31_days | [6-Mar-2007] [Silent Hill 4] Voice

Title: Voice
Day/Theme: March 6. no more curses you can't undo, left by fathers you never knew
Series: Silent Hill 4
Characters: Walter & Eileen
Rating: PG

He tries to ignore the sounds, but somehow he finds himself straining to hear them. A voice, rough against his ears, hateful and frightening and dark. He doesn’t want to listen, but he does, he listens and he understands that this person hates him, even though he has done nothing to warrant the hatred. All he has to do is exist, and he’s a burden. He wasn’t old enough to give back his life to the void, and he feels a kind of guilt that he didn’t just die then and there, or maybe even before that time when he was still with mother.

Bound. He feels trapped, and grimy, and hot. He feels like he’s dying, hungry and thirsty, desperate to feel any shred of contact against his flesh, but he feels nothing but the tight cloth, hears no soft voices against his ear, and no matter how he might try, he can’t remember mother’s face.

He hates it. He’s trapped between life and death, and he only hears monsters and yelling and screaming, and he wishes he didn’t hear someone crying and didn’t hear footsteps on the ground before him. He just hangs from the ceiling, lifeless, and waits for the person to leave, but she doesn’t, and the angry voice is only louder and more insistent. He wishes no one else would have to hear it too.

‘Is that… you?’ a voice asks, and for a sublime moment he thinks it’s mother, and he strains to see in front of him, strains to find blond hair but instead he finds brown. He loses that image of his mother, ripped away from his memories, and he’s angry at this girl for taking that away. But she didn’t know, and the hate dissipates, and he realizes that he’s reached the height of loneliness.

And she touches him, a frail touch of a bruised hand on his chest, and he feels the contact burn through to his skin even though he’s bound in cloth. And he tries to stop himself from going into her vulnerable mind, letting her hear and see that anger and feel that fear, but he gives it to her anyway because he must. The feelings in his own mind begin to fade, and the girl draws back from him, frightened.

He rests, dying again, feeling blood drip from his throat even though he knows its not there. He finds that moment of peaceful nothingness, silence and freedom of fear; it’s a small moment, but when he awakens he’s on the floor, and there’s a gun in his hand, and he knows he’s closer to finding his mother without his father’s hateful voice ringing through his memories.