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The stream of headlights washed across the vertical wood pattern of that particularly white house. It was always so clean and perfect. The beige carpet never had a speck upon it. There was too little furniture and too much space. But that's where he lay.

The deep green Toyota pulled up, landing a parking spot just at the rough end of the paved black driveway. Only the grass seemed to separate abyss of night from the ground itself. The engine hummed so quietly that the engine did not even require the need to be shut off. Instead the vehicle was shifted into park and the driver's door opened.

Out stepped the figure, with a long plaid shirt hanging from her shoulders. The baseball cap hugged tightly to her temples, as she walked further down the driveway and up to the base of the house.

Two windows rose eight feet above ground level and that, she knew, was the place where he lay. She stared at the dark windows trapped inside their frames. The roof of the house sloped upward, leading the eyes straight up to the single white round moon, hanging crisply in the lightly clouded sky.

SPLASH. SPLASH. SPLASH --GLUG--GLUG--!

Grasping a metal handle in-between her gloved fingers, she spread the liquid all across the bottom wall of the house. Directly below the second floor windows. Back and forth, with another hand rested on the bottom of the canister to provide accurate support, the girl spilled out nearly half a gallon of turpentine all across the pale wood paneling before she set the can down to dab at her forehead with the back of her glove. With a sigh, she heaved the canister up again and turned around.

Surrounding the house were some formidable trees graced by the presence of various weeds and bushes. The flower garden was neglected, but only because the flowers had already died. With an unplanned, intricate bow, the rest of the turpentine made its way across the bark and leaves of the bushes and trees.

The girl stepped away from the spot of her performance and stared. Setting the can down beside her (it was far lighter now), she dug into the pockets on the front of her long shirt. Slowly she pulled out several slivers of wood and separated them. Only one was needed, and after she set the rest of the sticks into her pocket, she lit the remaining match in her hand, and tossed it against the base of the house's wall.


The stretch of highway road in front of her was blank and bare, as the 97 Toyota made its way leisurely back and forth across the lanes. There wasn't a soul out on the highway, which was black, save for the orange circles of light that soaked into the road from the streetlights above.

With one hand on the wheel, the girl pulled her cap off and undid the bun that her brunette hair had been tightly tied into. The gloves and plaid shirt were already rolled into a bundle and placed in a trash bag, underneath the dashboard of the front seat. She'd worn some loose trousers over her velvet black pants that were far more costumed to her taste. A black sleeveless top was worn over a maroon, long-sleeved shirt. The top had a sketchy font spelling out the word "hope" right across the front of it. The numbers changed on her thin digital watch and it beeped. A green turn-signal light clicked on and the car pulled off of the highway onto a short exit, which led into the parking lot of a gas station.

The fire had burned brightly. She'd almost fell backwards from the blast of the flames once the match had hit the turpentine. But after feeling the hot on the skin of her face and watching the blaze dance its way slowly up the side of the house, a feeling of poised calm and ease came over her nerves, as though it were worn in through the pores of her skin by the very heat of the fire itself.

This would take care of it. And once the trees and underbrush caught fire, there would be no escape, not once the flames spread. They would enter the house, find their way across that perfect carpet floor, and into his room. Where he lay soundless and softly. Never to leave, never to wake. Rather, for his sake, he'd better lose consciousness; otherwise there would be the wrath of the flames to deal with.

How utterly symbolic it was. The wrath of the flames. The idea was almost electrifying and for a second the girl felt giddy. Not with the high of accomplishment, but because of the fact that she was already an hour away from the neighborhood, and currently on her way to North Carolina. There would be a Good Will store to stop at along the way, and there she would dispose of the canister in a lake and then sell the old clothes and gloves to the store. It was a brilliant plan. She'd thought of everything. She'd made a list. And once this was all done, with everything from the list checked off, she would tear the list up, spill the pieces into a bowl of cereal and milk. The list would go down far more easily if the paper became soggy, first. Leave no fragmentations behind.

With the keys jingling playfully in her hand, she paid for the gas with a debit card and began to fill the tank. Crossing her arms against the chilly night, she peered at the booth where a middle-aged Muslim man regularly tended the gas station and its small store. The whole place was brightly lit, but the booth was empty. The shop door was usually locked, this late at night. The girl glanced at her silver watch, which read a quarter past three. How does a guy stay up all night, in a place light this? She wondered. Either way, she could tell that she wouldn't be getting into the store at this time. The purchase of a Nutty Bar would have to wait until another four hours, at least. The drive ahead of her was going to be a long one. She thought about spending the remainder of the night asleep in the car, but getaways do not involve naps until the final destination has been reached.

A yawn and a sneer revealed her agitation towards the vacant merchant and then she saw that fourty dollars had already been deducted from her debit card. She stopped the gas and closed the tank, before opening the driver's door and sitting inside of the car while the door hung wide open.

She pulled out a pen and a check-book, copying the recent purchase price in as a withdrawal. Her pen froze as a heavy shadow pulled over it. When looking up at the cause of the shadow she jerked back against her seat while the lip of an automatic pistol suddenly pulled together the focus of her eyes. She couldn't help the startled squeal that squeaked through her clenched teeth, but quickly she steeled herself against the new guest who stood, leaning down to her, blocking her way out of the driver's seat and blocking the still open car door.

The dark man's voice was stiff as he spoke, "All right, just leave the key in the ignition and climb out of the car."

She stared at him, just now making out the shadows and shape of his face. Still too much of it was indistinguishable.

A moment of this caused the man to shake the gun at her again and in a louder voice he said again, "look, climb OUT of the car! Do it!"

The girl's eyes moved from the man's face, to the gun, then to his face again. Slowly she reached to grasp the handle of the driver's seat door and she heard the man proclaim, "thaaat's right. Just stand over there and I won't have to shoot your a**."

But here, she froze, which also caused the man to pause. Her eyesight caught nothing but whiteness as she suddenly grasped the door handle and pulled with every inch of strength she had. Immediately the door slammed shut on the man's arm which caused him to shout as the door bounced opened again, off of his bone. The man reeled backwards, grabbing his arm and shouting, but before he could steady himself, the girl slammed the car door shut, while twisting the ignition key.

Before the man could run up to the window of the car, she'd clicked the car into drive and floored the gas, causing the tires to screech as she blew out of the gas station, onto a merging lane and back onto the highway where her car sank deeper and deeper down the long straight road ahead of her.






The sound of her watch beeped again and the girl glanced at it with heavy eyes. Six-twenty six, it read and she heaved a sigh, looking on at the double lane highway that ran through some foggy mountains. She couldn't remember the terrain being quite so calm, as the trips she'd endured to North Carolina before were usually quite exquisite with their high rocky ridges and dozens of trees. But here, things were so small and calm that she had begun to worry that she might have made a turn off by accident somewhere. That didn't seem too plausible though. Surely she would have noticed something like that at the time it would have happened. She was on the god damned highway for Christ's Sake!

One might have thought she would have seen the signs involved with such a mistake by now, but come to think of it, she hadn't seen a single sign for the past hour. She thought she had just been losing track of time, but the time on the face of her digital watch revealed the case to be otherwise. Something was strange here.

The fog was white and thick so she flicked on her headlights as the car continued to cruise on down the road. She wondered if it had rained in this area just before she'd arrived, but the road was bone dry. The road carried on and after a while her thoughts began to wander. From the strange road to the strange situation she had placed herself in. What she had done was attempted murder. Attempted? It was premeditated. If the cops ever caught on to any of this, it was prison, without a doubt. So why had she taken such a ridiculous risk?

It was that man. No, that boy. Terry. The dark haired and brown eyed boy who had promised her something she never thought she had ever wanted. She was twenty three, and Terry had been her very first boyfriend. There was no use in denying how odd a delay such as that might have been. But she had never thought of a reason to take up intimate companionship with any human being, not at any part during her life. The thought crossed her mind, "You need a boyfriend. You're lonely." But this statement or thought was easily rebuffed by a bundle of reasons. The whole idea was wrong. She didn't need a boyfriend to feel loved. She didn't need a man to lean on or to depend on. She didn't need a man to take advantage of her and order her around when she might let her guard down. She didn't need a man around to control her.

But she knew better then to deny the fact that she, like anyone, was fond of the idea of being loved. Held and hugged, spoken to and protected. Someone to share her darkest fears with, and not feel belittled by cynical skepticism or to be burdened with the weight of guilt she would feel just by sharing her pound of dark secrets. Someone who would not think him self better than she, intellectually speaking, especially since she was prone to slipping up with speech every so often. Articulation was a strong point, but far from perfected. She was prone to making a fool of herself at times. At times, she wondered if she'd suffered mild dyslexia as a child, but there was no way to prove that now, from what she could tell.

There were all of these emotional expectations that she would hope for in a being that might love her. But the furthest need from her mind, ironically was what even the greatest philosophers of the common mind had considered a basic need. The fact was, she was even still a virgin, with no intentions to succumb to that very behavior that she saw could control even the strongest. Above most anything, she hated control.

She was no nun, of course, for even she had the capabilities to ponder and wonder about sex and just what went into the development of it. Most of what she knew about it came from college texts. By now, it was a tired subject that she knew to be nothing beyond a compilation of bodily functions. She understood sentimentality behind it, but she had also concluded that sex was the one activity she did not need. She had no desire for it, no yearning for it and she felt pity to those who could not stand to be without the activity for longer than a few months. It was in this world, but she didn't have to choose it, so she didn't.

This boy, Terry, had attempted to show her the "wrong in her thinking," however. He had come across her in a vulnerable time, when she had found herself alone and friendless for three years, prior. Terry had simply asked her out to a movie and then some dinner. She didn't see the harm in giving the notion of a "date" a try, but by all accounts she had not even been attracted to the guy. She thought his eyebrows were too thick and she could have even swore he must have shaved that space which separated them. Either way, she thought perhaps there might be something in sharing an evening with a potentially new friend.

Over the dinner he had persuaded her to at least "give the boyfriend/girlfriend thing a try," and perhaps out of sheer boredom, she obliged him. She had her ideas, her rules, but she was not closing doors to these things. She didn't mind giving it a try, after all, it would be foolish of her to think she knew exactly what it was, before even attempting to test her theories. She agreed and they spent the next seven months together. When there were no more movies left to see, they went to play pool and even took walks in the park. That time in the park was where it had ended. She could remember that evening so clearly. The fog had been so gray, enough to make the grass and trees appear to be white.

She blinked as her windshield wipers flashed back and forth in front of her eyes. She'd clicked the switch for them by accident and now she clicked it off, focusing back on the road.

"What...?" She uttered, for the road suddenly had a different appearance altogether. Now, it was a single lane road that cut through trees and nothing more could be seen around it. The leaves made their symphonic debut on the bottom of her car wheels as she continued on forward.

"This is crazy," she uttered and finally pulled over to the side of the road, next to a thick tree. She thought for a moment, unfolding a map that she pulled out of the glove compartment and peered over it. The thing was covered in lines that made it almost look like a cheaply made, fake party-favor spider web. The road she assumed she'd turned off on looked nothing like the place she was currently at. That road passed by several strip malls, for one thing. There wouldn't be a tree in site.

She looked through her windshield again, gazing, squinting, trying to see through the fog. The road seemed to disappear into it, leaving nothing in its wake but a white void.

"Damn it, I'm going to have to turn around or something... There aren't even any signs here--" she grumbled, but just as her voice trailed the sentence, her eyes had caught, just vaguely, onto a strip of lime green. A street sign.

"What the f.... Huh. I must have missed that. Sweet. That'll give me a clue as to where the hell I am, won't it?" She spoke to no one in particular.

As though on queue, a patch of fog blew off the sign which blatantly read SILENT HILL. The pointed end of the sign was pitched to direct an onlooker further up the road.

"Silent Hill. Woo, sounds nice. Like some retirement resort or something."

But she couldn't find the town anywhere on the road map. This did not discourage her, however, since the map was far too crowded to make immediate heads or tails of anyway, so her conclusion was astute. She would follow the road down to this town and ask for directions. It was what you did when you were lost.

The engine started up again and the car pulled back onto the road, following the single posted sign that was the only indication of the girl's direction.




The car bumped melodiously along the road, which dove further down into the strangest town that the girl had ever known. All of the streets were pale, and white, bathed in an endless thick fog of which even her headlights could barely pierce. The girl had slown her car down to about five miles per hour, even though she had passed a speed-sign which had read fifteen. The town was so simple, so bare and clean looking. But above everything it was a ghost town. Completely deserted and nothing, not even any stray animals or vermin could be seen. She would have expected maybe a rat in a dumpster if anything. But there was nothing; the place was completely empty.

"Well, that's just great. Of course, the only town for miles and it's deserted," she hummed to herself with a flavor of sarcasm in her tired and agitated voice. What good was this place going to do for her. She stopped the car by the side of the road, and placed the gear in park, without turning the key. The engine ran with a gentle hum, while she tried to think of what to do. She though she'd seen some payphones somewhere, but could not remember where. She waited a minute or so, to see if anyone would pass by from anywhere, although by now she wasn't sure exactly why she was still expecting to see any people.

"Why is this place so deserted... ? I mean, where did all of the people go, around here? This place doesn't look like it's quarantined for chrissake," she muttered to herself. In honesty, she was also irritated that this place was not going to liberate an easy answer to her problem.

So she put the car into drive and started down the road again, but this time she made a turn. Marking the road sign mentally in her head, she continued down a new road.

Keeping the car on one side of the road took nearly all of her concentration, but after some minutes of attempting to stay on the right side of the yellow lines, she gave it a rest. No car was going to come down the street from any kind of direction. After this point, she began sampling more of the town, or what she could see of it, by its scenery. But as though struck by electric current, her heart jumped at the second she thought she had just made out the dark forms of two shadowy figures rushing towards what looked like the entrance to a large hospital.

Her foot pressed the break to the floor as she paused with her head turned, peering through the passenger seat window. She watched the figures head towards the front of the building, but before she could exit the car, they had both already gone inside.

"God, this is crazy. Was just seeing things?"

The question seemed apt to ask, by this point. The fog could have produced any kind of illusion, especially by this point, when the girl was already fraught with fatigue. She remembered she had planned to sleep in her car at a rest-stop on the highway this morning, but a town as peaceful as this would be just as good.

Yet, she did not want to sleep in front of that strange hospital. In some odd way, the divided cement gates by the entrance gave her a chilled and eerie feeling. She felt as though the building itself were watching her and she did not trust herself to sleep in front of it. In some way, she wondered if that feeling spread to more than just that hospital, but to the whole character of the town. The place looked so dead; why did it feel as though the place were alive?

Her shoulder shook and she turned the wheel, pulling the car around and back down the street from where she'd come. She had remembered a sign that might have said "Motel" on it, so that was the direction she headed next.

Luckily her eyes had not failed her, even in their restless state, as the car pulled into a parking space just beside the only door that could have lead into the office. She though perhaps if any of the doors were unlocked, she might even have a chance to sleep in a bed. The thought caused her skin to crawl, but a pillow and a mattress would do wonders for her stiffening neck and tired legs, accumulated after a seven hour drive.

The engine shut off as she turned and pulled out the keys, slipping them into her pocket. The girl gave a fine stretch of the arms, once she stepped outside of the car and the foggy mist felt surprisingly cool on her skin. Some air circulation might be just what she needed. Perhaps after a small rest here, she can find the town on the map and look for some rout to any alternate town that might actually have some living people in it.

The thought reminded her of something and she peered up at the blank sky. No. Just as she thought. Not even any birds. There was absolutely nothing.

She sighed and swung her arms back and forth as she paced through the fog. She imagined it was a large cloud and she almost relished at going through it. A short moment left her coming onto the feeling of cold as she expected would happen in the mist. But that did not bother her; the cold was keeping her awake.

She stretched her arms out more, until her shoulders gave a comfortable crack under each blade and she yawned. When she opened her eyes again, she had to blink them. There was something shining on the ground. Out of all the dusty space around here, that black spot was a trumpet sounding in a locked library. She ran over to it, not really understanding her need for a rush and speedy retrieval, but once she picked the object up, she understood what caused her to run.

It was a key with a ring and tag attached to it. A grin came over her face as she examined it, turning it over and over in her hands.

"Wow, I don't believe this. 103," she muttered and then looked back to the other motel doors, which led each to their respective rooms. This section was in the higher numbers, though. 115 was the starting number, for this end.

"Mm'kay, well, let's go," she laughed and tossed the key lightly into the air and catching it.

A sharp, bellowed growl caused the girl's body to react and she jerked one step back from the spot she'd been standing, whipping her head around to see what in God's name could have made any sound at all, in this place.

"Whu-whu-" she stammered when she saw the thing silhouetted in the mist. It stood on four legs; its thin boney figure was black against a pale backdrop of fog while its head sniffed at the ground.

"A dog.... is it feral?" she asked herself, just as the beast lifted its head and opened its jaw to release a bellowing and echoed howl that made the girl's knees buckle.

"Oh god-" she spun on her heel, stumbling as she turned but without falling to the ground, and she began to run. She knew she shouldn't run, for that would coerce the animal, but her feet had acted without her permission and so naturally, the animal dove into a charge fit for a racehorse.

The girl screamed as her pointed black boots slipped in the white dust that covered the road, leaving her smeared footprints trailing back behind her, the dog following them as though it understood to do exactly that.

In second the girl spotted her car and then another kick of adrenaline pushed her legs to the car faster, while her shoulders pumped and her fingers heinously gripped the motel key.

She bumped into the side door of her car, on the passenger’s side, and she pulled the keys out of her pocket, fumbling them into the small lock and forcing them in as fast as possible.

The dog let out another fearsome howl that ended in a carnivorous snarl, as its paws pounded mercilessly onto the ground. Her car door opened and the animal leaped.

The girl fell onto the cushioned seat as the car door slammed with a force that she hadn't expected. She rolled herself around in the seat and sat up, peering wearily at the passenger window to see where the dog was.

The force of impact on the side window caused the girl to scream, but what had caused her to reel back as far from the window as possible was what she had seen.

The dog was a beastly abomination. Furless and covered in dried or moist fleshy strips of skin, the animal looked to be almost as dead as it obviously was alive. The worst part of the beast was its head, which was unevenly split into two self-motivated halves. Drool slid down between the fractured jawbone edges which jetted out from the skin of the brute’s mouth. Its tongue was still intact, but seemed to slither back and forth at leisure, between which side of the mouth it would occupy. The nose was crusted and muddy, or covered it what looked like mud to the girl. The eyes were nonexistent, as were the ears. The dog looked like some insane overgrown prematurely birthed embryo. The girl could not stop screaming while the beast beat its own bulk into her side door and window over and over.

The girl pressed the automatic lock and climbed between the two front seats, so she could lie in the floor space at the base of the back seats. She shoved several packed bags aside and curled her body as tightly as she could, to fit in one side of the car. From there, she peered up as tears stroked her cheeks and she gripped the long strands of her hair while watching the beast-dog beat itself against the side of the car. She choked in a gasping sob, while the creature continued its work, slowly becoming tired of the procedure and then soon, stopping its efforts all together.

Her breathing came slowly as she listened for any sounds the dog made. After sniffing around the car for nearly fifteen minutes, the animal gave a final howl and she soon heard the clicking of its feet as it finally ran off. The girl heaved a sigh that caused her to hiccup.






"What the hell was that?" the girl gasped to herself, once she was nestled behind the steering wheel of her car. Her chest heaved in gentle gasps, as her body still continued to weaken its stress reactions. Her arms were still shaking, as well as her shoulders, not only from the sudden fright, but also from the cold. She shivered to try and even the shaking out.

"It was... it was a dog. Just, a dog. A weird dog. Really weird," she spoke to no one allowed, while both her hands clasped the steering wheel in front of her.

"But," she swallowed, "it was mutated. Like... like something happened to it. That's all, it just was in some horrible accident. There might only just be that one running around. The poor little thing," she finished. As strange as her rationale was, the girl understood the nature of living alongside strange beings. She felt it best to keep an open mind about strange situations, for they may not always be as strange as they first appear. It was a matter of divided cultures. What looked strange to an American, might be fine to an African. The same applied to strange animals as well. That hadn't been a beast. It was a strange breed of dog gone all wrong.

But even that did not leave a proper excuse for it. If anything, that meant that something might be wrong with this town. Of course! The absence of people, the mutated dog. This town was contaminated! By what, she didn't care to answer or know, but still one thing was certain. She could not stay here.

The key in the ignition turned just as always, but the engine only complained in a weak, dry, sputter.

"WHAT? I put gas in this thing! I wasn't riding around THAT long!" she shouted, glaring at the gas-gage. But she saw that she was correct: the tank was still half full.

"What?" she whispered now and her forehead began to ache as she tried turning the key several more times. She felt the need to cry again as her breath came faster and she pleaded fruitlessly with the vehicle. But it would not start.

"I'm gonna die here," she sobbed, crying more to herself and for the sake of the situation. The leak of tears seemed to empty her own head and her forehead began to hurt less afterwards.

Finally she looked up again, rubbing her sleeves on the corners of her face.

"Okay," she laughed a bit, "I was just a little scared. I mean, come on, it's a ******** puppy-dog!" She laughed even more, "It was just a damned little doggy. Haha! So it was a little hungry. So what? We all get a little hungry. There's probably nothing wrong with the town. It's just that one dog. This is just weird, is all. God, hahaha, this place should be a ******** amusement park!"

She opened the door to her car again, still laughing and knowing the insanity behind the action, but also realizing the lack of progress she could make while only sitting inside of the car. She decided to stick with her plan and take a nape inside the motel room. At this point, she could barely think straight and it was evident, no, mandatory now, that she be well equipped in order to help herself out of this situation. So she picked up the road map, placed her keys in her pocket, slipped the motel key-ring around her thumb and began walking on shaky feet.


She counted the numbers on the doors down, occasionally humming some arbitrary song lyrics she came to think of from time to time. But her humming stopped whenever she would hear another howl from far off in the distance. As long as she knew the dogs were far away, she did not feel a need to run. At this point, she knew she'd never be able to make the distance back to her car anyway. At this point, it was a do or die situation. If only she had a weapon of some kind.

Around a corner that led down a sidewalk with more doors and empty car lots, the girl saw the number 106 painted across the label of the door next to her. At last, she could not wait to get herself onto a soft mattress. She didn't want to think that the rooms would be empty, trashed and crowded or altogether unfit for rest. It was easier for her to walk if she felt there would be a reward for her to obtain by doing all of this.

She heard the bang of a trashcan hitting the asphalt road and she whipped around, ready to run.

The trashcan rolled and then another one beside it fell, as a different creature came stumbling lazily out into the open. The girl could not even make sense of what she was seeing. There was no head that she could detect, and its limbs... it seemed only to be made of limbs, which bent in such odd manners that she might have called the joints knees for all four appendages. It came closer towards her, when a sudden howl ripped through the silence and the girl watched as a beast dog ran from behind the same corner that the first creature had emerged from and it began biting at the flailing top limbs. The dog gorged itself, jerking the wailing creature from side to side, for somehow it made a sound, an undisputable sound.

Then the dog paused, sniffing the air. It turned its attention to the girl and she swallowed. It was "go time."

This time the dog began to run, which caught her by surprise, but she made a sharp bank to the right as the dog slid past her, biting at the air. She charged forward while the dog galloped after her and to her horror, the beast suddenly leaped straight at her, biting down on the back of her boot, digging a long fang into the rubber heel. She screamed, beating it fiercely on its head and pulling her foot, until the rubber finally broke and her heel slipped free.

She scrambled back onto her feet, stepping unevenly now, but further she ran just as her eyes caught a glimpse of the number she'd been searching for.

103 stood out like an offshore lighthouse and it was the only door the girl saw as she ran.

Her boots clapped on the ground until she grabbed the knob of the door and jabbed the key into it. She turned to see the dog coming and it barked, waving strands of translucent spit to fall all across the front of its path.

As soon as the doorknob clicked and turned the girl shouted, "GO TO HELL!" before she slide inside and slammed her self against the door, shutting the beast out and turning the small silver lock to keep it out there.

She rested her forehead on the back of her hand that also rested against the cold metallic feel of the door. She closed her eyes and felt dizzy as well as tired. The dog howled and chomped at nothing outside, before finally taking its leave again.

She turned, sliding down the door and resting herself on the carpeted floor. Oh yes. There was a carpet.

The tiniest smile crept across her face as she gazed across the prize room that she had won. It could have been a palace to her at that point.

Wall to wall light brown carpeting bathed in honey light that was provided by a simple faded purple lamp which sat on a nightstand, separating two twin beds. A chair and table sat by an air conditioning vent to the left side of the room, right across from a television and a small refrigerator.

But she noticed a bag sitting next to the white cube of furniture and she wondered what was in it. Had she the energy, she would have stood to investigate it, but for now she turned her head to stare straightforward.

It was then that her attention was brought back to the beds. The one on the right...was occupied.

Her eyes widened as the figure in the bed began to move and she tried to stand until her legs simply gave out on her, plopping her back down onto the floor. She pulled her knees up to her face and squint her eyes shut, waiting for a shouting disproval. Instead there was silence for an unbearably long moment.

"Um, hello?" a voice said, in the most easy of tones.

The girl lifted her tired head and saw that the person in the bed was a man, perhaps in his mid or late twenties. He wore a dark buttoned shirt with a pointed collar and dark jeans. She couldn't be sure of their exact colors in this light. But his hair, it was nearly colorless. Perhaps a much exaggerated platinum blond color. She wondered if he had, perhaps, dyed his hair, seeing as how his eyebrows were so dark. They were almost black as were his irises.

She could not think of how she might look herself, at the moment, apart from appearing as though she had just escaped from a mental clinic. But she imagined he did not gain much company in a place like this, so she felt confident enough to speak.

"Hi. Do you live here?" she started and then nearly felt like kicking herself for such an idiotic sounding question. Of course he didn't live here in this motel room, "I mean um. Like, in this town," her mind was so clogged with fatigue that she could barely think. She pictured that eerie fog consuming her own brain.

The man laughed and it was strange how easily the sound came from him, "Live here? In this place? I'd have to be crazy. Have you seen the native inhabitants, yet?" When he smiled she could see almost ever tooth. She blinked.

"Wait... you mean the dogs?"

The man nodded with a sorry conferment.

The girl had to pause because something was not right about this at all.

"I was just chased down by one of them. Up to THIS door. I just slammed the door and shouted at the thing. It was howling and growling and s**t and-" she stared at the man, "and you were sleeping. Didn't you hear any of that?" she was feeling a knot of anger wrestle its way into her chest.

But the man appeared to be genuinely oblivious as he stared at the door in confusion, "No," he said, "I was sound asleep, I'm afraid."

The girl stared at him in disbelief, "There's no way. I was screaming."

"I'm sorry. I should have helped you," he looked at her sincerely and what he said was enough to make her pause again.

"Who are you? Where am I? What is this place?"

"I can't exactly tell you where you are, because honestly, I don't even know that myself. I don't know really what I can tell you, at this point. But for starters, the least I can do is tell you my name. It's Kay."

"Kay?" The girl repeated and the man nodded, smiling gently. The girl's forehead was beginning to hurt again so she rubbed it. The motel key bumped around her temple until she pulled it off her thumb.

"OH! You found that! Great," Kay said as he moved off of the bed and reached over to take it. The sudden movement caused the girl to press back against the door, wide-eyed. He hesitated and moved more slowly, "Sorry again," he said, "it's just that key you have there? I dropped it a while ago. I almost wasn't sure what I'd do without it, you know? I'd have to leave this place unlocked and God knows what could get in here, right?" he laughed again. She realized he was awfully cheery for a man living inside of a single motel room within a beast infested nowhere.

"I... My name is Rachel," the girl spoke her name, but kept the key wedged neatly inside her palm, "I came here just a while ago and my car won't start anymore. I was hoping I could stay somewhere to rest for a bit."

Kay nodded, "Oh, sure, certainly," he agreed and leaned nearer to Rachel, holding out his hand which she took, to help herself up.

"Listen, you can sleep in that bed there. It hasn't been used and I'm pretty sure it's clean. There are no maids or anything to make the beds, so I'm pretty sure that one hasn't been disturbed for a while."

Rachel could barely muster the energy to speak anymore, and only half-mindedly did she find herself pulling the stiff covers off of the bed and lying her head down upon the pillow, which was also stiff, and cold. She shivered and curled her knees to her chest in order to get warm.

"Sorry, I'll see if the heater is working yet," Rachel could hear Key move away from the bed and she felt her fingers squeeze the motel key tightly, as though it were her only means of negotiable payment in exchange for this hospitality.

"Look," Kay spoke again, in a soft tone, as he sat on the bed across from Rachel, "you can sleep as long as you need to. I'll be right here to watch things. Don't worry about anything, okay? Despite everything," he paused awkwardly, "you'll be fine."

Rachel wanted to answer him, but her eyes had already fallen closed and her head felt as though it would sink right through the pillow and the mattress, all the way to the floor. She did not know why she was willing to trust this man so quickly, but for now, her rationale told her it was because she was too tired to care. As it were, if he had slit her throat while she slept, it might as well have been all for the better.





How strangely clear the frame of the brightly sunlit window was to Rachel, as she stood in the kitchen with her back to the counter, crossing her arms and glaring at the small square shapes of the black and white tiled floor. She could feel the straight beams of the sun resting perfectly on her arm, warming it. Even the leaves on the short bushes outside of the window seemed to have a glow about them.

In front of her stood the tall boy with moppy black hair and a stubble chin. He wore a gray tee-shirt and blue jeans, but he was not standing in that happy and certain posture he usually had. His hands were balled into fists as they rested on his sides. The large black eyebrows furrowed together across his forehead, while he stared back at Rachel with those pale and frustrated eyes.

"You're making this a lot more complicated than it really is, Rachel. Can't you see that?"

"Terry, come on. I'm not making anything complicated here. My answer is only a simple one. Even a two-year-old could get it."

Terry shook his head, throwing his hands up, "You don't even know what you're saying. I'm not asking for you to become a pole-dancer or to start selling yourself on side-streets for God's sake! It's just one night. One time. That's all, it's not going to kill you. You might even find out that you've been missing out on a good thing."

Terry's words flared in a bright blaze across Rachel's mind and she tore into his own face with a severe glare. How could he even dare to try and talk her into something like this. You ******** b*****d. You don't care about anything but THAT, isn't that right? Her thoughts danced with her crossed expression.

"Rachel, come on. I can't believe you. Don't look at me like that. I'm not asking for anything unreasonable! We've been together for six months and still nothing? Not even barely a kiss. It's like you don't even see us as being a couple. If anyone didn't know any better, they'd probably even assume we were related the way you back off from me so much."

Rachel rolled her eyes, "Look, I'm sorry. I TOLD you it was going to be like this. I told you what to expect from me. But you wanted to do this all anyway. I didn't make any damned promises and you can't frikkin' hold me to anything. Six months? Please. That's not enough time. You think that just becau-"

"Okay so how much time do you need, then?"

His interruption was not giving Rachel any further incentive to become anymore agreeable. She glared at him again, but this time dropped her eyes to spare him some of the boiling hate she was feeling from this conversation.

"That's a ridiculous question and you know it."

"Well, no, I think it's very reasonable. I mean how much time are you expecting? A year? Two?"

For a moment she thought he was serious. It pained her to think that she really wanted to answer probably never, but she knew that was far from the answer he'd be hoping for. So she rocked slightly and shrugged a bit, muttering, "I don't know. Maybe a year or two."

Terry was silent, as Rachel continued to peer down at the floor. To her surprise, his voice came back with a strangely resolved sounding, "Okay." Another pause came before he continued, "But can I just make one request between now and then?"

His voice became loud and as Rachel looked up, he was startlingly close to her. In response, she leaned back, but could go no further back than the counter permitted.

"Can I just have one kiss?" he said and even without an answer, he began to lean forward.

Rachel grit her teeth but before she could feel the pressure of anything on any part of her face, the entire floor felt as though it suddenly shifted. She stumbled as Terry moved back away from her, staring at the floor and proclaiming, "what the s**t?!" just as the square tiles chipped off in random directions, leaving a rusted looking foundation underneath of their feet.

"Whoa, what is this, an earthquake?!" Rachel shouted, but Terry hadn't heard her. Slowly, Rachel's eyes fell on the kitchen door that led outside. Its wooden frame had lost all of its white paint and now the dark wood was rotting and the entire door suddenly collapsed on itself.

"Jesus Christ," Rachel heard someone say, and she wasn't sure if whether it had been Terry or even herself. But her breath held cold in her lungs as she saw the large thing appear within the frame of the rotted door. It was a bulky creature with a humped back, a gray head covered with stringy black strands of hair that could not have even been human hair. Its mouth was repulsive as Rachel could see the blue thread used to tie over and over, across the purple and green swollen mouth of the beast, while its nose snuffed out stifling clouds of air from each nostril. Slabs of skin seemed to be haphazardly sewn into place, just to cover the creature's half bald and half string-haired head. But most of all, Rachel could not pull her eyes from the two large empty holes that were twice the size of any normal eye-sockets on any kind of human skull. Nothing could be seen inside the bleak holes on that creatures face and then it began to step forward.

"Oh my god," Rachel heard Terry say and her shoulders tensed as she made ready to run past the thing, while she still realized that she had no chance of escaping it.

Without a hint or sign of change in the creature's pace, its entire figure jolted forward and a single limb pulled out from under its chest, grabbing Terry's head with three clawed and wrinkled fingers. Terry screamed, while his mouth stretched opened as far as it could go and Rachel watched in terror as the thing's strong arm made ready to yank Terry's head into an unnatural direction.


A sharp and cold gasp pushed Rachel up from the pillow of her bed and her eyes grew sore from how widely she kept them open, in order to stare at the blank motel door, which sat just a few feet away from the foot of her bed. Rachel's breath came fast until she realized that she was no longer in Terry's kitchen. She glanced around the room, taking in the fan on the ceiling and the dark shadows that displayed interesting shapes all around it.

"Ugh, jeeze," Rachel sighed, resting a hand on her head and leaning back against the wall behind her bed, "Haha, that was a weird nightmare," she chuckled to herself. Boy, Terry really got his in that one, didn't he, she thought. It wasn't entirely unusual for her to have bad dreams about Terry, but that had been the first one where he had almost actually died. And the first time there had ever been such a whacked out looking monster in it. Well it didn't take rocket-science to figure out why she was dreaming about hideous looking monsters now.

"This place is so silly," Rachel muttered to herself. She looked at her watch, which caused the eyebrows on her head to rise. She'd been asleep for nearly eight hours. No wonder she felt so much better and more relaxed, even. For the most part, she did not feel frightened of this place at all, now. There were oddly mutated animals running around: beastly dogs and strange looking bunny-rabbit...things, but what were animals to deal with as long as you knew how to avoid them? Unless there was a brain inside that split-headed dog, or somewhere inside that leg-thing, Rachel decided for herself that they were not really much to worry about.

Just as Rachel began to notice that her bed sported not only her sheets and blankets, but now Kay's as well, the man suddenly opened the motel door and entered the room through it, carrying some plastic bags, one of which was torn near the top.

With a blink, Rachel noticed that Kay was carrying the motel key in his free hand as he used the other to push the door closed. When he turned around, his calm but bright expression fell into a troubled one. He was confronting Rachel's own expression, which was quite accusing as she eyed the motel key and almost willing some kind of explanation.

Immediately Kay looked at the key, and then his familiar smile returned, "I needed it so that I could lock the door while I was out. There was no way I'd be leaving you behind an unlocked door. I had to pull it out of your hand while you were sleeping, I'm afraid, but I certainly wasn't going to get it any other way," he ended his speech with an apologetic shrug of the shoulders.

"You apologize too damned much," Rachel's response bit back and this caused Kay to pause in clear surprise. But then his own expression fell flat as he moved past her, heading for the portable refrigerator, "Well then, I don't know what else to say. I don't want you to think I'm not someone to be trusted. Especially in a place like this. We need to take what we're given, around here. Like this, for example," he pulled out a single can from the plastic bag. It was a quick-made spaghetti and tomato sauce mix. All that was required was to open the can, pour it into a bowl, and microwave it. Rachel peered at the can, wondering where on earth he'd found such a thing.

"Given? How'd you get that? It looks like something you'd get from a grocery store."

He shrugged again, "there are a few buildings with some storing freezers in the backs of cafes or restaurants. As a matter of fact, I know where there's a restaurant. I've been cleaning the place out, though, so it'll be expedition time all over again, soon."

Rachel could not even believe what she was hearing. Taken from the freezer of some abandoned restaurant? Did he even check the expiration dates on those things?

"Wait, no, come on, man. You took those from an abandoned restaurant?"

"It's not abandoned if I keep visiting it, technically," he graced a smirk over his shoulder and back to her as he placed the remaining cans in the small fridge.

"But... that's.... scavenging."

"Tell me about it."

"But-" Rachel was trying to make sense of the implications here, "then how long have you actually been here? I mean, you really are living here, aren't you?"

At this point the man stood up, his face held stern as he stared back at Rachel, "There's no way I'm reserved to living here. I can't stand this place. It can eat away at you, in such ways that you can't even imagine yet."

His manner had become so unusually dark, that Rachel became apprehensive that she had just tripped some kind of wire for the guy. But he continued, suddenly just as calm as before.

"I just haven't found a way to get out of here yet. It's taking more time than I had imagined, so I've got to do what I can to stay alive until," his voiced trailed as he paused.

"Until?" Rachel urged him, leaning her head forward.

"Until the town let's me out," he answered her.

Rachel blinked again. Trying to grasp exactly what the man was saying to her. The obvious assumption was frightening and she did not want it to be the correct one.

"But... we're not stuck here," she let out a small laugh, "my car is broken down, sure, and that seems to happen a lot around here from all the other broken down cars I've seen. But we still have our legs. And those animals?" she thumbed at the door as implication of her meaning, "They'll be pushovers once we figure out how to get around them. There's nothing to worry about. If all else fails, we can walk out of Silent Hill!"

The strangest half of a weak smile came across Kay as his head tilted just a bit. Rachel did not like his manner at all and so she stood up and marched over to the refrigerator and pulled out a can, looking for an expiration date.

"What are you doing?"

"What's it look like I'm doing? I'm starving."

"Oh. Well, um, there's a portable kitchen back here. You might not have noticed this door before. Come on," and thus he led her into the small kitchen.





"So you're sure this is okay to eat, right?"

Kay gave a soft chuckle, while dabbing a fork into a bowl of some watered down pasta in a heated broth. Looking up at her before taking a bite, he assured her it was fine.

"You know what I've heard?" Rachel poked at her own food now. She had to admit, the bowl of stuff looked very appetizing to her aching stomach. But she continued with her statement first, "I'd heard that if you eat food in some otherworldly realm or something, you become apart of that world. So then you blend in more and more, until you can never cross over from that world again. It's like tainting your own soul, you know?"

Kay simply stared at Rachel. To her surprise, it looked like he was taking her statement seriously. She hadn't even meant it as anything more than a joke. She'd heard that from a Disney movie!

Through her teeth, Rachel told him, "You know, I'm kidding, right?"

But his answer came back just as serious when he said, "You really are?"

"Yeah," but a strange silence grew between them and so Rachel finally took a bite. The spaghetti tasted fresh and warm, tangy but sweet at the same time, so she began to nearly scarf the entire bowl down. She knew she'd been hungry but suddenly she could not stop herself from eating. Her stomach thanked her with a satisfied growl after she set the bowl down on the wooden table-top and set the fork along the interior edge of the bowl.

"Wow, that was like, the best spaghetti meal I've ever had. God bless commercial food products."

She expected to hear a laugh but instead, Rachel saw Kay returning to the table and setting down several fat books that contained hundreds of pages of road maps. At that point, Rachel felt a little silly, both because she had not even realized Kay had left the table and also because she had not even needed to drag her puny little road map in, from her car, after all.

"Okay, now pay attention here. This is something I've found out just a little while ago."

It was then that Rachel noticed the bookmarks that Kay had taped inside so many pages of the books. And also that some of the books had the same maps but for different years.

"You think this is a regular town, right?" Kay sat on the floor beside the table, while Rachel watched him from her chair. She placed her hands on her knees as she confirmed his question with a, "Yes, of course. It's a strange town, but it's still a town after all."

"Yeah, strange. Right. So, then, this town should show up on a map somewhere, right?"

Rachel bit her lip as she knew where this was going. She had not double checked her car map yet, but all along she had a creeping suspicion that she would not find the town's name in it.

"Well, the thing is that you're right. The town does show up on a map. It shows up on a few maps," Kay began, and continued, while Rachel sat still in surprise at the answer she had not expected.

"Like, right here, for example," Kay flipped open a book and pointed to a spot he had circled in red sharpie, "it's right there. Silent Hill."

Rachel looked, "Wow. So it is on the map," she grinned up at Kay, because to her this represented the possibility that they could still walk out of this town and find a neighboring one.

"Uh-huh, yeah. But take another look at the map itself, all right?"

Rachel peered suspiciously at the map and then she noticed what state the map was for. West Virginia.

"Uh, I was heading for North Carolina. I couldn't have been turned around that much..." she muttered but then added quietly, well, then again, I might have.

"Yeah, exactly. This is from 2002. How about another book from a year earlier," and here Kay flipped open a different book that sported a completely different map with yet another red sharpie circle that shown brightly from the bottom left corner of the page. He pointed, "there's the town, and this is the state."

The map was showing the highways and routes of Rhode Island.

"There are two Silent Hills?" Rachel tried, but Kay threw up a waving finger.

"Here's a map of Rhode Island from 2002, the year from earlier. There's where Silent Hill is."

But Rachel could not spot the name of the town.

"It's..."

"Not there. That's because during this year," he tapped the top of the map, which read the annual date, "it's in West Virginia. Can't be in two places at once, now can it?"

Rachel could only stare in disbelief, "But, how do you know you're not just overlooking the town's name? Maybe one of the maps is misprinted."

"Of course, and I was hoping that too. So I pulled out some more books. Some of them are even from different publishing companies. Look, here's Silent Hill in this one in 1999. Somewhere near Florida. And now, a map of Florida a year later and it's gone. But in this same book for this year, it's now in Illinois! In this map it's ******** right next to Detroit!" by now he was shoving the other map books away from him as he kept pointing the town out to Rachel.

"But that would mean it's..."

"Now you see what I'm getting at? The town is moving!"

"But that's crazy. A whole town can't just up and move for chrissake! That's freaking impossible!"

Kay shook his head, "No, it's not, if you consider what's really going on, here. See, this is not a regular town like you keep hoping it is. It's something entirely different. Something otherworldly, which is taking on the form of a town."

Rachel shook her head, "you're crazy. You've just been here too long. I'll bet it's the fog, it's so thick around here."

"Rachel, the evidence is right here! You can look through the maps yourself if you want! I've spent so many god-damned hours trying to disprove myself that it makes me sick just to LOOK at these things!"

He stood to walk over near one of the beds and then he sat down again with his head between his hands. In a way, seeing Kay stressed like that was enough to put her own confidence on edge. For some reason, she felt that if he could not handle what all was going on, then she could not bare to imagine how she could do it, herself.

"Kay, come on. Even if those maps are this way, you know it doesn't make any sense. Those are just a bunch of defective maps. Maybe there are different towns that took the name Silent Hill, but then changed their names or something. It just doesn't make sense that this town can appear, scoop up a bunch of people, and then poof off."

The tone of Rachel's voice must have gotten to Kay, because he made a short snicker after her statement.

"Well," he said, "I would love to be proven wrong, Rachel. But there's been too much time that's gone by. If I couldn't have gotten out of this town by now, myself, then that can only mean one thing, at this point."

"Just how long have you been here, then?" Rachel stood up from her seat and now placed her hands on her hips, watching Kay as he stared ahead, thinking. He seemed unsure and unable to figure out the time involved with the length of his stay and he looked back at Rachel timidly.

"I don't know, anymore. Time is so strange around here. You look at your watch, sure, but after a while you begin to realize that it doesn't even matter anymore. Night and day work differently for this town."

"What? How can night and day work differently, here?"

Kay gave her another one of his sad smiles, "Sometimes, I have a theory that the town decides when it will be night or day. But mostly, you hope that the day will last as long as it can."

Rachel shook her head, "Man, you are making no sense at all," and in frustration she folded her arms, glancing around at the floor. Her eye caught sight of the bag that sat next to the small refrigerator. It had not been touched since Rachel had first seen it. So now seemed like the best time to ask about it. Once she mentioned the bag, Kay came right over to it and lifted the bag over to one of the beds. He turned it upside down until the contents fell out of it, onto the matress.

To Rachel's surprise, they were about twenty or thirty clips for a nine millimeter automatic.

"Why the hell do you have a bag of those just sitting around your hou-er, motel room?"

Kay gave her a smirk and sat down on the bed beside the black clips, "I find them around the town. My philosophy is that, if I collect them and I find a gun for them, I can use them. But if someone else around here has the gun, at least they won't have the clips around to use on me."

Rachel could not help but watch Kay. She had only gotten to know him for a short amount of time, but even by now, she was not even sure if she could decide whether the man was sane or completely crazy.


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