her only a few dollars to spend and keeping the rest for what they only ever called 'God's share'.
"Oh God!" Estelle cried, stopping in place as she held her head in her hands. She had the worst headache, remembering
all those times pained her head so badly that she had often passed out from it before she'd simply blocked them
all from her mind. 'Don't stop, 'Stelle.' Noah's voice spoke to her from somewhere. He'd never used those exact words
in her prescense, that she could remember anyways. It was just her mind, dredging up her thoughts of him to keep her from
turning around and running right back to Brookhaven Hospital again. "Noah.." she whispered, and took a deep breath.
Suddenly she imagined him next to her, standing in that casual way even though his clothes were torn and his wounds
still bled. "I have to keep going, I need to see him." Noah's voice echoed in her mind. Just as Noah had been searching
for James, she now sought to be reunited with him. Was that all it was? The need to see someone that was so strong
fear ceased to be of any consequence? Estelle wasn't sure about that, but accepted it temporarily as she passed
the Super Burger's front counter. Behind it was a flashlight, shining a single beam of light into the blackness and
seeming so small that she could have put it in her shirt pocket. Except that she was stil wearing the same black
woolen sweater, devoid of any pockets above the waist. She hesitated, her hand freezing inches from the flashlight.
Estelle knew quite well that as soon as she picked it up something would happen, either a monster would appear or
something unimaginable and frightening would occur. Realistically, she didn't need the flashlight to see anything.
But she was on her path now, and something like this was a trigger that would bring her to the next step. Without it
she would never get out of here.
Estelle took out the handgun, feeling it's heavy weight in her palm as she reached for the flashlight. She snatched
it quickly, turning behind her and shining it as a heavy thud shook the floor. Someone was there, she could hear the
light clicking of heels on the floor as the shadowy form hobbled closer. Estelle knew right away who it was.
After she'd been working here for a little while, and sometimes a wrinkled old lady would come in with her son.
She'd been very sick, and had with her at all times an oxygen tank that made a slow hissing noise as she sucked
life from it's depths. Estelle heard the same sound now, as the figure was now close enough to see in detail.
The old lady was missing her skin, bleeding from her exposed muscle tissue at the arms and legs as she came closer.
The wheels on her tank squeaked away as she walked, one wrinkled and decrepit hand dragging the tank behind her as
her other hand was clenched angrily. She had been so mean to her, Estelle remembered. She's yelled at her, saying that
when she was a young girl she'd worked in many a restaurant and had never spilled coffee on a poor old lady's lap
or dropped a plate with someone's dinner on it. She'd thrown a handful of change at her, insisting that such a clumsy and stupid
little brat didn't deserve anymore than that for such awful service. As Estelle remembered pt, the old lady coming
towards her moved her hand, throwing an overly large quarter at her. Estelle shrieked and ducked behind the counter,
as the oversized coin flew by and left a crater in the wall before clunking to the floor beside her.
The old lady moaned, her oxygen tank hissing as she advanced on her prey. Estelle shot up from behind the counter,
firing the gun three times and gasping as the bullets bounced harmlessly away from her attacker. More moaning,
as Estelle could here the old woman's tank wheels squeaking. In a moment she would come around the counter and kill her,
and Noah would be leaving here alone, if at all. Estelle stood up again, this time she aimed for the tank.
Four bullets sank into the metal casing, as another huge quarter was flung at her head. She ducked down behind the counter
again, screaming as an explosion rocked the building. A round shape hit the wall with a splat, falling to the floor and rolling
to where Estelle knelt behind the counter. The old lady's face leered at her, saying nothing as her nostrils still sniffed at the
plastic tubing from the oxygen tank. Estelle screamed again, rage rushing ahead of her fear as she punched the head.
Blood spurted from the old lady's face, as Estelle stood up and kicked it away, screaming with contempt for the old woman
as her head sailed through the air and broke open agianst a table. There was a metallic clank, and Estelle saw a small piece
of something protruding from the old lady's braincase. Estelle almost vomited again, as she approached the head and
plucked a metal key from it. The first step was cleared now, as Estelle breathed a sigh of relief.
Normal human eyes could not have spotted it, but as she looked around at the two other doors leading away
from the dining room she could somehow feel which one the key belonged to. She moved hastily to it,
inserting the key and sighing as it clicked and the door opened.
"Noah.." She whispered again, as she stepped through the doorway. If she had run, or even walked just a little faster
into the next room she would have died. The door had opened into nothingness, and not in the sense that nothing was there.
Because Estelle realized quite quickly that something was indeed there, in that very room with her. Harmonic gibberish
echoed through the blackness as Estelle took a cautious step forward, it sounded like a low hum mixed with faint whispers.
Estelle pulled her top up over her mouth and nose, protecting herself from the nasueating smell. Even with her mind's eye,
she saw nothing but dark. About two feet in front of her, the floor had simply ceased to exist. Beyond the edge of the dirty
tiles it seemed almost as if she was inside some gigantic hole, a hole with no beginning or end. "This is some dead end.."
Estelle observed, looking around her as she wondered how she could have chose the wrong door. The key had fit..
Suddenly Estelle saw that she hadn't met a dead end at all, although turning back and trying another door would have been
the saner choice. As she happened to look down around her feet, she saw something move sideways from below.
Walking up the wall, if there actually was a wall here. More likely crawling up it, and in bending down to investigate
she saw something odd. Indeed there was a sort of invisible wall, and as Estelle brushed her hand along it, she could feel concrete.
It was bumpy and rough in a most familiar way, and of course she knew why. It was why the town had led her here, after all.
"If I'm wrong.." Estelle mused, frightened to try it even though she knew it would work. She turned the flashlight off and
slowly reached out towards the wall, moving slowly to keep from alerting whatever she had seen down there.
Just as she'd thought, her body was drawn to the wall . She was now on her hands and knees facing downwards, crawling
along without the slightest noise. She could feel the atmosphere changing, as the wall she moved along slowly became
the floor. Sirens wailed faintly in the unseen distance, as Estelle kept thinking that Noah was right beside her,
reminding her not to give up as her lips silently chanted the mantra. She couldn't let herself give up now,
no matter what she found. Her attempt at stealth failed, as whatever she'd seen in the darkness earlier
was now follwing her, and catching up quickly. As she rose to her knees with the handgun drawn, the wall did
finally become the floor and a sudden rush of inertia made her stomach turn. Estelle turned the flashlight back on,
gaping in horror as she saw the monster bearing down on her. It scampered wildly on furry paws, hissing as it
neared her. Estelle fought to keep from turning away in disgust, the monster looked like..
No It WAS a cat whose fur had once been a steely grey-blue.
It's coat now dripped red and smelled terrible, as wet cats always do.
When she was not quite ten, her father had lost his temper over her not tending to the cat she'd found and
brought home. He yelled at her for when she'd had no time or just forgotten to feed it before school,
he'd cussed over her not always being there when the litter box needed to be changed, and he'd gone on and on
about how irresponsible his little girl was. And when she'd come home from school the next day, her cat was waiting for
her on the front steps. Drowned in the lake by her father, a small paper bag pulled over it's poor head.
And there it had stayed, as the creature yowled and leapt at her. The bag had since bonded with the cat's body,
now seeming more like bread dough and forming to the cat's sideways head. It jittered and swung crazily as Estelle
brought the gun across her attacker's side, falling to the floor with it as she pulled the trigger twice.