Mona finds a hint as she explores the maze.
The sword was working remarkably well. Though she'd only encountered one creature so far – a small, wailing bit of cinder that crawled towards her on all fours – she'd been able to dispatch it in only three blows from the weapon and a kick to the head. It gave her some small measure of hope that maybe she could make it through this labyrinth and out the other side, momentarily ignoring what might be waiting for her if she did.
Even so, the path out was far from clear. The winding, random layout the maze took her down seemed to have no real plan to it, sending her off in multiple different directions that shouldn't be physically possible within the architecture of the building she came from or even in relation to each other. More than once, she'd come to a fork in the road, one path immediately leading her down a series of turns that would logically have her moving up the side she chose not to traverse, yet it only seemed to open up to new paths along the way.
And then there were the doors. They started off sparse with one or two every hundred or so feet (her estimate). As she continued forward, they became more and more numerous, some walls having upwards of ten in a row placed frame-to-frame against one another. Most were jammed or locked and wouldn't budge but others were a bit more charitable, at least in the sense that they opened. She didn't really want to talk about some of the things that she saw behind them.
But if she wanted to advance, she didn't have much choice in the matter but to keep trying the doors. That's what it was telling her to do, at least. Anything could be behind them whether that be some new horror or a valuable item she'd need later to finally escape from this place.
That said, the rooms still weren't pleasant. Slamming one shut as blood spurted from hundreds of tiny scrapes across her body, she ran with all her strength back down the way she'd come. She had initially ducked inside to hide from what sounded to be another creature pursuing her, regretting that decision almost immediately after the expansive darkness inside seemed to come to life just to menace her. It was as if millions of tiny hands began to grope at every inch of her body, raking like broken glass across exposed skin and ripping into her clothes.
What that may have actually been was impossible to discern given she didn't have a chance to look at it before the attack started. It didn't help that her jacket had to be left behind earlier, phone now shoved between her boobs and held in place by her bra and sheer force of will, an awkward and precarious situation to say the least. The more pronounced back and forth shifting of the camera light that this created while moving was both disorienting and annoying on top of all that.
Wiping a trickle of blood out of her eye, she clasped a hand to her mouth as she heard the unmistakable sound of her father moving towards her. She'd been lucky not to run into him up until now and was lucky still to not be boxed into a corner, though "lucky" was the furthest thing from her mind with him just around the corner. Right now, all she could think about was escape.
This meant yet another door. She didn't care. Back to the scraping hands, spiked walls coming to crush her, or even an army of monsters; so long as it got her away from him, that would be an improvement. She tried the first door to her right, turning the knob in every direction and pulling and pushing with all her might.
She tried one next to it after that with similar results. There had to be some escape, though. She couldn't be expected to fight him. She just had to run. Find somewhere to hide. Hope she wasn't found this time. But where was she going to hide?
Her salvation (if it could be called that) appeared as she was sprinting back down the path, a new door having appeared along the left wall. She thought that maybe she had simply missed it during either trip down this space before considering all of these doors looked to be the same, but she quickly pushed that thought aside once she noticed it did not, in fact, look like the others. Not only was this illuminated by some force, it was also twice the size of the rest of them in both height and width. In contrast to the dark wood of the others, this one was a gray metal, too.
Mona didn't have time to stop and catalog all the possible reasons for these differences with the sounds of stomping and metal protrusions gaining on her every second. Without even a second of hesitation, she gripped the knob and pushed her way through, shutting the thing behind her.
She expected to find nothing but further torment behind it, but that didn't happen this time. Paradoxically, that almost made things worse. Instead, she was simply greeted by another domestic scene, this one being a living room of what may or may not have been her childhood home. Memories were so jumbled and confusing at this point she could barely even tell who she was anymore.
Brown carpet, a brown couch, and a brown recliner all surrounding a brown wooden cabinet in which a clunky brown TV sat. She didn't remember her family liking so many brown things. Then again, maybe it was just a trick of the eyes in all this darkness or some fault with her recollection. There could be any number of explanations for why something was the way it was in Silent Hill. Trying to figure out why would just hurt your head.
At least for now, nothing seemed to be trying to kill her. There was no ominous images in the television screen, no multiple entrances to the room leading to pitch black death, and not even a vaguely unsettling element like a decapitated doll or burned out photos on the wall. This really did just seem to be a place to rest.
She took a few cautious steps further into the room, scanning the darkness as best she could for signs of danger. Again, she didn't see anything to worry about. Nothing was jumping out at her or trying to break down the door or materialize out of the shadows to grab at her. Frankly, she was starting to hope something like that would just hurry up and happen, the anticipation and worry that a completely safe room brought preventing her from relaxing even the slightest bit.
Anxiety or not, she'd been running and fearful for quite a while now. Exhaustion set in with this minor lull in the danger leading her to flop down onto the couch, placing the plastic sword along the cushions within reach. It wasn't a particularly comfortable seat but she wasn't feeling that picky at the moment.
With a tremendous sigh, her muscles finally unclenched a bit. That was when the pain started to set in. All the cuts that accumulated on her body stung worse than ever, the tiredness in the rest of her only making it all the more intense. If not for the ever-present sense of dread that hung over everything, she might have passed out then and there.
Taking her phone off her body, she shined the light around the room to try and get a clearer picture of her surroundings. This more thorough look at the place revealed it to be more a cheap facsimile of a living room than the real deal, the walls and ceiling the same stone as the rest of the maze. The furniture was also the only thing contained within the space, no other accessories or decorations to be found.
But then something caught her eye, the phone's light glinting off it for a split second as she passed over. With a great effort, she managed to pull herself up off the couch and approach the television cabinet. Inspecting the area around the TV, she found another of the little glass symbols like the one she'd picked up before.
Another backhanded gift from the town. It should bring some sense of security knowing that she could survive at least one encounter here, though that security was immediately undercut by the fact she'd have to die to take advantage of the charm. And as bad as dying was in general, the last thing she ever wanted to die to was her father.
She suppressed the urge to vomit as thoughts of what might happen to her body after that moment began to seep into her mind, pocketing the item. The moment she did, the TV sprung to life, Mona falling backwards from the shock.
Predictably, it displayed only static for the first few seconds, the image slowly turning to a picture of a darkened room complete with some kind of raised pedestal in the center. The picture was from a slightly raised angle, barely enough to see along the top of the pedestal and show a sort of indent or slot in the middle.
While it may be a leap of logic, her instinct was that she'd have to sheath the sword she'd been using as a weapon inside it like the Arthurian legend. That made some degree of sense (as much as anything made sense in this place), though she did have to question why this myth in particular was being referenced. Sure, she had empathized with the desire to realize she was secretly someone important and to be whisked away to a world of fantasy never to return to her horrible life ever again, but she had multiple pieces of pop culture to turn to for that. Why this one specifically?
In the time it took to contemplate this, something terrible had happened. Turning back to the couch, she could only look in open-mouthed horror at what was before her – nothing. That is to say, the sword was no longer where she'd left it, disappeared into thin air.
Where the hell could it have gone?
Call this a late Christmas gift. Mona's gift is that she gets to live for a little longer.
I wonder where the sword might have gone. Hopefully she'll recover it sooner rather than later. That's all we've got for now, though. Thanks for reading. Share if you're enjoying. Always remember to look before you enter a room.