Rev4587 – I know! A lot of stories all follow characters that already exist. There's nothing wrong with that, some of the best Silent Hill stories I've read were like that. But you'd think more people would get their own ideas. Plus, when people DO use original characters, they only use monsters and plot devices that are already in the movie or the game. The one exception I've stumbled on is E.P.O's "Cracks in the Ice." Work of genius. As for identifying with Tyler's being gay, well…everyone's a little gay on the inside.

dark crimson dragon mistress – (Hands a handkerchief for uncontrollable drooling.) Umm…I don't want to give too much away, but…whether or not Tyler and Dr. Roger Waters end up together is going to be completely up to you.

And, a note to all readers: You might want to play your favorite boss music while you read this. Me, I wrote this listening to Scarlet's Boss Music.

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Chapter 6 – Life Lessons

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Tyler awoke to the freezing temperatures of the Otherworld. It seemed even colder now than it had last time. He sat up in the bed. He could hear what sounded like some sort of loud fight going on a ways away from where he was now. He looked around and grabbed his glasses. It was still very hard to see, but he also made out the flashlight on his bedside table. How had it gotten there?

Tyler moved to get out of the bed, but bumped his head into something. He turned on the flashlight and looked. It was a skeletal arm. He looked around. The nightmare had developed even more. Now, instead of being limited to the reception area, all of the ice walls were full of blood and male bodies. How was this happening?

Tyler moved out of the bed, not even bothering to look at his medicine. He grabbed his cane, noticing that it, too, was frozen over and was now more of a club than anything else. He walked some, testing his ankle and other injuries. It hurt, but not so much that he couldn't walk. Tyler looked over to the door. The Phantom was in the doorway, but something was different about it. Its face looked thinner and more masculine. The Phantom kept looking at him, and moved away from the door, but this time it lifted its hand up and motioned with it for Tyler to follow.

Tyler slowly walked toward the door and the Phantom vanished. Tyler walked into the hall, and looked to his left. The Phantom was still there, and still ushering Tyler on. Tyler walked towards it, but heard something clattering behind him.

"Shit." He cursed. That sounded like a Shiv.

Tyler turned, and saw not one, but two Shivs running down the hallway. They both stopped short of five feet away from him, and they both screamed.

Tyler cringed, falling to the floor, covering his ears. The loud, disorienting noise was amplified with the fact that there were two of them, and the echoes of the sound bouncing off the icy walls. Tyler did everything in his power to keep his eyes open to watch the monsters. They leapt after him, and both tried to attack. Tyler moved backwards and landed on his ankle. He fell for a split second, but managed to ignore it and get back up. He saw one Shiv was unable to move because the other was in its way, and the second Shiv's fingers were stuck in the floor.

Tyler moved to the creature, bashing it over the head several times with the frozen cane. The thick ice was harder than rock in the cold environment. The creature screeched each time it was hit. The Shiv managed to pull its arms out of the ground, and stumbled back a ways with its hands over his head.

Tyler had an epiphany. He grabbed the Shiv by its upper arms. It made a squawk of confusion. Tyler used it like a battering ram, slamming it into the body of the Shiv behind it. They both screamed, and Tyler stuck them into the wall, using the knives on the other's back. They stuck, and the two Shivs flailed helplessly, screaming loudly. Tyler backed off, covering his ears. The flailing knifed limbs were particularly dangerous, but Tyler managed to duck beneath them and avoid the kicking feet. He grabbed his cane, sacrificing his hearing, and smashed their heads into the wall simultaneously. The first one had been beaten enough that it was enough to kill it, and the second Shiv finally died from being impaled by the other's back.

Tyler took several odd, tottering steps. His balance was shot from the noise of the Shiv's screams and the ringing in his ears was just as annoying. He felt his ears. Thankfully, they weren't bleeding, but everything but the ringing sounded underwater. He knew that every time, sounds had alerted him, and now he couldn't hear anything except that damn pinging/ringing in his ears. He slumped down and sat on the ground, looking right and left. He made absolutely sure that he wasn't snuck up on by more Shivs; or worse, The Beldam.

It took a while, but the ringing in his ears panned out and he tapped his foot on the ground. He could hear the padding of his bare foot and the chattering of his teeth. It was cold, but he was too tired to feel it.

Tyler stood, and took a moment to steady himself. He looked around. The two Shivs were still in the wall, so he had to go the opposite direction. He looked and saw The Phantom standing a good way away from him again; it raised its hand and beckoned him forward once again.

Tyler walked on, but each step forward made The Phantom take another step away from him. Finally, it stopped, but Tyler saw why. They were at the end of the hallway. Tyler got close, and it just faded into some weird evanescent mist. Tyler looked into the room. The icy reception area hadn't changed. Right down to the monsters in it. The Ideal Man was still fighting off The Beldam's massive arms.

"Have they been fighting this whole time…?" Tyler asked himself.

He shouldn't have. The Beldam heard him. Tyler thought as quickly as he could, but The Beldam threw its arm right at him. He backed away into the hall, just missing being squashed like a mosquito. There was no way to get close to this thing. If he still had his gun…

Tyler looked into the room, and saw the desk had been broken into pieces, so the gun had to be over there. He scanned the floor as The Ideal Man kept fighting with The Beldam, who became distracted by the creature trying to attack her again. Yes! There! A small, black piece of metal! The pistol was still there! If he could just get to it! The problem was that it was BEHIND The Beldam, and there was almost no way to get near her let alone by her.

'Come on, Tyler, think! THINK!' He knew he couldn't make any noise because then The Beldam would hear him and…

…

…Hello.

The Beldam obviously couldn't see very well, because otherwise she would have made her attack a bit more accurate. It was just too easy to dodge. So she had to sense him through her hearing.

Tyler threw his cane into the area in between the two monster, and it landed on the floor near the wall. The Beldam moaned and threw its arms onto the floor, attacking the frozen stick. While she did that, Tyler ran behind her as fast as his long, narrow, lanky legs would take him.

"MMH!?"

The Beldam moaned in a questioning manner, and Tyler dove for the gun right as a giant limb swung over him, and crashed into a wall. Skeletal remains went flying from the bodies reaching out. Tyler grabbed the pistol, and aimed it right at The Beldam. He pulled the trigger.

Click.

For a split second, the whole world seemed quiet as Tyler realized that the magazine was out of bullets. "FUCK!!" He screamed; a complete knee-jerk reaction.

Tyler looked around frantically and saw the magazine he'd seen during the last nightmare. As soon as he grabbed it, The Beldam's arm had finally hit him. At first it knocked him breathless, and he was aware of the sensation of air rushing around him. It didn't register in his mind just yet that he was hit and that the massive weight of the arm had sent him flying.

Excruciating pain burst from Tyler's back and chest as he made contact with the icy wall. His body fell a couple of feet onto the ground, and he had to struggle to breathe. It hurt so much to move. It hurt so much to breathe. It almost hurt to think. Lifting the gun up in front of him, Tyler just kept in mind one thing: The Beldam was going to kill him if he didn't do something. He got the pistol to let out its magazine, and saw The Beldam ready itself by bringing its arms away from itself. It was about to clap its hands onto him.

Just as he jammed the mag. into the pistol, the beldam let out a particularly loud moan. He looked up and saw her mover her arms to attack. He scrunched his eyes closed.

'This is it…!!'

Tyler didn't feel anything, but heard screaming. It wasn't his. He knew he didn't have the power to scream at this point.

He looked. The Ideal Man had gotten between him and The Beldam. The Beldam moaned/screamed in rage and used her arms at one time to swat The Ideal Man away and into a wall. She then used her arms to pummel him into the ground. Obviously, her arms were impervious.

She turned back to Tyler and brought both of her arms over her head. Tyler raised the pistol and fired. The noise made his ears ring, the recoil made his arm ache, and something hot came to his face. But The Beldam stopped mid-attack. Tyler fired twice more. They must have hit because The Beldam jerked around fro a moment, and fell to her knees as her arms came crashing down on both sides of Tyler.

Tyler used the very last of his strength to stand and walk closer to the abominable woman. Closer target. Tyler fired away continuously, hitting her each time. The creature let out a horrid deathly moan and seemed to die, but that didn't stop Tyler. He kept firing at it over and over again until the gun just started clicking. Even then, he kept pulling the trigger for about ten seconds before finally becoming too tired to even move his finger any more. He looked around the room. The glass wall was frozen over, a Shiv was in a hall, an Armed Nurse in another, and three Shambles in the last one. They weren't moving. They weren't even breathing, it didn't seem.

Tyler looked at The Beldam's defeated form. "Now I get it…" He said. In a moment of clarity that only came with extreme exhaustion, he understood just what this monster was.

His mother.

Tyler let out a hollow laugh and looked at The Ideal Man's corpse. The thing had sacrificed itself for him. That meant it had to have been some manifestation of his father.

Tyler smiled and fell onto the icy floor. He sat at first, but then fell back onto his back, spread-eagle. He laughed quietly. It was over.

He understood now. His grandmother had always told him that there was one thing he needed to learn that many people didn't. Forgiveness. If you don't forgive people, all of the darkness of what they did will weigh you down. It'll hurt you, and cause you excruciating agony.

Tyler hurt so much, but barely managed to think coherently. 'I get it. Momma…I love you…for giving me life…' His mind was high on pain and exhaustion. Everything just seemed to make sense. It was like a dream where everything made sense no matter how impossible it was.

'I forgive you, momma…I'll never forget the pain you caused me…but I forgive you for everything you did to me…' Tyler cried. He didn't have the strength to sob, but his eyes spilled with tears.

The monsters all made their respective sounds, but sounded strangled. Like they were choking. He heard the tight crack of ice freezing that sounded the way a pulled tooth felt. He heard cracking. He heard breaking. The monsters had frozen and broken…

The Beldam froze and The Ideal Man froze as well, breaking into pieces. Tyler saw everything go completely black, and felt warmth around him. In his blurred vision, the ice seemed to just go away and darkness replaced it. From his position on the floor, he saw The Phantom walking to him.

He smiled fondly at the human figure. It smiled back for the first time. Its body also became ice, slowly, and broke into tiny pieces. He wasn't needed anymore.

Tyler closed his eyes finally. Everything hurt, but the pain was somehow numbing. He fell into deep slumber, allowing the warmth of darkness envelop him.

---A few hours later---

"Gale?" Dr. Waters asked the lab technician. She was a young woman with gothic attire under her lab coat. She smiled when she saw him.

"Hey, Roger! Whatcha need?"

"We found Tyler passed out again. He was covered in blood and what looked like GSR. He had several fractured ribs. It was a miracle none of them punctured his chest." Waters explained. "They were all broken on the side. It was like something was pressing against his chest and they collapsed." He shook his head to clear it. "Well, he had to go through some pretty bad surgery, but he's out and on some pretty good morphine now."

"That's good. But why are you telling me this?" Gale asked.

"Well, I need you to test the blood." He held up a swab in a plastic tube. "See if it matches him again. And see if there's any actual GSR.

"This is a hospital, not a crime lab." Gale said. "But I'll do my best. See if there's any heavy metal I can find." The hospital's equipment did have technologies that could find heavy metals in blood, to test for potential poisonings.

"Thank you." Waters said. "And, I know how you're sort of the Intelligence Guru around here."

"That's my title, don't wear it out." Gale smiled, setting the blood up already.

"I need you to look and see if you can find out what happened to Tyler's parents. He said that his mother killed his dad, but I'm not so sure. Something's nagging me about it."

"I'm on it." Gale said, getting to work on her machines. Dr. Waters left.

---Hours later, still---

Tyler's brain hazed into reality. Everything was blurry and he was so very dizzy. He didn't even feel the bed he was on. He saw the white and blue-ish colors of the room blend together. 'Where…what…is it…'

"It's just too bad."

The voice was amplified and Tyler looked very subtly over to his right.

"No matter what we do, you just don't get any better!"

He made out a pink shape, skin tone and dark. He took a moment for his eyes to focus.

"First the ankle, then the fainting, then the battered arm, and now almost 30 stitches from surgery repairing nearly all of your ribs?!"

The voice slowly came into focus. It was Nurse Defoe.

"You're just not gonna get any better."

Tyler heard the words but they hardly registered.

"I suppose I'm just going to have to stop this cycle before you get worse."

She took out a syringe with something bright red in it.

"It's too bad that it had to come so early…"

Tyler's eyes widened with realization…

Nurse Defoe…

She was going to kill him!

---Meanwhile---

"You get anything?" Dr. Waters asked Gale.

"I'm…not sure…" Gale said. "I searched as hard as I could, and…here's what I found." She handed the doctor some papers. He looked over them, his eyes widening.

"Oh, my god…" He muttered.

Beeping came from one of Gale's machines, saying they had tested something positively. Gale just stared at the screen. "Oh, god…that's…that's not possible…"

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This is the penultimate chapter. The next ones will have the four endings: a good ending, a bad ending, a neutral ending, and a UFO ending, because it's Silent Hill. No Silent Hill is complete without a "WTF?" UFO ending, right?

Review and keep an eye out. It's almost done!