From the moment it happened, everything was dark for me.
I'm such a mess now. Everything has really gone to shit in my life. I don't know how I've managed to hold down my job, because there are times when I don't bother getting out of bed in the morning. The alarm will go off, and I'll just ignore it. It's not that I'm tired, not at all. Usually I just wake up and just stare at the ceiling, thinking about nothing because my mind's not in the groove. I suppose I do still have a job because my boss is quite a sympathetic person, but it has been three years now and I'm pretty sure even her patience is wearing thin. Celestia knows I know what my co-workers think. It's getting to the point now where they don't even bother waiting for me to leave when they ask each other why I can't just get over it already.
Well, fuck all of them. None of them know what this is like.
It's not just work, either. I don't speak to my friends anymore. My father actually tried to be a father to me when Velvet's illness really started to take a toll on me. Why he did this, I don't know, but after she died, his visits and his phone calls became less frequent in a hurry. I don't know what made him bother. We were never close in my childhood, or even through most of my adult life. He almost didn't even make our wedding. But, when she got really bad, even Dad's presence was welcome. It was human contact, when I was becoming more and more convinced that I was losing that capability. For a good long while, I felt my only friend was the bottle. After she died, the bottle got a lot closer to me. Thankfully, I was able to stop, because even I saw where it was leading.
Nevertheless, life was still a big drag for me. I existed. My body functioned. My lungs breathed, my heart beat, I still ate, still pissed and shit. My brain's more basic functions were just fine. But my soul was gone. It left with her when she died. They say your soul goes to Heaven when you die, but my soul didn't wait for me to die. The longer it went on, the worse I felt. Every new day had that dark feeling setting in just another inch or two deeper in my heart.
I guess everything changed when I got that letter, but I like to think it started the night before.
I remember sitting in my bedroom. I still had the king bed. It had been years since I had really shared it with anyone, but I never bothered getting one smaller. I had sat on the edge of the bed, with a shoe box in my hooves. In this shoebox was a Colt revolver, with a single speedloader. Six large .357 bullets. I had a slight fascination with handguns in my youth, and I fed this fascination thanks to my uncle, Hand Cuffs , a career police officer. He must have had a dozen different weapons, rifles, a pair of shotguns, an old Changeling War musket in working condition, and several handguns. The Colt was always my favorite, and he gave this to me as a wedding gift. I kept in the shoebox ever since. I don't think I ever took it out until the night before I got the letter.
I levivated the Colt in front of me. It was still as shiny as the day my uncle gave it to me. The mechanisms were still pretty well clean and lubricated, surprising considering how long it had been neglected. I toyed with the gun, dry firing it a few times. Then I slowly levitated a bullet from the speedloader and chambered it. I closed the chamber and spun it, like I was playing a game of Griffon Roulette. I was laughing. Had anyone else been there, they would have certainly thought I had finally jumped off the deep end.
Maybe I really did, because I then put the barrel in my mouth. I stared at the ceiling, and I had a bit of magic on the trigger. I closed my eyes and I saw her face again, just like in the photo I still carry in my wallet. That picture of her in the pink sweater. It's her, it's Velvet, still smiling at me. Celestia, I love her. I miss her so much. It was the first time in a good long while that I had actually thought so clearly about her, and the grief hammered me like waves, strong and potent even after three years.
I took the gun out of my mouth, stopped levitating it, dropping it on the floor at my feet. Then I buried my face in my hooves and I cried. I cried like a god damn baby. Three years it's been, and yet she still haunts me. My body was racked with sobs, and I felt the strength drain out of me. I fell back onto the bed, weeping tears from my eyes and dripping snot from my nose. I made no attempt to wipe either away. I just lay there crying, until I finally passed out.
It was light when I woke up, still in my jacket. Thank Celestia I didn't have to work this morning, because I didn't really think I was going to stay awake long. I sat up in bed, and I wiped the dry snot from my face. I went into the bathroom, took a long piss, and tried not to look at my reflection in the mirror as I went back to the bedroom.
I levitated the Colt up off of the ground, and stared at it, remembering how close I had come to using it last night. It was a game of Griffon Roulette after all, with just one player. I didn't know if pulling the trigger would have ended my life. The odds were against it, but I was still quite curious.
I pointed the gun at the ceiling and pulled the trigger. The hammer struck, but instead of a thundering roar, all I heard was the sound of it hitting an empty chamber. No worries then. Without even looking at it again, I levitated the gun back into the shoe box and put it back on the shelf in my closet that it had been sitting on ever since we moved in here.
I started walking to the kitchen to get a bite to eat, when I heard a very loud bang on the front door, very loud. And it wasn't like someone hitting the door with their hand, or even with a stick, it was more like someone drove their car into it. The house reverberated and shuddered with the impact. It would have scared the living shit out of anyone, and with me and my hair-thin nerves, well, I know for sure I would have pissed myself if I hadn't already relieved myself.
I ran to the door, expecting to see it caved in or even knocked off of its hinges, but when I got to it, I didn't see any signs of damage. I looked out of the small window, but I saw nothing, except the stairs leading up to the small porch, enough that a car could not have hit it, certainly not with the force I just heard. Gingerly, I unlocked the door, and pulled it open. It moved with its normal fluidity, and the front of the door showed no damage, not even a slight sign of impact. It was very confusing.
Then I saw the envelope on the ground, lying face down on the welcome mat.
I reached down and grabbed it, then shut the door. I got all the way to the kitchen and had a glass of orange juice in my hand before I even looked at the thing. It was a rather fancy envelope, and small, much like the kind Velvet and I used to mail our wedding invatations. It was creamy-white and embossed with floral designs. I turned the envelope over in my hand and looked at the front. What I saw absolutely blew my mind like nothing I had seen before.
"TO: Red Velvet."
My wife's name.
My heart slammed against my chest, and my breathing was quick. Velvet! The envelope had no return address. I slid my finger under the seal and nearly ripped the flap off from the force. There was a piece of paper inside, folded into quarters. I pulled it out and unfolded it.
It was a letter. And it wasn't written to her at all. Maybe if it was, things would be very different right now. But it was not. It was Velvet who wrote this letter. And, it was written to me.
"In my restless dreams, I see that town, Silent Hill. You promised you would take me there again someday, but you never did. Well, I'm alone there now, in our special place. Waiting for you. -Red Velvet"
Waiting for you. Waiting for me.
No fucking way, Jose. I could not believe this. I CANNOT believe this. She's dead! How can she write me a letter? What the hell was all this about?
Never once then did it occur to me that someone could be playing a cruel joke on me. Not once. I knew right away that it was her handwriting, and her words. They seemed terribly familiar for whatever reason, but there was no mistaking this, in my head. My dead wife wrote me a letter.
Reason totally abandoned me. I guess that finally pulled that final guitar string that was my sanity a little too hard and I could almost hear its terrible plucking sound as it snapped. The feeling was sudden and strong, it was like having a good drunk, really.
I had made up my shattering mind to go there. Celestia only knows why, but she said she was there. It was the first dim ray of hope I've had in far too long, there's no way I could ignore it. It was an incredible feeling. I didn't make any special preparations for the trip, just a few sodas in a cooler and a map of the town I kept from our last visit, right before she started getting really bad.
Not even twenty minutes later I was walking toward the Everfree Forest on a certain path heading everywhich way, that only I could figure out, heading north towards Augusta. Once I was a bit north of Augusta, I would take a right, which would lead to the western part of which the Everfree houses many secret lakes, the most beautiful of which is Lake Everfree. Around Lake Everfree is the small resort town of Silent Hill. Our special place.
Red Velvet was there. I know it. The letter said so.
Author's Note
This is my first story ever! Based off of Silent Hill 2, one of my favorite games ever, and it gives me so much joy to actually write this!
The walk was a long one. Maybe it was just the state of mind I was in, but it seemed much longer than it did the last few times I attempted. I think the fear and the anticipation may have played a role in that. Don't get me wrong, I had been here before a handful of times with Velvet. She loved this town to death, and while I can't really say it had the same effect on me at first, I'd say by the end of the second visit, it really began to grow on me as well. After that, even I was excited to go, and it became an annual tradition, one that started as a random getaway and ended as our anniversary getaway.
But never did the thought of going to Silent Hill seem the way it did today, and why would it? I had not even thought about going back since the disease really began to bury its claws deep within her. Now I was going again. Maybe it felt different because she wasn't with me. I had never come here alone before. But of course, it was more than that. Would I be alone when I got there? What was I going to find? My imagination supplied me with plenty of possible scenarios, ranging from a tearful reunion to something out of The Exorcist, but if my rational mind even bothered to chime in how utterly ridiculous this whole idea was, I guess I wasn't paying attention. Luna knows I wasn't in the mood to hear it anyway.
I crossed the Augusta border around noon, and almost immediately after I did, clouds shrouded the sun from view. I didn't take much notice, it was summertime in Equestria, and it wasn't unusual at all for thunderstorms and overcast skies to be prowling about. For the next hundred miles it was like this.
I stopped in Augusta, at a veggie burger joint. I got a fairly decent veggie burger and hay fries, but I ate them in an absolute daze. I can't even remember the name of the place or what the interior décor was like. I remember stopping there, I remember eating, and I remember having the burger in one trembling hand, and that photograph of Red Velvet in the other. I just stared and stared at it, as if seeing it for the first time.
In a way, I felt the same kind of dumbstruck when I first met her, but this was quite different, a feeling I had never experienced before and one I couldn't even begin to describe. That first time, I was taken by her beauty, her grace. I was amazed that such a wonderful mare (close description, I met her not long after she turned eighteen) would give her attention to a quiet loner like me, but she did. That was love at first sight, so I felt at the time. I suppose it really was. Princess Cadence was certain that it happened all the time, I guess I could believe in it too. What I was feeling here and now, though, was a terrible, oily mixture of longing and incredibly crazy hope. I would not have ever admitted it then, but I was a terribly desperate man, and this really was my last hope.
I finished the meal, tipped the waitress my last twenty bits, and got back to walking. I still levitated the photo beside me, and I sat there staring at it again, unsure of what to do with it. On one hand, I couldn't bear to hide it back in my saddlebag again, but on the other hand, the more that I looked at this picture, the more I felt strange vibes from it, as if the serene, smiling face of my wife now carried a subtle undertone of accusation in her eyes that I couldn't even think to explain. In the end, I kept it out, clipping it to the dash. As I continued north past Augusta and onto the path to Lake Everfree, my eyes were almost constantly taking glances at her.
So distracting was this photo that I covered a lot of the walk without even realizing it. I saw a sign telling me that I was less than ten miles away. I guess I wasn't much farther than that when I ran into the first of the fog, which was a little odd. Not that fog was an uncommon sight in western Everfree, especially around the lakes, but it was the middle of summer. The temperatures were peaking ninety, and it was cloudy and overcast all day, conditions that aren't really conducive to creating fog.
That wasn't the only odd occurrence though. After passing that sign, I did not see a single vehicle of any sort. There was no noise at all, and here it was, the height of tourist season. There was a dread silence, and my hooves crunching on the dirt as I walked, singular contrast to it.
The strangest thing I didn't really notice until I was just outside of town.
I got off at the path's exit onto the Toluca Spear, one of Silent Hill's main thoroughfares, looping all the way around Lake Everfree town's limits, Nathan Avenue was blocked off, and not just with sawhorses and barricades, but the entire entrance underpass was blocked. It looked as though some heavy-duty construction was going on. I couldn't believe they would seal off one of the major entrances to town with the tourist season just around the corner, yet there it was.
Out of options, I stopped nearby at a rest station, and looked around. That's when I noticed the strangest thing of all.
It was cold as hell. Not chilly, not even merely cool. It was cold. It felt like it was in the forties. Halfway to June and barely above freezing! Thankfully I knew a couple spells to help with this problem, learned them from Hand Cuffs. I used the spell, but I still felt a little cold.
I grabbed the map and the letter from the passenger seat, and had to double-take to grab the photo. As much as that thing had occupied my attention for the last few hours, I couldn't believe it wasn't the first thing I took. I stretched a bit and headed to the little outstation, for nature was calling.
The restroom was one of the absolute filthiest I had ever seen, and it looked quite neglected. Graffiti stained the walls, which were crumbling and pitted with impact damage, the toilets were stained with urine and shit, and it looked like some parts of the floor were too. It smelled like it hadn't been cleaned since roughly the end of the Unicorn/Pegasus War. The lights were still working, but the plumbing apparently did not, as the toilet did not flush when I pushed the handle, nor did water flow from the sink.
The mirror above the sink was as filthy as the rest of the place, but there was enough clear that I could see my face. I can't say I really liked what I saw, either. My hair was greasy and there were dark circles under my eyes. My nose was red, as the sudden cold was making me sniffle. I still had lunch on my breath. I looked like hell, to be sure, but I like to think I didn't look insane. Doing what I was doing certainly qualified, but I knew something would come of it. I had to believe it. Otherwise, I would have realized just what it was I was doing, and God only knows what that would have done to my mind.
I wiped my face with the sleeve of my jacket, twisted a crick out of my neck, and walked outside, towards the overlook.
The view from here was really quite nice, I could almost see all the way to the lake. The overlook was quite elevated, and on a clear day I imagine you could even see the houses of Old Silent Hill from here, but today was anything but clear. The fog was very, very thick. That and the biting chill I was at a complete loss to explain.
I pulled out the map and looked at it, then at the letter again. Velvet did not specify a particular location. All it said was that she was waiting at our "special place". But what was our special place? I felt more than a little crappy for not knowing, but we did come here quite often, and in our travels had seen a great deal of the town. What could she mean?
I found the overlook on the map, and from there I saw a twisted path leading into the South Vale neighborhood, which, as I remember, was a bunch of shops and a few apartments. That's when my eye caught a name.
Rosewater Park. That was definitely a name I remember. Rosewater was a lakefront park not far from here, a nice little place with a statuary and gardens. I remember sitting on the benches with her, holding hands and daydreaming together as we gazed upon the beauty of Lake Everfree. I remember actually doing that on more than one visit. She did really love it there. Of course, I did too. I didn't know for sure if that was the special place, but it was as good a place to start as any.
I walked towards the nature trail, tucking the map, letter, and photo in my pocket. There was a set of concrete steps leading down to the trail, but the fog was so syrup-thick that I couldn't see the bottom. It was, in all honestly, quite scary to look at. I felt even then as if I were at a threshold, that right now I had one last chance to think straight, turn around, get back on the path, walk through Augusta and the Everfree, and go straight back home. I'd still be miserable, but maybe I wouldn't be crazy. There was such a foreboding about the descent in front of me that it almost felt tangible, like it was a snake coiling around my ankles. Then I thought of the photograph in my pocket, and of course, the letter as well.
She's here. It may have been nothing but my own wishful thinking, but I thought I could feel her presence here, in this little lakeside town. She's here.
My brain made one last attempt to warn me off and go back to the path of reason. I ignored it. I may be crazy, I may be totally off-the-rocker batshit, but right now, crazy was sounding leagues better than the misery and emptiness that had been consuming me for the last three years. I started down the stairs, into the swirling gray fog, towards Silent Hill, and Red Velvet.
Author's Note
Hey guys, sorry for not updating, school took over my life, and I had all these projects :P. But I'm back now, I hope you enjoy!
