Work Text:
James felt safe. It was lunacy to even think it while the screeches of those things spawned from that hellish fog were still close to hear. His arms shivered as they supported the weight of his body leaned over the desk. He’d barely noticed what cluttered it and he allowed his weary gaze to drift over the mess now. Piles of medical reports with scribbled notes in messy penmanship in the margin, sentimental knickknacks and a few picture frames with adulterated photos encased beneath the glass. He lingered briefly on the faces inside the frames but seeing the nameless children smiling with their eyes scribbled out as with every photo in the hospital made him very uneasy. Who would take the time to defile what must have been a memory of a loved one like that? To what end? James didn’t know and it was just a drop of confusion in this great ocean inundating Silent Hill threatening to drown him at every jagged turn.
He looked away, suffering a twinge of shame at thinking maybe those nameless children were waiting for whomever loved them enough to place their effigy on their desk and he doubted they’d be reunited. He’d seen too many horrors lumbering under the subterfuge of that unnatural fog for James to easily accept optimism. He was struggling but the effort was becoming a heavier and heavier burden to carry the longer this night dragged on. Was Mary really here? Could she be alive at all and if so, could she hold on until he found her?
He felt the despair creep into his bones and his arms shook but then his stare was pulled back to the eerily bright red light shining on the surface of the marred wood. The call of it was as unnatural as the rest of this insane town but James let its odd siren’s song steady his nerves. It was madness to even think it but when he looked into this ethereal light James felt safe. It always seemed to reach for him when he thought he couldn’t carry on a step longer before collapsing. He felt warmth taw the frozen terror forcing his heart to struggle with no respite which reminded him of being young and sheltering behind the skirts of his mother. It was mad but he clung to this unexpectedly kind mercy or he would have perished by now. He was not a strong or brave man. He was not a fighter. He’d never held a gun before for fuck’s sake! He wouldn’t have managed to force his feet forwards had it not been for those moments of gracious rest.
James let himself get enveloped in the velvety security of it, on this occasion unbothered by his lack of comprehension. He let the screeches of the things masquerading as nurses drift away. The ever present cry of metal dulled and as insane as it was to think it, James felt safe. His arms stopped shaking and his breathing steadied. His resolve to find Mary sharpened and he thought he had it in him to push a little further.
But James should have figured it by now. Silent Hill was not a kind place. It was folly to expect generosity and if it was granted he should take it for the anomaly it was. Perhaps if he’d been less quick to let himself be mollified by this crimson lullaby, he’d have heard the heavy drag of the rusted blade across concrete sooner. Perhaps he’d have picked on the stomp of the monster’s heavy feet get closer. Perhaps James would have recognised the sirens piercing through all other noises but he’d let the alarm be muted and by the time he roused himself enough for the terrible sound to scrape across his brain like nails on chalkboard, it was too late. James felt the cruelty of all that peace he’d managed to grasp onto get ripped away in one heart sinking instant.
He knew what he’d see in the room with him before he twisted to confirm it. A terror stricken whimper was all he managed to gasp out as that mammoth with the red pyramid for a head blocked the doorway. It was bigger and James wondered for a crazy second how the monster even got his bulk inside the room but his disjointed thoughts were cut to silence the moment it stepped towards him. The creature had his sword with him, as tall as a man and probably just as heavy from the way it dragged behind the muscular behemoth. The room was dark, barely illuminated enough for James not to trip over his own two feet by a flickering bulb dangling above his head. That and the red light. He dared pull his stare from the monster to stare accusatorily at the nefarious glow he felt tricked him into this situation and James flinched to find the desk…normal. There was nothing there. Had he imagined it?...
James flinched at the drop of another large boot and he realized with shocking clarity he needed to run. The fear which had the soles of his feet nailed to the floor lessened just enough for him to recall how to move again. He scurried, not even entertaining the absurdity of attempting to fight this monster. He recalled how pointless his bullets were when he’d foolishly shot at the creature from inside the closet. The thing didn’t even pause as he neared James’ hiding spot. There was blood on his apron but James had a terrible suspicion it wasn’t his. For some reason the monster didn’t end him then and there and he’d never understood why.
He just stood as if allowing James to stew in his suffocating fear until that siren shattered the thick silence and the creature unceremoniously departed as if called to another task. James couldn’t understand but he never forgot that moment of certain death. He’d never experienced such hopelessness. There wasn’t a power under the moon who could have saved him had the creature decided to lay his hands on him. He’d felt desperate before but never absolute, undiluted hopelessness and it lingered to lick at the fraying edges of his sanity ever since. Every time he heard that siren he felt it slam into him and now the root cause caught up to him.
The room was small, far too small for him to try running away and there was no other door than the one shrinking behind the guarding bulk of the monster’s body. No way he could run past it to get out that way. James scurried in blind panic and found a corner he crawled behind. Maybe the low light gave him just enough umbrage to hide if he made himself very, very small and quiet? The notion was a result of self-delusion for sure but James grasped at it like a man adrift to a lifesaver. He heard the pyramid monster approach, steps thunderous but slow. There was no need for it to rush. James wasn’t going anywhere.
The room was limited and he’d scrambled to the furthest corner he could reach but that would still buy very precious little time of life before the monster would surely carve his soft flesh with that blade sending sparks in its wake. All that flaking blood peeling off it, and soon James’ would add to the macabre collection. He didn’t understand why the monster allowed him to live before, both in the closet and on the rooftop. He nearly choked when he recalled the collar of the monster’s fingers around his throat. He’d been so vulnerable. Ripe for the taking but the creature tossed him aside instead of snapping his weak neck. Twice he’d been allowed to live and James had a feeling his chances were up.
The time until the creature reached him dragged for too long, and James was forced to pickle in that hopelessness. It was almost a relief when he felt fingers grab his ankle and drag him across the floor like a corpse. He scratched at the ground but there was nothing to grab and even if he dug his blunt nails as hard as he could into the dust, all he did was break them and blood left tell-tale lines as the monster pulled him behind. James felt his head bounce off the ground and split his chin. More blood to leave one of those disturbing reminders he’d come across in almost every building he’d dared explore. Maybe one day someone would find this room and wonder what terrible fate befell the person who left those marks immortalized in the hospital basement. Maybe they’d be dismissive of it, just as he had been after seeing so many.
James hiccupped a stuttered gasp when he felt himself get lifted and slammed across something. Paper fluttered around like a flock of startled birds. Wood splintered and glass shattered, poking into his flesh as if annoyed at his disturbance. He rolled his eyes, pain burning across his spine and understood the monster dragged him right back to the desk which had his attention so rapped he’d practically waited to be executed. James stared at the red metal casing, unsure if there was even a head beneath it, with wet saucer eyes but he wasn’t stupid enough to expect pity. He couldn’t know if the creature had eyes but he felt the intrusive sensation of being watched and his innards tightened with queasiness.
A sudden clatter bellowed through the skeleton of the building so piercing and loud it seemed to reverberate through the marrow of James’ bones. He only realized now a stifling silence surrounded him. It was incredibly unsettling. This was a crazy world where noise seemed as interwoven with its abnormality as birds singing. James couldn’t think of a moment when he’d been spared the teeth grinding tumult of metal eroding against itself. There was always something gasping or crying or screaming in the unknowable depths of the fog but not now. The room was dead silent but James was forgiven his ignorance with the drumming of his own heart so violent it rang in his ears.
This silence allowed him to hear the heavy breathing of the monster from somewhere beneath its metal hood. That noise was the clangour of the cutter slamming to the floor. It felt like a slap across the face forcing James to whiplash his thoughts from stunned terror to confused dread. Why wasn’t the monster splitting his organs already? He should be carved up like a piece of meat on a butcher’s countertop by now…
‘What do you want from me?...’ He didn’t recognise the meek voice as his own but it came from his own mouth and even that pathetic string of syllables seemed too loud in this cone of silence. His lips shook and his breath exhaled in a cloud of heat, as if the temperature suddenly dropped but he didn’t feel the chill. His flesh was peppered from head to toe but he didn’t think the cold had anything to do with the gooseflesh.
The monster didn’t speak. James didn’t know if it could. He’d never heard it make a sound past groans and huffs. It reached for his legs and opened them. There was no hesitation or care in the act, just a desire to make room for himself so he could move the bulbous mass of his body and slot it between the man’s splayed thighs. James didn’t understand but he knew on an instinctual level to be repulsed. His thoughts were pulled back to his time in the closet as if independent of his autonomy.
He recalled the first time he’d seen the monster and how he’d turned away in shame. The creature attacked one of those mannequins fused at the waist and James remembered how disturbing the entire scene was. He’d managed to slip inside the closet just as the brute dragged the other monster to a kitchen countertop. There was a wall partly obscuring James’ line of sight but the noises made him pale. He listened with morbid fascination as the smaller creature moaned with a woman’s voice and the slap of flesh…. It made him think of sex but a perverted version of it. Sounds of plastic, metal and skin were fused in a creepy concerto which made the fine hairs on the back of his arms stand up but the noises were just familiar enough to be uncanny.
James recalled lowering his stare as if disturbed but surely the monsters weren’t copulating! It was madness to even think it but those noises… And there were other sounds festering in the undercurrent. Rusty gears being forced to spin and the wet squelch of meat when it was split apart. James peaked up only once and saw the obscene thrusts of the monster’s hips into the bloodied opening of the mannequin’s legs. Large fists struggled with the flailing limbs as if to hold them still and the female noises crescendo more and more into something deranged. James looked away like an accidental voyeur but his bowels tightened with revilement. Surely he’d imagined something which couldn’t have happened and he’d shoved the grotesque thought away but it resurfaced now…
Agony forked up his spine so suddenly it made James jerk like a fish out of water before his mouth fell open to let loose a wail. The volume of it scraped up the lining of his throat as his voice contorted to a sharpness he’d never heard before. He’d never felt pain like this and this shriek came from deep within his core. His eyes rolled to their whites before lowering to find the source of this torture. The monster’s palms were pressed on his thighs and he’d pried the limbs apart with such careless force, James’ bones popped out their pelvic sockets. The snap was so abrupt he never had a chance to brace himself. One moment the figure was sliding between his legs and the next he was struggling to stay conscious.
James blubbered something nonsensical, thoughts bouncing inside his skull with no tether to anchor them to sense but he felt large hands wrap around his left arm like constricting serpents and he shook his head in a mute plea. It was useless. Another pop and his shoulder dislocated. The monster pulled his bones out like he was a doll to be toyed with and James’ cry obviously meant nothing. After the left, came the right and James barely had time to blindly swat at the creature before he was reduced to a broken thing. His fingertips brushed against the edge of the pyramid and he felt the coarse rust grate his injured flesh. An odd thing to reflect on before everything was drowned in a melting pot of agony.
He gasped for shallow pockets of air while his mind did its best to find miniscule respites between the strikes of pain electrifying his nerves. Every breath seemed to be punished with a jagged thorn prick of hurt but it wasn’t as if James could stop. He was entirely too distracted to notice what the monster was doing until an especially acute ball of misery exploded around his crotch. The sound of jeans being ripped went unnoticed, eclipsed by his own desperate please. James looked with eyes too feverish to properly focus at hands jerking his injured body while they peeled the cloth off. He didn’t comprehend why the monster’s nakedness was so terrifying or connect the implications to himself.
James felt the dull press against his pucker and even then his mind scrambled for different answers. Then the thing breached him, rough and impossible to resist like a red hot knife splitting meat apart. James couldn’t keep his thoughts together long enough for him to start figuring out why this was happening but it dawned on him after the burning rod scored his guts that, it was happening. His ears filled with the obscene noises he’d heard in the closet and they seemed so close but the only cacophony disturbing this eerie vow of silence were of his own making. The monster said nothing while it violated him. It was as emotional in its punishing delivery as an executioner dropping the blade on the necks of the condemned.
He screamed until he didn’t think he could anymore. His voice became quiet, scratching all the way to his throat and dying there. His mind mantled itself in a detached numbness and James embraced it. Nothing dulled. Nothing felt easier but James discovered a tiny crevice inside his thoughts where he could cower while this was being done to him. There was something so cruel about being confronted with his complete helplessness and being forced to accept it. James realized Silent Hill tried to tell him how lacking he really was from the start but when things got too bad, he somehow found a sliver of help to keep the sparks of his hope alive. Had it all been a malicious trick like the safety of the red light? He’d have laughed madly if the action didn’t threaten to break his brain completely.
The monster pounded into his body with what James assumed was his cock. The rod felt inhumanly thick and hard. Maybe it was made of rust and metal like his head? He couldn’t possibly know and he doubted any answer would make the dank noises coming from between his legs any more bearable. He felt his body tear and rip and things slide out. He heard the wet slop of them pooling on the concrete and there was certainly more than blood slipping out his gashed hole. His cock spat out a trickle of cum but it wasn’t something remotely pleasurable. Just a bodily function being forced out of him which caused James’ innards to tense and ache more. He madly wondered if the monster would fuck him until he was a minced pile of meat and maybe even after that. James gurgled a bloody smile at the twisted image. What the fuck was Silent Hill doing to him? Why didn’t he care? He coughed a deluge of blood and bile, gasping for air between the burning combination blocking his oesophagus.
James rolled his eyes to find the creature’s red pyramid head cast a shadow over him and felt that sensation of being watched from beneath the metal. What was the punisher seeing? Was James’ divorce from sanity pleasing to it? He almost wished the thing spoke even if he didn’t think anything would matter anymore. He would die here and leave behind a macerated corpse for the next unfortunate to find. What would they think of his splayed corpse? A weird thing to consider but James wondered if they’d turn away in disgust at the brutal gape of his hole. Or would they stare deep inside the vulnerable exposition of his intestines with the same morbid fascination he’d been guilty of?
Suddenly he felt the monster’s hands around his throat, fitting almost comfortably around it. They squeezed, thumb pressing on his trachea until James heard another moist crack and he sighed a breath of relief. Probably his last one. It’d be over soon. Had the light above him always been red? He felt that peace again.
‘James!’ He blinked and fell backwards as if released by a chain. James groaned at the dull ache of his coccyx hitting the pavement and shook his head in stunned bewilderment. His lungs felt deflated and he gulped for air avariciously, coughing most of it out and reaching to grab at his broken windpipe. Except… He looked around him in frenzied confusion.
‘Hey! James? You back with me big guy?’ He blinked dumbly like a new-born at Maria hesitatingly kneeling beside him. Her eyes searched his expression and he couldn’t understand where she’d come from. Where was the monster? Why weren’t his limbs hanging onto his torso by the stringy pull of his tendons? He stared around him but there was no hint of the behemoth and his pyramid head. No drag of his blade. No fresh blood cascading from the edge of the desk!
‘Maria?... What happened?’ James nearly flinched at the sound of his voice. It was…normal. He still heard it distorted by agony inside his head, so loud he nearly reached to cover his ears.
‘You tell me. You had one of your weird staring into space moments, then started convulsing all over like you had a seizure and now we’re here. Should I be worried?’ James turned to find the desk behind him with the red square still glowing its light. It looked so innocuous but… Had that not happened? He scrambled to cast his thoughts back before the monster grabbed him and remembered coming to this room with Maria. He basked in the sheltering glow of that light and then… But he was fine so obviously that encounter must have been in his own head! He curled his fingers and toes just in case and found them perfectly functional. He wanted to reach inside his pants to make sure other parts of him were healthy as well but he hesitated with Maria standing so close. Things felt fine, his organs felt whole…
‘No…No. I must have drifted off. Sorry.’ James had no idea what to believe but Maria needed reassurance. She seemed weary to take it but after staring deep into James’ eyes while he made a Macedonian effort to settle his nerves, she seemed to mollify. She stood and smiled down at him while he scrambled to his feet, dusting his pants off but also checking for fresh blood stains. There was nothing there….
‘It’s ok big guy.’ She chuckled but there was something unsettling about the sound. James didn’t catch it. ‘You know, it’s so weird when you drift off like that. Where do you go? A pleasant dream perhaps?’ Maria tilted her head coquettishly, clearly implying something James came to expect from her character. He touched his throat, so clearly feeling monstrous fingers around it he nearly started gasping again. He shivered as he glanced at the red light.
‘More like a nightmare.’ James was starting to think Silent Hill didn’t act without purpose but what had it been trying to tell him with that?! A tremor rocked his spine and Maria must have noticed.
‘What do you say we get out of here? Let’s go find the girl.’
‘Yeah…Sounds good.’ James turned his back on the light and he swore he felt something watch him.