SILENT HILL- DO YOU DISMEMBER ME?
Estelle came back to the world with a jolt, waking abruptly as she heard a faint sound. She looked upwards from her place on the floor and saw a
large overhead fan. It was set to the highest speed, the blades whirling around and catching the egde of a flystrip with every rotation.
The sound she'd heard had been a dead fly hitting the cement floor as the fan blades continued to dislodge more of them from the flystrip.
Estelle sat hugging her knees, cringing in disgust as she watched. Ten flies had piled where they all fell, and yet the strip was still
so covered that not a speck of the amber substance holding them could be seen. "I don't want to be here.." Estelle's thoughts escaped
her mouth without permission, as she made herself look around. She didn't want to see what else was here, waiting for her.
The town could call horrible images from your own mind, she'd seen it happen so many times before. Men and women alike
had been driven utterly insane right before her eyes, Silent HIll had that kind of power. And here she was, daring it to drive her insane as well.
But there was a morbid curiousity stirring inside her, as she stood and realized that the monster she'd fought with only moments ago had
mysteriously vanished. A large pool of blood stained the floor quite near to where she'd landed, which suggested that it was dead
or too wounded to continue the fight. Either way, it didn't seem that Estelle had to worry about it for the time being. She began to explore
the expansive kitchen, recalling the actual memories the town had created this place from. The Happy Burger kitchen had always been
so dirty, the restaurant had been shut down for a good reason. People had gotten sick, a lot of people. Estelle had come into the kitchen
with an order one day, and seen with her own eyes what was going on. The health inspectors would give the restaurant a passable review,
in exchange for some kind of drug. Estelle had been watching from just inside the kitchen door, as one of the cooks shook hands with
a helth inspector. In the cook's hand had been a small plastic baggie filled with white powder, and the insepctor had left with it in his
jacket pocket. God, if anyone had ever seen her there she would have died. Her own family would have murdered her, or turned her
into one of those ghastly monsters. The kitchen she now found herself in was an almost chidish characiture of the Happy Burger.
The flystrips which had always been full of dead flies, had never been quite so overrun with them as the ones hanging from
the ceiling. But to her they'd seemed about that disgusting and so the town had made them as such.
The ceiling itself was stained as it had been in reality, plaugued by patches of brown from the grease filled air. Nothing had ever felt right
in that kitchen. In fact the air had been so saturated with filth that anything she might have forgotten or left there overnight would be covered
by a thin film the next day. Estelle wandered through the kitchen as she dabbled in nostalgia, her mind still grounded enough
to keep the handgun out in front of her and reload the magazine.
As she continued exploring, a dull thumping noise began to repeat itself over and over.
Estelle thought the rhythm sounded like one of the ceiling fans must be catching on something, the timing was about right for that.
As if to prove her wrong, the ceiling fans slowed, and then stopped. Estelle gazed upwards and watched as they ceased to turn, frowning
at the rusty metal grates surrounding them. They had broken down all the time, and Estelle always thought about how someone could get their
hand caught while working on one and be unable to pull it out because of the grating. The thumping persisted, and with no other idea what could be
making it, Estelle became very nervous. She stalked through the kitchen, stepping slowly with her back foot ready to push off if she needed
to move quickly. Something about the fans was bothering her, something she couldn't quite remember. A chill had rushed through her when she
thought about someone's hand getting caught it them. But that had never happened, so why was it bothering her? Estelle crept around the
large oven, pointing the handgun ahead of her as she rounded the corner. Her eyes went wide, the thumping noise no longer a mystery.
Someone had been injured, very badly. But not because of the fans. She stood gawking at an electric slicer used for cutting meats and cheeses
into thin sheets. The part that held whatever you were slicing slid back and forth on a rail, passing by a large circular blade that did the cutting.
Hard as she tried, she couldn't remember his name. But there had been a young man working here as a dishwasher for a short time. A real loser, and lazy. He was also an alcoholic, and had come into work one day drunk off his ass, staring at hers whenever she came in as
he worked in the back room. He had been so focused on her, that his hand had gotten dangerously close to the slicer's blade and he hadn't even noticed.
Not until he'd lost two of his fingers.
Estelle moved closer to the slicer, as the sliding mechanism hit something again and again, thumping away until she hit the switch that turned the machine off.
It wasn't much of a surprise to her when she saw a human hand there, severed at the wrist and caught between the slicer's moving parts. On the index finger,
was a simple gold band. Nothing seemed unusual about it at all, there was no inscription or markings, just a plain gold ring. Estelle started to reach for it,
and stopped herself halfway. In this place, nothing barred the machine from turning itself right back on again, power or no power. She set her handgun
down on the counter beside her, catching a whiff of the old smell this part of the kitchen always held. The steel double sinks attached to the counter
were used for preparing all the seafood, which caused the area to smell like fish. Estelle went around to the back of the slicer, unscrewing the knob that held
it's two parts together. After a few turns the knob came completely off, so that she could detach the entire sliding half of the machine. She set it down on the
floor, and carefully reached her hand towards the gold ring. As she'd suspected, the machine promptly hummed to life once more, the blade turning at top speed.
She easily reached the hand and removed the ring from it's finger, but had she not dismantled the slicer first, the slide rail would have pinned her
wrist against the blade. As soon as Estelle got the ring free, an anguished male cry burst out from behind her. She put the ring in her pocket and
whirled around, scooping the handgun off the counter as she turned. Nothing was there, no monsters came to attack her. The scent of fish had
mysteriously vanished, replaced by the smell of decaying flesh. It seemed to grow darker, as if the sun had gone down. Except that there were no windows
in that part of the kitchen, and the lights hadn't been on to begin with. The darkness became almost pitch black, and although her mind's eye could
still see perfectly, Estelle knew she was supossed to use the flashlight now. It was annoying, not needing the flashlight to see and having to carry it anyway.
The town had such strict criteria, no shortcuts or ways around the metaphorical items and their purposes. Estelle shined the flashlight ahead of her,
her other hand holding the gun just behind it. Another random noise, this time it sounded like liquid dripping. As she investigated, she moved past the
back room and began checking doors. The bathrooms were empty, but in the storeroom she found some supplies. Two health drinks and some
more bullets set high up on a shelf. She also found a small pack of cinnamon gum, which she ignored at first. But her eyes saw an aura around the
object, almost a halo of sorts, which meant it was one of the obscure things she would need later. With no other rooms to explore, Estelle found herself
back in the kitchen, sipping a health drink and looking around for some sort of clue. She tried to follow the dripping sound, but it came from everywhere.
It didn't get louder no matter where she went, in fact it almost seemed as if it were following her. With that thought, Estelle stopped in her tracks.
Staying as still as she could, she turned her head to look behind her. The cat was back, not as wounded as she'd thought. It was crawling along the ceiling,
and she realized it had most likely been stalking her ever since the lights had gone out. A steady drip of blood fell from it's side where she'd shot it,
the sound finally growing closer as the cat moved. It pounced from it's perch on the ceiling, slahing with it's claws as Estelle sidestepped.
She let it go past her, and ran after it as she fired the handgun repeatedly. Slugs bounced off concrete as she chased it, sinking three more bullets into
the agile monster. A final bullet caught it's leg, sending the cat sliding across the floor before it crashed against the wall and lay still. Estelle wasn't
about to assume it was dead this time, and kicked it viciously. She didn't stop until the cat was in pieces. Estelle stood over the bloody remians,
breathing heavily as she resumed her exploring. Still there seemed to be no way to exit out of the kitchen, the sudden attack had changed nothing.
Or had it? Estelle thought about how she never noticed the cat because it had been on the ceiling all this time, perhaps she just needed to think
three dimensionally. Estelle shined the flashlight up to the ceiling, finding that she had been right. Almost directly above where she'd obtained
the ring, a ragged hole had appeared in the ceiling. She climbed on top of the metal counter and found that she could just barely reach the passage,
hauling herself into it with a series of efforted grunts. Now that she was actually inside it, the passage was obviously a vent shaft. She crawled along
it, stopping to notice that the fans up here were still turning. Next to one of them, a copper looking ring lay on the floor.
The shaft was quite small, and even with her petite size it's walls brushed against her body. Estelle crept to the ring on her hands and knees,
the unguarded fan blades grazing her hair as she picked it up. It really was copper, oddly enough. As soon as she took it,
the fan in front of her grinded to a halt. She could hear another in the distance, and it occured to her that there were more rings to find.
She followed the sound to the next fan, where a silver ring had been stuck in the wall. As soon as she'd taken it, that fan had stopped also.
Estelle repeated this process twice more, finding a bronze and platinum ring near two more fans.
She looked at her new jewelry collection, almost admiringly as some of them were quite pretty. The last fan slowed to a stop, as the
ground immediately fell out from under her. Estelle landed unhurt, sighing as she got to her feet. "Oh shit, here we go." She cursed in dismay,
shining the flashlight up at the hold she'd fallen through. It was much like the one she crawled up into the shaft with, a ragged hole in the concrete of the celiling.
Only this one seemed to be pulsating madly, like a quivering mouth that had spat her out. Estelle saw that the ceiling and walls and floor were no longer just
concrete. Disturbing lines of red swam through them like an Etch A Sketch gone berserk. Obviously, the otherworld had snuck up and taken over.
She had been dropped in what seemed to be a sealed off portion of the kitchen, no bigger than the average closet. In fact the only real thing around
was a large reach-in cooler. The rest of the room was insane with animate red lines and dripping metal backrounds, as if everything were made from rusted
chain link fences. In fact the effect of it all was so disorientating that she almost didn't see the long thin pole laying against a wall opposite the
cooler. Estelle examined it, taking hold as she tried to pull it free. It hadn't been a pole at all, Estelle realized as it came loose. She frowned,
inspecting the spot on the floor she'd pulled it from. It was dirt. For some odd reason, amongst all the metal link and concrete someone had actually
taken a mound of dirt from somewhere, and buried the head of a large mallet underneath. "Hmm.." Estelle mused, smiling just a little as she swung
it around. The weight was easy to handle, it would make a handy weapon if she lost her gun somehow. "Now about this.." She muttered, turning her
attention back to the cooler. She couldn't see inside at all, the dirty glass was too dark. Something was defientely in there though.
Estelle's eyes searched around until she spotted a large switch. She flipped it, watching as flourescent lights blinked inside the cooler, then stayed steady.
And the next thing she knew, Estelle couldn't stop screaming.
Estelle came back to the world with a jolt, waking abruptly as she heard a faint sound. She looked upwards from her place on the floor and saw a
large overhead fan. It was set to the highest speed, the blades whirling around and catching the egde of a flystrip with every rotation.
The sound she'd heard had been a dead fly hitting the cement floor as the fan blades continued to dislodge more of them from the flystrip.
Estelle sat hugging her knees, cringing in disgust as she watched. Ten flies had piled where they all fell, and yet the strip was still
so covered that not a speck of the amber substance holding them could be seen. "I don't want to be here.." Estelle's thoughts escaped
her mouth without permission, as she made herself look around. She didn't want to see what else was here, waiting for her.
The town could call horrible images from your own mind, she'd seen it happen so many times before. Men and women alike
had been driven utterly insane right before her eyes, Silent HIll had that kind of power. And here she was, daring it to drive her insane as well.
But there was a morbid curiousity stirring inside her, as she stood and realized that the monster she'd fought with only moments ago had
mysteriously vanished. A large pool of blood stained the floor quite near to where she'd landed, which suggested that it was dead
or too wounded to continue the fight. Either way, it didn't seem that Estelle had to worry about it for the time being. She began to explore
the expansive kitchen, recalling the actual memories the town had created this place from. The Happy Burger kitchen had always been
so dirty, the restaurant had been shut down for a good reason. People had gotten sick, a lot of people. Estelle had come into the kitchen
with an order one day, and seen with her own eyes what was going on. The health inspectors would give the restaurant a passable review,
in exchange for some kind of drug. Estelle had been watching from just inside the kitchen door, as one of the cooks shook hands with
a helth inspector. In the cook's hand had been a small plastic baggie filled with white powder, and the insepctor had left with it in his
jacket pocket. God, if anyone had ever seen her there she would have died. Her own family would have murdered her, or turned her
into one of those ghastly monsters. The kitchen she now found herself in was an almost chidish characiture of the Happy Burger.
The flystrips which had always been full of dead flies, had never been quite so overrun with them as the ones hanging from
the ceiling. But to her they'd seemed about that disgusting and so the town had made them as such.
The ceiling itself was stained as it had been in reality, plaugued by patches of brown from the grease filled air. Nothing had ever felt right
in that kitchen. In fact the air had been so saturated with filth that anything she might have forgotten or left there overnight would be covered
by a thin film the next day. Estelle wandered through the kitchen as she dabbled in nostalgia, her mind still grounded enough
to keep the handgun out in front of her and reload the magazine.
As she continued exploring, a dull thumping noise began to repeat itself over and over.
Estelle thought the rhythm sounded like one of the ceiling fans must be catching on something, the timing was about right for that.
As if to prove her wrong, the ceiling fans slowed, and then stopped. Estelle gazed upwards and watched as they ceased to turn, frowning
at the rusty metal grates surrounding them. They had broken down all the time, and Estelle always thought about how someone could get their
hand caught while working on one and be unable to pull it out because of the grating. The thumping persisted, and with no other idea what could be
making it, Estelle became very nervous. She stalked through the kitchen, stepping slowly with her back foot ready to push off if she needed
to move quickly. Something about the fans was bothering her, something she couldn't quite remember. A chill had rushed through her when she
thought about someone's hand getting caught it them. But that had never happened, so why was it bothering her? Estelle crept around the
large oven, pointing the handgun ahead of her as she rounded the corner. Her eyes went wide, the thumping noise no longer a mystery.
Someone had been injured, very badly. But not because of the fans. She stood gawking at an electric slicer used for cutting meats and cheeses
into thin sheets. The part that held whatever you were slicing slid back and forth on a rail, passing by a large circular blade that did the cutting.
Hard as she tried, she couldn't remember his name. But there had been a young man working here as a dishwasher for a short time. A real loser, and lazy. He was also an alcoholic, and had come into work one day drunk off his ass, staring at hers whenever she came in as
he worked in the back room. He had been so focused on her, that his hand had gotten dangerously close to the slicer's blade and he hadn't even noticed.
Not until he'd lost two of his fingers.
Estelle moved closer to the slicer, as the sliding mechanism hit something again and again, thumping away until she hit the switch that turned the machine off.
It wasn't much of a surprise to her when she saw a human hand there, severed at the wrist and caught between the slicer's moving parts. On the index finger,
was a simple gold band. Nothing seemed unusual about it at all, there was no inscription or markings, just a plain gold ring. Estelle started to reach for it,
and stopped herself halfway. In this place, nothing barred the machine from turning itself right back on again, power or no power. She set her handgun
down on the counter beside her, catching a whiff of the old smell this part of the kitchen always held. The steel double sinks attached to the counter
were used for preparing all the seafood, which caused the area to smell like fish. Estelle went around to the back of the slicer, unscrewing the knob that held
it's two parts together. After a few turns the knob came completely off, so that she could detach the entire sliding half of the machine. She set it down on the
floor, and carefully reached her hand towards the gold ring. As she'd suspected, the machine promptly hummed to life once more, the blade turning at top speed.
She easily reached the hand and removed the ring from it's finger, but had she not dismantled the slicer first, the slide rail would have pinned her
wrist against the blade. As soon as Estelle got the ring free, an anguished male cry burst out from behind her. She put the ring in her pocket and
whirled around, scooping the handgun off the counter as she turned. Nothing was there, no monsters came to attack her. The scent of fish had
mysteriously vanished, replaced by the smell of decaying flesh. It seemed to grow darker, as if the sun had gone down. Except that there were no windows
in that part of the kitchen, and the lights hadn't been on to begin with. The darkness became almost pitch black, and although her mind's eye could
still see perfectly, Estelle knew she was supossed to use the flashlight now. It was annoying, not needing the flashlight to see and having to carry it anyway.
The town had such strict criteria, no shortcuts or ways around the metaphorical items and their purposes. Estelle shined the flashlight ahead of her,
her other hand holding the gun just behind it. Another random noise, this time it sounded like liquid dripping. As she investigated, she moved past the
back room and began checking doors. The bathrooms were empty, but in the storeroom she found some supplies. Two health drinks and some
more bullets set high up on a shelf. She also found a small pack of cinnamon gum, which she ignored at first. But her eyes saw an aura around the
object, almost a halo of sorts, which meant it was one of the obscure things she would need later. With no other rooms to explore, Estelle found herself
back in the kitchen, sipping a health drink and looking around for some sort of clue. She tried to follow the dripping sound, but it came from everywhere.
It didn't get louder no matter where she went, in fact it almost seemed as if it were following her. With that thought, Estelle stopped in her tracks.
Staying as still as she could, she turned her head to look behind her. The cat was back, not as wounded as she'd thought. It was crawling along the ceiling,
and she realized it had most likely been stalking her ever since the lights had gone out. A steady drip of blood fell from it's side where she'd shot it,
the sound finally growing closer as the cat moved. It pounced from it's perch on the ceiling, slahing with it's claws as Estelle sidestepped.
She let it go past her, and ran after it as she fired the handgun repeatedly. Slugs bounced off concrete as she chased it, sinking three more bullets into
the agile monster. A final bullet caught it's leg, sending the cat sliding across the floor before it crashed against the wall and lay still. Estelle wasn't
about to assume it was dead this time, and kicked it viciously. She didn't stop until the cat was in pieces. Estelle stood over the bloody remians,
breathing heavily as she resumed her exploring. Still there seemed to be no way to exit out of the kitchen, the sudden attack had changed nothing.
Or had it? Estelle thought about how she never noticed the cat because it had been on the ceiling all this time, perhaps she just needed to think
three dimensionally. Estelle shined the flashlight up to the ceiling, finding that she had been right. Almost directly above where she'd obtained
the ring, a ragged hole had appeared in the ceiling. She climbed on top of the metal counter and found that she could just barely reach the passage,
hauling herself into it with a series of efforted grunts. Now that she was actually inside it, the passage was obviously a vent shaft. She crawled along
it, stopping to notice that the fans up here were still turning. Next to one of them, a copper looking ring lay on the floor.
The shaft was quite small, and even with her petite size it's walls brushed against her body. Estelle crept to the ring on her hands and knees,
the unguarded fan blades grazing her hair as she picked it up. It really was copper, oddly enough. As soon as she took it,
the fan in front of her grinded to a halt. She could hear another in the distance, and it occured to her that there were more rings to find.
She followed the sound to the next fan, where a silver ring had been stuck in the wall. As soon as she'd taken it, that fan had stopped also.
Estelle repeated this process twice more, finding a bronze and platinum ring near two more fans.
She looked at her new jewelry collection, almost admiringly as some of them were quite pretty. The last fan slowed to a stop, as the
ground immediately fell out from under her. Estelle landed unhurt, sighing as she got to her feet. "Oh shit, here we go." She cursed in dismay,
shining the flashlight up at the hold she'd fallen through. It was much like the one she crawled up into the shaft with, a ragged hole in the concrete of the celiling.
Only this one seemed to be pulsating madly, like a quivering mouth that had spat her out. Estelle saw that the ceiling and walls and floor were no longer just
concrete. Disturbing lines of red swam through them like an Etch A Sketch gone berserk. Obviously, the otherworld had snuck up and taken over.
She had been dropped in what seemed to be a sealed off portion of the kitchen, no bigger than the average closet. In fact the only real thing around
was a large reach-in cooler. The rest of the room was insane with animate red lines and dripping metal backrounds, as if everything were made from rusted
chain link fences. In fact the effect of it all was so disorientating that she almost didn't see the long thin pole laying against a wall opposite the
cooler. Estelle examined it, taking hold as she tried to pull it free. It hadn't been a pole at all, Estelle realized as it came loose. She frowned,
inspecting the spot on the floor she'd pulled it from. It was dirt. For some odd reason, amongst all the metal link and concrete someone had actually
taken a mound of dirt from somewhere, and buried the head of a large mallet underneath. "Hmm.." Estelle mused, smiling just a little as she swung
it around. The weight was easy to handle, it would make a handy weapon if she lost her gun somehow. "Now about this.." She muttered, turning her
attention back to the cooler. She couldn't see inside at all, the dirty glass was too dark. Something was defientely in there though.
Estelle's eyes searched around until she spotted a large switch. She flipped it, watching as flourescent lights blinked inside the cooler, then stayed steady.
And the next thing she knew, Estelle couldn't stop screaming.