Grace & Silver

Chapter 9

Nurse

Disclaimer: Konami’s Silent Hill and Takahashi’s Ranma belong to their respective owners. This is just for fun, please don’t sue.

WARNING: Remember Devouring Puppet? This is worse.

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Hell is rust and blood.

That’s the first thing that came to Nabiki’s mind when she regained consciousness. Hell was not fire and brimstone and torturous heat, nor was it the dark, artic and barren infernum that Dante visualized. Everything in Silent Hill is covered in blood and rust. From that, one who held facts and logic sacred above philosophy and spirituality came to the conclusion that Silent Hill was Hell; rusty, bloody damnation.

She was not in the Medical Clinic anymore; and she didn’t really want to know where she was. It was a long corridor with doors along one side, with the floor a steel grating over ebony abyss like that in the toy store. Scattered around the hall were demolished wheelchairs, thrashed hospital gurneys, and other mangled forms of medical equipment. On the back of one of the wheelchair backs there were stenciled letters.

‘Property of Brookhaven Hospital’.

Nabiki checked her map/brochure; she found it easily enough, but if she was in the hospital, then that meant that she had been transported halfway across the town when she was out cold. Well, if that was all that happened she would be exceedingly grateful. The question of who had done it came to her. Was it that thing with her father’s face? What the hell WAS that thing anyway? Whatever it was, it was gone now and Nabiki had no problems with the idea of never seeing it again either.

Meticulously checking herself over, she found no track marks, no puncture wounds, nothing aside from the damage she had already taken. Her duffle bag, windbreaker, baseball bat, and gun were all arranged on a gurney on top of a sheet draped over it. She didn’t dare lift to see what was the large lump underneath.

Nabiki saw that the way was fairly clear; the piles of wreckage blocked the doors and created a more or less straight path to a set of double doors titled by stencil as being the entrance to the Operating Theater. After gathering her supplies and getting herself ready for combat she quietly and cautiously tread through the hall towards the beckoning doors.

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It was enthralling. The very air itself seemed to be alive and sweet as she watched them. The old hag lay on the ground gasping for air, while the whimpering of those two filthy outsiders formed a melodic cacophony that only she seemed to enjoy. Most of all their smiles were content and joyous, like they hadn’t a care in the world. It was as close to bliss as she had seen, so happy and carefree. It was beauteous.

She rubbed her eyes from all the dust in the air. She hadn’t blinked the entire time as her eyes feasted upon the splendor before her. Ranma thrashing away the fur with his mother’s sword, as Akane gently cradling her father’s head as her hands and nails worked to strip tether by tether of flesh. That foul, icy middle sibling of the commoner family her dear Ranma was forced to reside with remained laid out cold on the floor, as people started to come to grips with reality; spurned by the smells of salty copper and fresh fear. She felt a dampness along her leg and realized that she had wet herself; unsure if it was out of fear, or exhilaration.

She looked down at the faint tugging on her arm. Someone was yelling at her to get up and move. She obeyed only when two pairs of arms forcibly lifted her up out of her seat. Her eyes remained fixed in the dusty air on the wedded couple. They were so happy, so very, very happy.

Gods, she wanted to be that happy.

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The operating theater was a large round room with a blood stained operating table and an EKG machine occupying its center. It was turned on, yet to Nabiki’s chagrinned fortune wasn’t hooked up to anyone. Its screen showed a long flat line along with the accompanying drone that remained unchanging for the moments she stared at it; a long, piercing beep being the only sound accompanying her fear-ragged breath. The floor had changed from mesh grate to riveted metal plates bolted haphazardly upon sparse sections of steel grates. Through the gaps, past the metal holes she could see a black endlessness beyond.

The walls were sweating, Nabiki noticed with a growing dread from the mounting surreality. She calmed herself, once she realized it was just condensation from the little mist and drips of water escaping the corroded metal pipes that lined the walls. Above where she stood were rows of benches circling the room, where prospective doctors, nurses, and other medical students would sit up there and observe the activities before them.

Nabiki chuckled a little as she pictured the scene. She had wanted to be a doctor once, a long, long time ago. She had wanted to be a number of things actually, but, like the dolls back at Maxine’s, she had to put that fantasy aside.

“It just wasn’t fair, you took away all of it.” Nabiki mumbled staring at the operating table. She paused as she realized what had left her lips. Where had that come from? Who was she talking about? Could she have mean-

BEEP.

Nabiki broke away from her introspection, her body back in alert as her startled instincts flushed her being with adrenaline.

BEEP.

There it was again. A high-pitched noise that broke from the long, constant pitch….

BEEP……….BEEP

The EKG machine’s obnoxious bleep, but it only broke like that if it were reading a pulse…

BEEP…BEEP…BEEP

Ihatethatbitchsomuch

It was another one of those whispers. A new one too, and, if the EKG machine meant what she thought it meant, then it was getting closer, fast.

KillhernutjobKillHerpsychopathkillher

The machine was beeping faster and faster, as if whoever it was monitoring was in the throes of a heart attack. What’s more, the sounds of approaching footsteps began to accompany it

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“That’s the third day the Kuno place has been quiet.” Hiroshi’s mother said as they walked by the front gate. “It’s unnerving.”

“I know, but then again everything happening here lately is unnerving.” Her friend said. “Did you hear what happened to our sons’ teacher?”

Hiroshi’s mother shook her head. “A tragedy, she was so young, and pretty too.” She sighed again. “I think we’re going to be moving soon. My sister in Osaka is willing to help us find a place there.”

“Leave Nerima?” The friend replied. “I don’t think I could do that.” She sighed. “You go ahead, I have to check on the Kunos. I’m worried about them, even if they are a bit eccentric.”

“Alright,” Hiroshi’s mother said shaking her head. “But I really think that this place isn’t safe anymore.”

The woman watched Hiroshi’s mother walk away with her groceries. She just couldn’t understand what she was going to do with the funnel and those bottles of drain cleaner. Anyways she had her neighbors to check up on. The front gate was unlocked, so she marched right up to the front door and rang the bell.

“Who is it?” The singsong, almost husky voice of the young Kuno girl replied.

“Miss Takabana, your neighbor. Is everything alright dear?”

“It’s perfect, we could never be happier.” Kodachi replied though the door. “But please excuse my rudeness.” She opened the door. “Please do come in.”

At the young girl’s appearance, Ms. Takabana gasped, stepping away like a small animal facing a ravenous wolf, “Ah…oh…I’ll be fine. I-I-I have errands…and…glad to see you’re okay…”

“Oh please, I insist.”

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It was human. No, it only looked human; it only resembled the person Nabiki remembered. It was about as tall as she was; with the height topped with long, ink black hair that had been untied from the ponytail she normally kept it in and allowing it to cascade down her back

It was smiling too; a lipless, crescent shaped opening in the pale skin of the face. Instead of gymnastics leotard, it wore a full Nurse’s uniform; a white blouse, skirt, and an apron draped over it. White shoes with no heels, white gloves, white stockings completed it, and to tie up the whole costume a little hat pinned to its head complete with a little red cross on it. A scalpel clutched in its hand.

Nabiki was struck by a strange sense of conflicting ironies, as she looked at the monstrosity. In one way, she would see this as a perversion of the town, twisting an image that she would usually associate with healing into a monstrosity. And yet, she found it strangely apt that something like this would only exist to kill her, clothed from head to toe in the pristine void of color that Japanese associated with death. Before her stood an angel of mercy… that promised none.

The EKG machine was beeping wildly, out of control, yet was drowned out by the wildly throbbing sound of Nabiki’s heartbeat in her ears. She kept her eyes locked on the monster, as she got her gun and bat in arm. The thing’s thin line of a smile stretched further across its face, as it shifted its weight to the right and moved. Nabiki reacted to its slight movement, and fired.

Nabiki jolted from the sound of the gunshot, barely even realizing it reported until the audible blast. The Bullet harmlessly hit one of the pipes lining the room causing a gout of water to burst out. The feeling of motion behind her! Nabiki spun around and raised the bat just in time to block the uniformed monster from stabbing her in the back with the surgical knife. Nabiki pushed it away trying not to show panic at realizing it not simply moved, but feinted and moved faster than she could follow. This thing was quick and smart; and possibly much more deadly than any of the monstrosities she had ever faced.

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The police came after the third person that had entered the Kuno estate reported missing. The household was still disturbingly quiet. The door was unlocked so the officers entered carefully, wholly cautious of what dangers the notorious Kuno grounds were set with. The first thing that hit them was the smell, a stench that festered in their noses like wretched decay.

“This is the police.” Officer Maniwa called out. “Kuno-san? Tatewake Kuno? Kodachi Kuno? Anyone?”

No reply. The officer turned to his partner and superior Officer Ikari with a perplexed look on his face. Ikari motioned that they should get their guns at ready, emphasizing that even under Japan’s strict gun control guidelines, this situation most likely warranted the precaution. The safeties were released, before they proceeded further into the manor.

There was something in the main room. It looked like a huge upturned bowl. The stench was so bad here you cold almost see the odors floating in the air in an almost comical way. Maniwa looked at his superior for guidance.

“You go check out the rest of the house.” Officer Ikari said wincing from the smell, and put a handkerchief over his nose in order to dull down the intensity. “I’ll see what that is.”

Coughing, and desperately glad to be getting away from the smell Maniwa nodded and went deeper into the manor.

Ikari, along with another officer, approached the large object in the room. It really looked to be like a bowl of some kind and if definitely was where the smell was coming from. Getting closer to the thing the aged detective gaped, once he realized what it was.

“A turtle shell?”

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Nabiki flinched, as she tried to fire again but missed, hitting another one of the pipes, and causing yet another gout of water. The sound of aging pipes being pushed to their limit indicated that she wouldn’t have to shoot anymore to cause them to burst. The damn machine was beeping incessantly, only adding to the roaring of water hitting the floor and falling through the grates into infinity. And then, as if the fates decided that Nabiki wasn’t in enough auditory pain, the demoness in a nurse’s outfit started to laugh, an awful noise that clawed at her eardrums with needle like talons.

It was just too much, as the awful noises compiling for her misery. Nabiki staggered back, with her hands clenched to her ears and her eyes screwed shut. Just barely above the unrelenting pain, she felt a sense of movement to her left rushing it as if it was coming in for the kill. Still with her eyes clamped tight, she swung the bat wildly with one hand and shot three times blindly with a Hail Mary thrown in for good measure.

A meaty thud, one metallic ping, and two muffled thuds responded. Opening her eyes showed her that, miracles of miracles, she had squarely connected with her bat and two of her bullets. Its gut leaked crimson that colored the filthy, shallow water it lay in. There was no way anyone could survive that.

That’s why Nabiki wasn’t that surprised when she saw that the creature was beginning to get back up. Aloud, she amended her statement to better suit the situation. “Anyone human.”

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The wretched and spoiled air robbed his breath, but still Ikari walked around the huge turtle shell to see what exactly it was doing here. “Hey,” He motioned for one of the officers. “Find a ladder so I can see what’s in here.” The man nodded and took off, leaving the commanding officer to for his assigned task.

Ikari’s shoe hit something hard and the object skidded across the floor. He raised an eyebrow, as he picked it up with gloved hands. It was a large collar with ‘Mr. Green Turtle’ engraved on it. Well now he knew where the shell came from. Of course the next question was that what was Mr. Green Turtle’s home doing here without Mr. Green Turtle? Ikari really didn’t like any of the ideas that were coming to answer his question, prompted by the overpowering stench.

The officer returned with a ladder and they propped it up next to the shell. Ikari, holding the ‘benefit’ of seniority, climbed up the ladder to look within. The officer watched dumbfounded as his superior calmly climbed down and left the building. He walked up to the pond in the yard and threw up into it, before he calmly returned to the front steps of the Kuno household and sat down, lighting a cigarette with shaking hands.

“Sir?” The officer who got the ladder walked up to him. “Sir what did you see? What’s in that thing?”

Ikari just shook his head. It wasn’t the piles of bodies, it wasn’t the copious amounts of blood, and it wasn’t even the fact that they had been putrefying for the last couple of days. It was the posh, luxurious mattress in the middle of all of that death and mutilation. Ikari still felt ill picturing it, imagining the fact that whoever was responsible for that was sleeping in it as well.

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Nabiki fought to steady her breath, but found herself losing to her anxiety and panic. She had swung this thing, shot this thing, and had actually hit the monster too, nothing seemed to work!

The laughter tore through her. The atrocious laughter mixed with the maddening sharp and thunderous pinging of the machine made for a abominate symphony that grated at her sanity fiercer than the shrilling scream the creature in the puppet theater had made. She could barely focus past the vicious and insane noise, but managed to concentrate on the pale nurse, as it made another running pass at her.

Her body responded almost automatically in a desperate effort to protect itself. The baseball bat rose up for a block and the gun swung around to fire; both weapons brought to use out of the instinct for self-preservation. Two sharp clangs preceded a thunder peal from the gun; a point blank shot that nothing should survive. The side of its head exploded, as the bullet exited of the temple from its trek beginning under its victim’s jaw. The concussive blow threw the monster away, only to have its short journey end on the floor with a wet thump; skidding away from Nabiki and up against the wall for the lack of traction caused by the water slicked floor. However, during its flight backwards it snaked the scalpel around Nabiki so that she would be impaled from behind. Thankfully Nabiki had dodged to the side in suspect of a retaliating swipe, but it wasn’t enough.

She could feel the blade dig into her flesh, and the warm blood dripping down her cheek, chilling her as it met with the cool, musty, and humid air. She didn’t feel any pain though, just a strange sensation like ripping apart two pieces of wet Velcro. She staggered back her had to her face, trying to stop the blood flow she understood was there without realizing it. Even as her hands dove for the bandages and salves in her bag she just couldn’t make what was happening feel real.

The thing was struggling to get up off of the ground; the water giving it no form of traction with its damaged limbs. Nabiki took the precious time given to stop the blood as best she could under the circumstances. What had happened hit home when she got a look of herself in the reflection of the EKG monitor, she had no idea if that shriek came from the machine, the monster, or her own throat. The thing had cut off two-thirds of her ear, and the last third was just hanging on by a tether of skin and cartilage.

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Maniwa, staying to one side of the doorway, slowly pushed open the door of the master bedroom, investigating the light from within. The soft sounds of gentle moans punctuated by short near-animal grunts became audible. The obvious sounds of fornication, as the stench that seemed to permeate the whole manor became mingled with the sweaty, heady smell of sex. Maniwa gingerly crept into the room with his gun at ready. He paused momentarily, as he looked down in disgust; the rug was wet and sticky, stained with some dark substance.

A girl with ink black, mussed and unkempt hair was lying prone on the bed, moaning softly, sharing an embrace with one other. “Oh…oh Ranma…yes oh God YES!”

“Kodachi Kuno? Sir?” Maniwa slowly approached the duo of lovers, gun leveled. “I must demand that you cease, and put your hands where-“ He stopped mid-sentence in sheer shock when he saw what Kodachi and her ‘partner’ were doing.

She wasn’t simply covered in blood, she was bathed in it, and garbed dried fresh and ichors; her eyes rolled back in her head and her mouth a wordless scream. Her lover was a misshapen couple of clothing store mannequins attached together; a head, a torso, legs, and other unmatched limbs to form a parody of a human male. She had stapled photos of some dark haired boy to every surface of its body, and its hand held a kitchen knife that slowly cut into the flesh of her right shoulder while she languishly gyrated against its inanimate form. The presence of other lacerations on her body made it clear that this was far from a new activity. The blade dug clumsily into her flesh again, forcing her to emit another moan. Her other hand probed and groped around the doll, as her nails dug into the back of it so hard to dig furrows into the wood, and cause her fingernails to peel and bleed.

“Oooooh Ranma, ohhh yes…ohhh, not so hard please! Oh yes! Oh more please more!” Maniwa stood with his mouth agape, as he became the voyeur to such depravity. Kodachi remained unaware of his presence, as she arched her back, slightly pulling her freely bleeding shoulder off the glistening blade, as a chocked whimper left her throat.

“Dear God in Heaven…” Maniwa mumbled under his shuddering breath, starting at the scene. “CALL AN AMBULANCE!”

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The thing finally seemed to regain its balance, the screeching laughter still coming out of it, as its shoulders trembled.

Nabiki was frantic, and more than a little hysterical, as the blood flowing down her cheek began to pool where her jaw met her neck. That damn EKG machine was beeping hysterically, and the laughter of the thing in the nurse’s uniform burrowed into her eardrums. Giving into madness, Nabiki became determined to silence at least one of the damnable noises.

She ran over to the damn machine and ravenously tore out one of its wires. The machine dropped from hysterics to the steady drone of a flat line. At the sudden loss of one overpowering and steady sound, she began to think a little more clearly. The frayed wires of the cable in her hand still sparked with electricity; the thing was still powered, even without a closed circuit. Turning to the monster she saw that it was back on its feet, trodding towards her in an unhurried pace through the dirty water that reached both their ankles. Its thin grin cracked, showing pure white teeth that bit into the almost non-existent bottom lip.

Nabiki looked at the sparking cable in her hand, and threw it down onto the spreading puddle on the metal floor. Before it landed, she quickly leaped up on the blood soaked operation bed. The following crackle was very satisfying, the floor even lit up for a fraction of a second. The machine overloaded, and sputtered out from its attempt to provide power over such a wide surface. The rubber wheels holding up Nabiki’s perch kept the platform from being grounded, and protecting her from anything more than a minor jolt. Any longer, and they wouldn’t have been able to take much more. The smell of burnt flesh wafted in the air where the permeating laughter had reigned; the creature before her smoldered, and remained unmoving.

The thing in the uniform didn’t jerk around or writhe with convulsions, only dropping to the floor like a marionette with its strings cut. The little clatter of the scalpel falling from dead hands onto steel grated floor was the only sound heard for what seemed to be an eternity.

Distrusting, Nabiki fired off one more shot to the thing’s head to make sure it wouldn’t get up again. Nabiki almost elated in the smell of burnt flesh, and was a little surprised to find a smile on her face; one that remained as she ripped the remaining pieces of flesh that once made up her ear and applied a fresh bandage using the last of her first supplies.

A new sound erased the smile from her face quickly.

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They put Kodachi in the room that was across from Daisuke in what was rapidly being called the ‘Nerima Wing.’ The suicide, murder, and…other…cases kept pouring in. Sadly she passed away after a week of her therapy, the doctor was very upset with himself. He did everything perfectly by the book; there was no logical reason as to why her heart exploded within her chest.

In this day and age, electroshock therapy was completely safe.

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The sound of enthusiastic applause caused Nabiki to snap to attention again, searching the room for the source. Standing above her in the seats reserved for young medical students to gawk at the procedures below was that damnable girl in the bloody bridal veil.

“You!” Nabiki snarled and aimed her gun with her trembling hand. An empty gesture, there was no way she could hit that girl, a fact that they both were aware of. The Girl in the Bloody Bridal Veil responded by tossing something down to Nabiki.

Nabiki jumped back as the object hit the floor with a sticky sound. It was a lump of noodles. The kind you get when you put noodles in water before the water boils. The starch doesn’t get boiled out right and you are left with this…congealed mass. Nabiki was very familiar with this kind of mass, mostly from the nights that Akane cooked. Speared in the middle of it was a pair of chopsticks with Lucky Jade Restaurant engraved on them along with some meaningless Chinese characterShe was really getting tired of this, following that girl’s clues every time she threw one of these ba-. A flash of insight hit her and caused her lo actually laugh a little.

“Oh. I get it now.” She said to the Girl standing above her, a little laughter creeping into her voice. “Follow the bouncing ball. Cute, cute. Now, who the Hell ARE YOU? WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?” She screamed.

The Girl in the Veil just shook her head waving her finger at Nabiki in a chastising fashion, before she turned around and left the room. Nabiki sighed, as her rage deflating uselessly. She left the operating room, and made her way to the exit know that it would be pointless to try and catch the girl.

A quick check of her map showed her that another long hike back across town was in order. Gods above, she hated this town. Muttering to herself she opened the doors to the hospital and walked outside.

“You have to be kidding me.” Nabiki stated in a bland tone. She didn’t think it was possible, but Silent Hill had gotten worse. The sky was still pitch black and snow was still falling but everything else was gone. Wait that was inaccurate…everything remotely normal was gone. The buildings were warped and leering, peering down onto the street. Parts of the common western design had been replaced by gothic architecture. In fact at one spot in the street it seemed like a Japanese pagoda and a brick building were leaning and twisting in on each other like some anarchical architectural form of copulation.

The road had been replaced by the metal grating that was in the puppet theater and the hospital. In the distance, framed by the pitiful light of her pocket light she could see the movement of those shifting masses; distinguishable shadows, shapeless masses… gods only knew what they could be. Looking beyond them, Nabiki found a vast abyss where the town south of the hospital should have been. Now, there were only rust and blood stained pillars rising from the black, ending in windmills lazily whirling in the air despite the absence of any wind.

Reorganizing her belongings, Nabiki got ready for her travels into this new face of Silent Hill. She froze in horror, her foot halfway off the ground, when she realized something…

Why was she there again? As vaguely as she could recall, it had something to do with the couple in the picture she was carrying...

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Author’s Notes: Every Silent Hill needs a nurse, it’s the law! Thanks go to WFROSE for his editing. The usual invites for reviews and comments, and also a big thank you to Dark1 Ultimate. Thanks for reminding me about Kodachi, can’t believe I almost skipped her!