The story continues.

Mona awoke on a bench somewhere in the fog-covered streets of Silent Hill. Her hands immediately felt herself all over, memories of her immolation, asphyxiation, and numerous other injuries flooding back like the remnants of a nightmare she'd been shocked out of. Yet somehow she found herself to be perfectly fine.

While one's first instinct would be to assume they simply fell asleep somewhere and dreamed the events that led here, Mona had learned well not to fall into that kind of thinking by now. Besides, her empty gun and fog-less glasses were proof enough that whatever had happened to her was real. Real enough to have killed her, at least.

How she managed to survive was a mystery up until she felt something sharp in her pocket. Pulling out three pieces of the small trinket she'd picked up earlier, she noted how the symbol on its front had vanished. Though she couldn't even begin to explain it, she had to assume that it was somehow related to her miraculous escape.

Dropping the spent object's bits next to her, she sighed and placed her head in her hands. What was she going to do now? Would she have to go back to the hospital and fight that thing again? Where even was the hospital? Nothing in this area looked familiar. Even if she could find her way back, was she meant to get into a fist fight with a monster?

It was almost enough to make her cry, and if she wasn't afraid that might attract more of those creatures towards her, she just might have right there in the street. Whether she cried or not, though, she was no closer to figuring out why she was here or what this place wanted from her.

As she sat in despair, she caught a glimpse of something next to her feet. Initially pulling her legs up onto the bench in a panic thinking it to be a monster, closer examination revealed it was just a small brown package. Giving it a poke, it didn't seem to be immediately harmful. Still, that raised the question of where it had come from. Judging by the markings on the side facing up, it traveled through the postage system, but what kind of mailman would deliver to a place like this?

Putting aside this question for later, she placed the box next to her on the bench, slowly untying some twine around the outside. Tearing through the paper, she opened the box itself and found a collection of oddly familiar objects inside. She didn't particularly want to touch any of them given the thick layer of soot and char on their outsides, but she observed what looked like a rabbit doll, an empty picture frame, and a pair of essential oil bottles. Tansy and pennyroyal is what they appeared to be, but it was hard to decipher with the labels so burned and scarred.

While trying to decipher the meaning behind this box of junk, shaking it revealed a dirtied, folded piece of paper at the bottom. Doing her best to avoid touching as much of the burned things as possible, she lifted the paper out of the box with her fingertips and shook it open, knocking off as much of the blackened chips that had fallen onto it as possible.

Scrawled in bright red letters were the words, "It's all your fault." She didn't have the faintest idea as to what this could mean yet believed it immediately. If she tried to question that belief, she'd simply find herself facing a wall of her own creation that asserted without a doubt that she was the one at fault for all of this. Did that mean she deserved to be in this place? Maybe it would have been best if that thing had killed her before, though she doubted the town would have let her go that easily.

Tossing the note back into the box, she left it be and decided to take a walk. She seemed to be on Bradbury Street for what good knowing the names of places would do her. Walking east, she saw a variety of storefronts, windows fogged over and obscuring what might be inside. She didn't bother to try the doors, assuming they were either broken or that whatever was inside was probably not something she wanted to meet.

Next to one of these buildings was where she found another box of five bullets. Rather than relief, all she felt at this was more despair and exhaustion. If she was being armed, it probably meant something would be coming to kill her. Giving her just five bullets to deal with it was a cruel joke at best. She'd still take them, obviously, but the prospect of escaping Silent Hill seemed more and more far fetched the longer it toyed with her.

When it came time to turn north on Ellroy Street, Mona simply took a seat in front of a garage nearby. Hugging her knees to her chest, she took another moment to collect herself. Hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and fear weighed on her like a suit made of lead. The basic instinct for survival was quickly fading inside her, so oppressive was the atmosphere in this place both figuratively and literally.

What was the point of continuing on? To fight more monsters? To be assigned more blame for things she didn't remember or understand? To have more people talk to her without making sense? To die and come back just to do it all over again? If that's all she had to look forward to, maybe the only thing she needed to find was one bullet after all.

Like she'd thought before, though, Silent Hill wouldn't let her go that easily. She had to play its game whether she liked it or not. With no other options, she forced herself back to her feet to continue her journey with no destination in mind.

It's stressful when you have to face everything you've wanted to forget for so long. Even more stressful when you still don't want to let yourself remember it in the first place.

Limited saves are terrible in a video game, but they work pretty well for our purposes here. If you're a developer, though, please don't ever do this to your players. We hate you.

Thanks for reading. Share if you're enjoying. Always remember to save often.