Hello, hello! –Waves frantically- If you're here, reading this, than I truly thank you for taking your time to do so. This is my first Silent Hill fanfiction, and I have tried terribly hard on it…if you talk to anyone that knows me, you'll find that I'm quite obsessed with the game series. I hope to do it justice, and possibly not disgrace it to any extent. Well, enough with my ramblings…enjoy! And don't forget to review, peasie!

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Couldn't move…

Couldn't think…

His limbs were rigid, like wood—no, like stone…stubborn, stubborn stone. They refused, and he pushed desperately in useless attempt, but alas he was glued to the filthy spot in which he lay. Fluttering eyes longed to stay awake, and although the heavy air weighed upon their wavering lids, they could not stand to close…closing would mean sleeping. And sleeping was not good. Not in a place like this, not ever.

His upper body began to move on its own, to its own dazed rhythm, to the beat of the room pounding, not like foreign drums from far away, but like an excited and dancing heart. Hearts were indeed alive…this room was alive.

The walls were of plaster, but the outside looked like a soft mold of flesh where beyond the surface long lines of veins trailed from floor to ceiling, pumping, beating, and causing the walls to bleed in delicate trickles. They were like little red rivers coursing down their path casually, some dripping from the ceiling and landing softly on the tip of his nose. It was warm, almost hot, so much that he had to jerk back from avoiding the falling drops.

He could hear the loud thumping of the room, every single pounding beat—all around him, the soft area vibrated with life. The pads on the walls were made to look comforting, welcoming, safe. Each crack looked as if they were about to sprout spiny arms, grasp him with curling fingernails, and pry him slowly from his roost on the floor to drag him away in the void he knew existed. There was an existence unknown, he knew…he had said so before, over and over, babbling on nonsense and yet was this image in front of him "nonsense"? Was it truly reality, or a twisted way of showing that his sanity was already being destroyed? Hadn't it been destroyed, years ago, when they had sent him to this horrid place? It was not very unlike his dreams. But this was not a dream…he had woken up to this.

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The day had actually started out very nice, really. All of the people of Brookhaven Hospital were given the opportunity to sleep in late, which they quite enjoyed, and afterwards most trudged to the local kitchen to receive their usual breakfast of mush, and to their utter surprise, a real piece of fruit. Or…it looked like a fruit—no one could identify what the substance was, but most foods that are of a red and orange color are usually classified as fruits. Raephin had taken the risk of tasting it, and to his shock it actually didn't taste so bad…maybe a little mold here and there, but altogether the juices were enough to add some taste to the meal. He'd wondered if the cooks were in an exceptionally good mood today.

After the morning meal, they'd been rushed back to their rooms, being told that a "technical difficulty" had occurred. He was still somewhat sleepy, stumbling along with the others and keeping an eye out for his roommate. The other had been sitting with him at the table, but had vanished when he had turned his head to figure out what the uproar in the cells had been about.

Number Fifty-Two—the male who shared his room—was a nice and quiet boy who hardly ever spoke a word, unless he was asked. The boy was young, too, only around eighteen when he had come to the hospital…he hadn't been there long. Maybe a few months at the most. His eyes were a dull gray, and the black of his messily cut hair was fading, as if from lack of sunlight—which they most obviously did lack. When he'd first came to the Hospital, he had stuttered a lot…always talking, always mumbling something or another, which Raephin truly never took the effort to understand. The boy was crazy, he figured. Crazy like the rest of 'em.

What caught Raephin's eye at first glance, though, was Fifty-Two's right stub of an arm when he had come silently through the large double doors of Brookhaven. He was a kind fellow that forced a shaky smile, but he never talked about his arm directly to anyone. Once Raephin had asked, and the boy had just stared at him for the longest moment, and then began to babble on about some sort of nook in the padded room, which of course was not there.

"Where could Stub-boy be…?" Raephin's mutter was veiled by the loud shouts of the other residents of the hospital, and for this he was grateful. He was tired of the guards and their droning complains about 'not running' and 'staying silent' when they were done with their food. He didn't want to hear it anymore. He felt like he was going insane, just being here. See, if one weren't truly screwy before he was sent to this place, he sure as hell would end up becoming it if he ever left.

Same old room, same old rusty padded walls, and same old collection of plastic forks, which he stashed in the corner of the room secretly. He tossed yet another into the messily built pile, collapsing beside it to count absent-mindedly. It was fairly odd that he had a strange yet addictive attraction to forks, but what other obsession could one possibly have in a place like this? He literally had to sneak them off the table at mealtimes—although he doubted they would actually care if he did. They were plastic, after all, for the "safety of the mentally unstable patients".

A few moments later, after repeatedly counting the prongs—which he could have sworn was four a day ago but had narrowed down to three…or was it two—Fifty-Two had rushed in with wide eyes, door slamming behind and giving Raephin little time to notice if a guard had escorted his friend or not.

"Ooh, the soup! The rolled-back eyes, massed hair…lips ajar, floor dirty, wet, choking words…fog, lots of fog, and guards too…!"

Raephin interrupted immediately, having been lost from the very start. "Fifty-Two, slow down…slow down and repeat what you're trying to say." He blinked, knowing the boy probably would just say the same words over, only slower.

Fifty-Two took a deep breath. "Seventeen, I…he…they…technical difficulties!"

"Yeah, so what? They told us that this morning…and where were you?" Raephin was trying to put all of this together. It was like a very wet, soggy puzzle that wouldn't stick together.

The black-haired boy scrunched his face up in thought. "'Member Mr. Sullivan…? Killed two kids, nut, said he didn't do it neither!"

Raephin had to sit back and look up in thought for a minute or two. The man with the long hair, dirty…he supposed he could. He sure was on the news a lot, though. "Yeah, go on…what about him?"

"Well," Fifty-Two yawned and scratched at the bandages clinging to his stub. "There's a rumor going around that he snuck a soup spoon from the table some few days ago, and this morning he had stabbed himself in the neck with it…think they called it the carotid artery, they said he hit…got stuck two inches in when they found him. They heard it from T-Toluca Prison—where he's at, y'know—and so they're goin' 'round to check the cells for utensils right now."

Raephin's—or Number Seventeen's— eyes widened as he scooted over protectively in front of his collection. "Right now?" Eyes darted this way and that, trying to find somewhere…anywhere to hide his precious possessions! They couldn't take his forks…it was what kept him occupied throughout the day. The guards didn't give the patients any books or newspapers or anything of the sort, thinking that perhaps it would feed their ever-growing hunger for freedom. What was he going to do?

A question popped back to him, one that had slipped from his mind when Fifty-Two had told of the problem that morning. "So, where were you? You never told me…they didn't let anyone stay back to watch it on the guard's television, did they?"

"Not anyone, no…" the boy jerked his head down, refusing to meet his roommate's gaze. "T-The doctor…he called me in for examination, that's all. That's all, yes…'s all…"

Raephin's eyes narrowed suspiciously. The doctors usually called in for checkups in the afternoon, but…what else could the boy have been doing? Such a day was getting weirder by the second…why, the town was filled with an overly large amount of fog from what he'd seen when stealing a glance out of one of the cafeteria windows. The place did have its share of mist, but never so much as he'd seen that morning. Walking out, one could probably choke on the stuff if they had the chance.

He settled himself comfortably on the filthy ground in front of his forks, making sure they were hidden from view, and began fiddling with his pant leg thoughtfully. "So that Fourteen guy…committed ten murders, didn't he? Was always whining on about his mother, too. Some of the people here really annoy me, y'know? Like that old guy who used to tell of the one really, really old legend…do you remember that one, Fifty-Two? I told it to you when you settled in for a few weeks, here. I heard it myself from that old resident when I first came. Something about a little girl the hospital experimented on long time ago…she got burned, I think, and was kept down in the basement with a really hot nurse. That's just what I heard, though. Bizarre words bounce all over the place here, though, so you really don't know what to believe."

There was a long pause. A wavering silence seemed to stretch throughout the whole hospital, and perhaps beyond. It was as if the whole world had gone mute for the moment. "…Fifty-Two?"

Raephin looked up. His roommate was nowhere to be seen.