There are moments when the universe is balanced on the point of a pin and a lifetime can be lived in a second. This is one of those moments. I haven't explicitly identified the speaker, but if you've finished SH4 you'll know who's talking, and under what circumstances.

This was written all at once, late at night, in roughly the amount of time it took to type. I don't own anybody here, or Silent Hill 4, or any of it, and I'm sure as hell not making any money off of it.


I could do it. Right now.

I could put my hands around your thick, bullish, worthless neck and feel your blood thumping past my fingertips. Feel your breath on my throat, the warmth of your skin. I could press so lightly just there, knock you out in a second or two. Or, I could squeeze, just a little at first, then more and more until my fingers met and interlocked and all you were was a heavy lump of blood and bone in my hands.

I could do that. What's there to stop me?

Only the glaring reality that it's more than you deserve. Nothing to do about that, though.

Hah. What, you didn't think I had it in me, right? Meek, quiet little me, who prefers to interface with his world through the lens of a camera, rather than get his hands dirty with direct contact. No, not me. Never.

Important things are worth the personal touch. You may be worthless -- or that's what I've been telling myself -- but you're far from unimportant. You changed my life forever. Mine, and nineteen others. They're going to love getting their hands on you when I'm done with you. Can't wait, I bet.

You know, in a different life, you might have been a pretty decent guy. That little boy seemed so promising...the sort of kid that I'd hope I'd have someday with the right girl, if I were lucky enough to find her. He could have been so much more. Maybe. Some wounds run too deep.

Guess yours was one of those.

What happened to him? Is he still in there somewhere? Or did you burn him out of your soul a long time ago?

Whatever. It doesn't matter.

Strange thing, this. I've spent most of today thinking of ways to do this. How it would happen, where, what I'd use. I had it all planned...even after it didn't seem possible any more. And now all of those plans have gone out the window. It's just you and me and this old axe, and the axe is no longer needed.

Don't you see? It's the only way I can show you what you've meant to me...by feeling your life slip away in my fingers, bit by bit, not at the edge of a blade or on the business end of a bullet. By sensing that vital flow, that rage in the void, that ghost in your grinding machine of solitude pass between my thumbs as it ebbs into the continuum. So familiar.

Killing you kills this part of me. I'll never be able to be this again.

And that's why I have to do this by hand. Would you have it any other way?