Silent Hill: Tears of Memory

"Broken Shards" by: Dillon Sharp

I do not own Silent Hill. Konami does.

A 19 year old looking girl drives her midnight blue jeep 95 miles an hour down the highway. She has short, shaggy black hair, with dyed red tips. Her eyes are a deep green, with a look of panic, and worry in them. Her name is Mika Obscura.

I can't even remember what sleep feels like. It had been four days since I had enjoyed the sweet embrace of sleep. I thought to myself as I drove down the highway. It was around 3:33 in the morning, and I had been driving ever since I left my abandoned house. I drove to run, I drove to hide. There were things...Creatures. Nightmares that even a child couldn't believe in. I was attacked in my sleep, awoken by a stirring in the bathroom. I dragged myself out of bed and thought that something was wrong with my Mother and Father. I had been staying in their house for my college summer break, and everything had always been like normal.

Until tonight.

The moment I arrived at my home four days ago, I found that I couldn't sleep. I'd stay awake just staring at myself in the mirror, or writing in my diary about my worries and fears. I wanted to tell my parents, but I was too afraid to say anything. I read somewhere that the longest record for going without sleep was eleven days. After that the people were sent to an insane asylum. The images they saw on that eleventh day drove them to the brink of insanity. That was my worry, and that was my fear.

Tonight, when I crept to the bathroom door. I could hear a child's laughter. Laughter that I had remembered from my time as a little girl. My younger sister laughed like that. My eyes filled with tears as memories of my little sister flooded my mind, and I opened the door with a smile.

The room was completely dark, and the moment I cracked the door open, the laughter subsided. The only thing I could hear coming from the dark room was the sound of my own breathing.

"...Jasmine?" I asked aloud and flicked on the lightswitch.

The thing I saw was something that I couldn't even imagine in my wildest nightmares. My bathroom looked like it had rusted over, there was blood all over the walls, all over the bathtub, the mirror, and hanging from a thick rope in the middle of the room was a child. Or what looked to be a child. Its neck was broken, and twitched back and forth like pressing fast forward while watching someone have a seizure. It had no eyes, and only an open void for a mouth where the bloodcurdling scream echoed from. It's body only resembled the basic shape of a human. It's skin was a dull burned peachy shade of sick. Just looking at it made me want to throw up.

I fell back into the hallway, and backed as far as I could into the wall. My own scream echoed with the creatures, and I cried outloud for my mom and dad. The Hangless stretched it's arms out to me, it's claws that replaced it's fingers reached out wanting to tear me. But it's thick rope held it securely hovering in the middle of the room. And it screamed, and screamed. But there's was nothing it could do. It screamed until it started to puke up it's own guts. Which fell with a splat against my bathroom floor.

I crawled to my parents bedroom, dry heaving along the way. "Mom, Dad! Wake up!" I called out to their bedroom flicking on the light after I pulled myself off of the ground. Their bedroom was empty...The bed was made, and nothing had been disturbed. It's like they had never even lived here.

The screaming was getting louder.

My father always kept a loaded 9mm Beretta handgun in his desk drawer. I prayed that it hadn't dissappeared like my parents. I ran over to his desk by my parents king size bed, and rummaged through the mahagony drawer. Underneath a copy of War and Peace was the beacon of hope I was looking for. A sleek, black 9mm handgun. My father was a bit of a redneck, and always wanted my to be the son he never had by taking me camping, and teaching me about weapons. About the only thing I couldn't take apart, clean, put back together, and reload was a rocket launcher.

About the time, I heard a snap, and a thick thud. The sound of a rope breaking...Then the wet sound of crawling. I backed up against the wall, as the noise got closer to the bedroom door. I readied the handgun, the iron sight pointing directly in the middle of the doorway. When the noise got just outside the door...It stopped. My finger was itching to pull the trigger at the abomination that left me alone, away from the only people that cared for me.

Very quickly I saw it, but it did not crawl in on the floor. It crawled in on the ceiling. It's claws digging into the plaster, pulling itself to me, and defying gravity. I was terrified, so when I fired my handgun, the first two shots missed. It screamed at me, opening it's void of a mouth, and leapt towards me. My third shot rang out, and found it's mark. Its head exploded in a storm of black blood. Its momentum kept it falling, and it landed on me, blood getting all over my white tanktop, black tight jeans, and a little on my black bra strap. I screamed and pushed the dead Hangless off of me. I rolled over and started to vomit. It's smell was sickening.

I adjusted my mirror, checking my blindspot. There had been no cars on the road all night. After the incident in my house, I had fled my neighborhood. Creatures were in each house, and the roads had been blocked off. This was the only car running in the neighborhood. It didn't even need a key to start. I had tried calling the police, but no one would answer. It was like I had a dead signal. I didn't know what was going on, but I was terrified.

I didn't know where I was driving, and I didn't care. I just had to find...someone. I had to find a beacon of hope. What if this was like all the movies, that some aliens have landed and abducted everyone but a certain few. Or even a weird case of zombies. Somehow I don't think George Romero could write something like this...

I was heading into a tunnel, I was still the only car on the road. And the darkness in the tunnel was so thick that my car headlights had dissappeared completely. I could barely make out the yellow line on the road. A responsible driver would have stopped to check her car, but I will not stop in this insane asylum, to get killed by some nightmare monster.

I continued to drive for thirty minutes or so, I hadn't hit anything, and I even tested out to see if I was really in a tunnel. I turned the will sharply, and the yellow line on the road never moved. It stayed where it was. I let off the gas, and let go of the steering wheel. Only to find that the car was drving itself. Where was it taking me...? I sat back, and prepared for my long journey...

I tried to dose off, but sleep would not come to me. A lurking fear came up in my chest. The terrifying thought of insanity after 11 days did not do well to calm me. Why couldn't I just fall asl----

An explosion of sound and pain rocked my senses. I could feel blood dripping down my forehead. Everything had happened so fast. The noise stopped, but the pain stayed. My vision was gone, and everything hurt.

"Please...Please just let me sleep." I begged outloud, but I couldn't even hear my voice.

When I found the strength to crawl out of my wrecked jeep, I crawled out the driver side window, glass getting caught in my hair, and cutting at my waist. I stood up and wiped myself off. I was at the end of the dark tunnel, a fence was blocking the way to the other side. Luckily there was a side maintanence door. How could a fence stop a jeep? I thought to myself. I walked through the door, stumbling a little bit, and wiping blood off of my forehead. There was a reststop a few yards ahead of me, and two cars were parked beside it. One of them was a van, the other was a shitty looking car with an open door. A huge sign pointed away from the reststop down a flight of stairs. It read "Toluca Lake"

Toluca Lake...? That name sounded familiar. My grandmother used to speak of a town called Silent Hill that she was afraid of as a child. And Toluca Lake was a well known location in it. I never knew it really existed...She told me stories of a cult, and how it used to be a tourist town. But my memories of her were fragmented...She died when I was eight years old...

Before I would head to Toluca Lake, before I would look for someone else besides me. I was going to wash my face in the reststop. Maybe i'm sleeping and this is just a horrible nightmare.

If only that were true.

I actually feel happy with this chapter. Thank you for the review "black cat"