✘ lost in the flames

[yardbird]

Day I. September 26th

• Narrow Escape: The Shiver [Narrative]
  
• It's Such A Gray Day | Henry Townshend

Day II. September 27th

• Monster Hospital | Anne Cunningham's Otherworld
  
• The Defiled [Narrative]

Day III. September 28th

• Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things | Alex Shepherd's Otherworld
  
• Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig [Narrative]

Day IV. September 29th

• Full Circle [Narrative]
  
• Folosom Prison Blues {The Penitentiary} | Irene Adler

Day V. September 30th

• Mirror, Mirror | Annie Cresta
  
• Roadkill {The Church} | Nepeta Leijon

Day VI. October 1st

• The Devil You Know [Narrative]
  
• The Repeater I. | Nepeta Leijon {Nowhere}
  
• The Repeater II. | OTA {Nowhere}

Day VII. October 2nd

• The Repeater III. {Nowhere} | Anne Cunningham

Fin

• Breathing Water [Narrative]
  
• Flooded Area | Alex Shepherd

Comments

Nowhere | Breathing Water

[yardbird]

IT WAS NIGHTTIME AND I WAS FLOATING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE OCEAN.
I WAS TRYING TO SWIM, BUT I WAS TOO COLD. I KEPT LOOKING -- I KEPT LOOKING FOR SOMETHING TO HANG ON TO.
AND THERE WERE PRESENTS FLOATING ALL AROUND ME. THEY WERE WRAPPED UP. THEY WERE TIED WITH BOWS.
I TRIED TO GRAB ON TO THEM, BUT THEY KEPT POPPING AWAY. AND THEN I STARTED TO SINK LIKE A STONE.
THERE WAS NOTHING I COULD DO. I WAS FALLING.
BUT IT FELT GOOD. I WAS LETTING GO. I WAS LETTING MYSELF GO...
AND ALL I COULD SEE WAS BLACK AND ALL I COULD FEEL WAS THE DARKNESS ABOVE ME AND THE LIGHTS COMING FROM BELOW. I KNEW I WAS DYING.
AND THEN I HEARD THIS VOICE, LIKE SOMEBODY WHISPERING IN MY EAR.

"WAKE UP, NUMBER 37."

AND THEN I WOKE UP.

{The Sinking Man}

[yardbird]

He wakes in the water, where it began. The treacherous flow of the currents take him, like several hands pulling him farther down into the black. It's dark here now in this muffled place, unable to scream or cry as his vision slowly fades.

Murphy remembers the gardens, the way the world shifted and changed like a horrible nightmare coming to claim him once more. He can still see the visions beyond the red windows, picture them in his head as he falls -- and ran into Townshend when he had.

After twists of hallways, the ship no longer bore any likeness to the Tranquility. No, it had been a hospital. And before long something had struck him from behind. The next thing he knew, something had been carting him down myriad corridors; the churning of rusty metal of the wheelchair still lingers around him. And Anne--

I love you.

Anne.

Once again he had done wrong by her. Couldn't even speak the words back when he had the chance, before they were separated, before the drugs had taken him and he couldn't think, see, or hear anything. But the words don't give up still ring true in his mind, and that is something he doesn't want to forget.

They never loved you.
He's falling deeper into the water now, and he still remembers. It's impossible to forget that boy, Alex...

He tried to help. He wanted to, very badly. But Alex was gone. Dead, most likely, sunken into the ground where he can't ever see...

Then there was Carol.

Murphy tries not to think about Carol.

That prison continues to haunt him. In the passing of the days, weeks, months... maybe years. In that sliver of time, he had given up. He would have even let Silent Hill have its way. These bars might as well have been his home now. He ought to get used to the cramped corners of his confinement.

It's enough that he can't bring himself to regret the fact that he resorted to begging. To Adler, of all people.

But it got him out, didn't it? It got him...

Nepeta.

Oh, God. Help him. Nepeta is gone. He hurt her, so bad. It wasn't him, but he watched it happen. He let himself slip away while that thing had her. He lost control in that nowhere-place. For awhile, there was no finding his way back. Nothing.

It almost wound up doing the same to Anne... It wasn't him, but, again... he sees himself. In the waters, far off, he sees himself. The masked monster, staring back at him, with its arms held out and joints bent and twisted in ways that no human would be able to survive.

Then Murphy remembers how many times it had forced Anne to shoot him. How many bullets did he have in him? How many injuries?

There is no sound when he screams. Only the airy pitch that reverberates in the water, now black and red creeping from his wounds.

He twists, the maddening agony creeping in every corner of his panic. Blood drains from his injuries, but stops when he feels as though something inside of him is burning.

Suddenly, the blood stops flowing.

Murphy doesn't move.

In an instant, as easy and swift as that, he doesn't struggle anymore. He just can't.

It doesn't hurt so much now. The final moments are a bit peaceful, actually. For those brief fragments of time as he descends deeper into the vacuum of the water, down into that nothing, he realizes -- he is oddly thankful. This is the closest that Murphy Pendleton has ever felt to his son since before he died.