Disclaimer: I am not the creator of the Silent Hill series, its characters or its plot. The title of this fan-fic is a song by Rammstein, and I don't own that, either. Just about the only thing that is mine is the idea to write this. So don't sue me: I'm poor, anyway.

20th May, 2007: I edited this, proofread it, fixed some grammar and tweaked the language a bit. Not much is different, but perhaps it's worth another read.

Mein Teil

I.

This room is a cell. Not just any ordinary cell, it's almost like one you'd find over in Brookhaven or St. Anita: confined and ridiculously cramped with its eight by six foot cubicle rooms, bone bleached tiled walls and floors, plaster ceiling squares swelling with water stains. I never imagined I'd look at my place in such a way… I used to love it here, couldn't get enough of its "cozy" feel and how safe I felt when inside of it, but now I want out. It tricked me, and now I'm locked in with no way of escape. I used to enjoy it here, and I felt comfortable… but now I can't say that for sure. Now it makes me restless, edgy. My nerves are frayed.

This room is closing in on me, contracting and tightening like a tensed muscle or an animal preparing to attack. Its almost alive…I can hear its pulse in my head while I sleep: it swells behind the silence and draws closer with each moment, and sometimes I swear I can hear it in here, like it's inside of me or something, growing off of me. This place is a tumor with a heart of its own, throbbing with life in time with my pulse. Just the thought is making me ill, the idea that someone else is in here with me, watching me, invading the last scrap of privacy I had... I came to this city to be alone and to have some time to myself for a bit, just a few years of well needed solitude, but now… I just want so badly to be near someone again.

I'm standing front of a window, one of many, in my living room. The glass is dirty from my palms and fists but I don't bother to clean it off, it doesn't get any clearer no matter how I try. I stare down at the city beneath me, watching people dart across streets and into cabs, winding their way through traffic, and I try to remember what day it is, or how long I've been in here. I can't… really tell. My head's not working right today. Must've been the dream I had last night. They're nothing new, I've always had weird dreams since I moved to this place, but there's something… different about this one. It felt more real than the others. I guess it doesn't help matters much that it happened in my apartment, either.

There was someone in the walls, I remember that much. I could hear whispers and footsteps as I moved into the rooms, trying to hide from whoever it was but never getting out of its reach. It would run after me through the walls, which were hollow and stare at me from mirrors and windows that were two-faced, but I never saw it. It breathed long, droning pants of air, mingling with furtive whispers and mutters that I couldn't understand, only snatch at a word or two and translate it into something coherent. One of them was "Receiver." The other, "Sacraments." Odd.

It's like I'm a stranger to my home, and it to me. I barely recognize the place anymore. Locked windows, chained door, everyone can look in at me but I can't get out or make a sound. It's a prison, a cell, a vice slowly winding down, a malign intent spinning the handle closer and closer, nearer, sooner. Whatever's gonna happen... I can't help but think it'll be real soon. I feel it like a person who senses the impact of an oncoming car and winces in the halo of the headlights before it rounds the turn, or like a mother who knows when her child is in danger and can feel it in her gut. A second sense, an instinct. There's something wrong here.

I realize now that I am a stranger in my own home. I know very little about it and I'm just taking up space, biding my time, while the room thinks of a way to get me out of the picture. Whatever's happening here isn't new or bizarre by this room's standards, it's perfectly normal. I'm the one that's out of place. This place... it's alive, and it's treating me like a parasite, like an abnormal growth that latched onto it one day and sucks out its life by breathing and being. But really, isn't that sort of what happened—me moving in and all, invading its territory and arranging it to fit my needs? And as long as I'm stuck in here, it'll try to make some use of me. It's none of my business to begin with and it's not my problem, but now I'm sucked into it just by association, just because I live here. My room's an abyss that knows no limits and pulls in what it can when it can…

II.

I felt something weird about this place when the Super showed me around, almost like a pull, a yearning to get closer, to be closer. Being inside the apartment that first time was… well, it was sort of like being in a cradle as an infant, or like being held in my mother's arms. I felt like a kid again, safe and ignorant to the world beyond these walls and blind to anything that could hurt me. I thought the room would shelter me from what I'd gotten away from since high school ended ten years ago; I thought it would protect me from the real world. And now… now it's turned against me. A mother's loving arms that once supported now squeeze to harm, to crush. Caressing gentle hands now clasp around my throat, slender fingers clawing at my eyes and mouth. An open hand becomes a closed fist poised to strike, a soothing lilt dissolving into a feral howl. But I can't leave her—here! I can't leave here! Physical obstacles aside, I just… can't do it. It wouldn't be fair to mother. What would she do without me—where would I be without her? Where… wait. What?

My mother? What the hell's happening to me? She has nothing to do with this… and besides I haven't seen her in a while... hadn't seen her since she and dad got divorced and left town. M-Maybe the room's screwing with me a bit. I don't know why I thought of her now of all times. It's water under a bridge or something, right? I'm over it, I'm a grown man and there's nothing I can do to change what happened.

Christ, I have to get out of here. I need some air, some space, a change of atmosphere, some company. Someone, anyone I don't care who. It's hell being stuck in here, alone and trapped, and there's nothing I can do to change it. I'm helpless…

III.

The air's getting thick and it looms over me like the lid of a coffin. I can almost feel the nails slam down like a slackened pulse. The fan whirling above me slices through the heat and keeps my claustrophobia at bay, but I don't know how much longer I can hold out like this… My television is out, the clock stopped I don't know how long ago, and the radio just barely works. All I get is some weird news report about murders, naked men found urinating on utility poles, ear-splitting static or this freaky ad for that resort town, Silent Hill. The lamps are dimly lit at best, a beacon in a world shrouded with fog, and the windows are stubborn in their frames, immobile and unrelenting. This isn't a home so much as it's a tomb, a vault, a crypt for me to waste away in without anyone being the wiser to the truth behind my situation. This may be just a dream but the threat is frighteningly real.

Is it even possible to die from isolation?

IV.

This place is disgusting. I want to get out of here, just leave and not bother with it anymore, un-peel it from me like dead flesh that blisters and cracks. My head's starting to hurt, the pain a gradual crescendo that expands from my temples and trickles down, encasing every muscle, every tissue, every cell in a spasm. This is the kind of headache that you can feel in the root of each tooth as they wail in harmonic dissonance, the kind of headache that makes you want to take a set of pliers and free each paralyzed pearly white with swift, desperate gestures, the kind of headache that you feel so horrible it's like every nerve is a knife slicing, cutting, wounding. Advil and Tylenol are useless tools for combat; how I pine for some Vicodin.

It's funny… in one of those not-so-funny-so-much-as-it's-ironic way. You don't realize how in debt you are to other people until your contact with them is cut off abruptly. You don't realize just how much you depend on them to make up part of your daily routine, a schedule that's reliable in an unreliable world, until you have to do without. All the little bits that make them who they are, that make them memorable and hell, even what pisses you off about them becomes embedded into your mind. You almost begin to anticipate these little quirks no matter how much you hated them previously. Now it's just one more thing you relied on to be normal that's turned its back on you.

This type of thinking never did me any good. Sure, it's realistic, but it doesn't change a damn thing. It just makes reality that more painful, that more… real. It's like taking my face and pushing it up against a wound that's so encompassing, so significant even from a distance: not only is it entirely unnecessary, it's also pretty obnoxious.

V.

The pain roils again, taking me by surprise. God… it's worse than before, worse than I thought it could be. It must be messing with my head, all this pressure and aching, because I swear mixed in with the throbs and pulse of my heart I can hear someone talking, someone's voice, a child and a man blended together, but even worse than that cries cries cries and chants, oh God what are they saying I can hear them and it's all kids, little kids who're locked up somewhere and wasting away, little gray husks that wither into dust in their cells and they're being watched, He's watching them, like he's watching over Mother.

Mom, why doesn't u wake up?

Please no more. Please, God, anyone, someone, something, just make this stop. My teeth are gnashing, grinding, molar against molar, my eyes feel ready to rupture with tears or blood I'm not sure it doesn't matter the pain is just there focused like a clamp and it's squeezing it's choking oh God I can't think anymore. I can't see I can't feel everything's numb, so cold and so far off, I can see it but I can't feel. Let me out of here, get me out of here, please let me out of here let me let me let me let—

VI.

I'm back in my bedroom staring up as the ceiling fan churns the fetid air in spirals. It makes me a little woozy, so much so that I can't sit up right away. There's a weight on my chest like a hand placed there, applying greater force than I can fight against. In fact I can feel fingers there, pressing down over my heart; the black crusted crescents digging just so slightly into the fabric of my shirt and into the skin underneath. I can feel the muscles tremble as the hand clenches, and just to be sure it's in my head and therefore nothing to worry about (besides my dwindling clutch on reality) I look down.

And there's a hand. And connected to that hand is an arm in a dark blue sleeve, the material caked with grime and filth. And connected to that arm in that dark blue sleeve is a shoulder, to that a torso, to that a neck, a strained Adam's apple. And finally, a face, a face I recognize. Not that I've seen him before, he doesn't live in the complex I know that much, but I recognize him because he's been watching all this time, he's been here, in here, with me all along. He never really left even though they left him here.

But before I can say a word and before the recognition of this man, of Him, can ripple fully over my face and widen my eyes and slacken my jaw, he rams his fist dead center on the bridge of my nose and all that I can express after that are a series of screams and instinctual mannerisms of protection: my hands curling around my shattered nose, my shoulders hunching and my body folding into itself, knees up back arched head down. I think I can hear him laughing, hear the glee in his voice, that mild and even-paced voice like a child trapped in a man's body, and I can feel both of his hands on me as he pulls me from the comforting tangle of my bed sheets and blankets and throws me onto the carpet. My head strikes the nightstand as I fall down and my eyes burst with ink stains. I can't see anything.

For now.

And considering the smile my eyes caught on the way down, down to the ground down into unconsciousness, I don't regret it.

VII.

The welt on my head is about the size of a knuckle when the ink clears, but the inflation in the middle of my face distorts my perception, my eyes sliding out of focus without warning. I'm still woozy, still reeling, and the room seems to expand like lungs filling with gasps of air. A hiss punctures the silence like the sound of grease over a hot flame as a scent so alluring drifts to my nostrils, making my stomach quiver in a famished chill, prompting me to think back to the last time I'd eaten anything. Must've been days ago, before this lock-down crap started. I never had much of an appetite anyway, but for some reason whatever's on the stove now makes my entire body weak, makes my mouth moisten with saliva and yearning, oh Christ I've never wanted something this badly before. I can feel my body tilt to the left, ready to tumble into a heap on the carpet with my dead weight (dead dead God don't say that I'm not not yet) but something stops my fall. My movements are sluggish and calculated, not out of caution but because of the lingering intoxication of slumber, as I turn to glance at the force keeping me, however slightly, erect.

It's the hand again. His hand.

I can't help myself; how can I not look? I just have to see those eyes once more—have to see the cruel gleam that chills my marrow—just to be sure I didn't imagine it all. His expression is… sad. Painfully forlorn, my heart aches just to look at him but I can't look away. His hair is shaded a sandy blond that hangs in his face like a veil, the straws thick with dirt and grease. They brush against his stained cheek and obscure the rest of his features. A steady creep of stubble frames a pursed mouth pockmarked with dried blood and teeth indents; it makes the contours of his face seem grating, rough like the edge of a blade. Beneath the folds of his unkempt mane is the purest, most sincere pair of blue eyes that I've ever seen. They penetrate through his tangled bangs and connect with mine; their color is unnerving, their intensity almost surreal. All I can see are those haunting eyes staring into me, the adoration in them almost frighteningly passionate. My breath catches in my throat and I blink slowly, languidly, lids descending over weary eyes that are tired of watching and want nothing more than rest, to go back into bed and crawl under the sheets and blankets and shut the world out. The way I'm shut in.

I moan wearily. I don't mean to but the noise just creaks out of my throat and rolls down my lips, dripping into the eerily silent air. It hangs there like a worm on a hook, the evidence of my displeasure brazenly bared like naked flesh, and again I can feel his gaze weigh heavily on me like a cross to bear. The man's hand presses against my shoulder tentatively, as if unsure of himself and what he's doing, like he's lost his balance. Finally his fingers curl into his palm and turn outward, his knuckles grazing gently against the welt on my temple. It reminds me of a child pushing his hand to a stove to test the surface and as I focus on his face I can make out an expression of curious uncertainty; it's as if he didn't understand my pain but knew enough to figure it out on a simplistic level. Like most children, and adults as well.

His touch cools my skin like a dip in the Arctic. I can't help but tremble and gasp, reflexively drawing myself away from him. To my surprise I'm met with resistance as I try to lift my hands from their position at my sides. I glance down, dismayed and confused.

They're tied down. I can see the ropes tethered around each wrist that holds it to the long, tapering legs of the chair I'm sitting in. A similar rope binds my ankles as well.

My skin begins to tear up as I stare in disbelief at the restraints used to keep me in place and inevitably at his mercy. Impossible. How the hell could this be happening? God… I give them a tug just to be sure that I'm not hallucinating, that the crack to the side of my head hadn't given me brain damage. Sure enough they're real: they grate against my skin like sandpaper.

My voice returned… I don't know when. But it's back now. I feel words shine through the mess that clouded my logic and bit by bit they secrete onto my tongue until my lips curl around them. "Who are you…?" I ask, my words like a creak in the floorboard or a rusty latch. I sound frightened.

I might as well not have spoken for all the good it does me. He doesn't even answer, instead he just slides his foot backwards a pace and moves around the length of the counter-top, winding closer to the stove with heavy, sluggish steps. His eyes remain glued onto me, pinning me in place, and like a prey warily eying its predator I can't stop staring at him. He's hauntingly distracting.

The verbal bullets I had in store for him that weighed heavy on my tongue are all duds. My voice, previously fantasized as being a spiteful and disgusted snarl, is nothing but a blank. It rattles like bones in my throat and groans past my lips in the form of an inhuman whine. I'm terrified, I'll admit it. I'm petrified of this crazy bastard.

… I wonder what he's cooking, anyway.

Despite the message my churning stomach was relaying to me, the idea of eating something fills me with a sense of horror and dread, a tingle that crawls up from the base of my spine and bathes my skin in ice. After a moment of frantic internal discourse I realize that this is what I could sense, this is what I'd been dreading for the past few days. This moment these moments this man this nightmare.

The silence between us dangles openly as my eyes dance back and forth across his back, surveying the broad expanse of his shoulders and how they sag so heavily, as if a weight was pulling at him from the inside. Try as I might to see around him and to what he's preparing I can't make out much, just a sore-colored red tendril flecked with what looks like, oh CHRIST, scarlet and blue veins. There's a series of knots, like it wrapped around itself, like the top part of a noose. Bile roils in my gut and inches its way up my throat, burning like fire.

"Jesus, no," I spit incoherently, my eyes widening into saucers. Please tell me that's not what I think it is, oh God no not this. Tell me anything else but this. Those idiots on Fear Factor haven't eaten anything as disgusting as what I think that is. I'm trembling, I'm oozing sweat all over and I'm shaking like a fault-line, I can even feel tears well up out of nowhere. This is just so impossible, please it can't be real.

The man glances over at me with such a lifeless, unaffected expression that it makes me break out into sobs, lungs wrenching for air and eyes leaking onto my cheeks, curling down my chin and plopping onto my thighs. The water spreads out into oval puddles in the fabric of my jeans and as I try to move my hand to rub it dry I'm reminded again of my imprisonment. This only makes the tears flow faster and an embarrassing wail stumbles from my lips like a child crying for its mother. The frustration is intense I can't even oh god no he's coming over.

There's a pan in his hand, heat rising off of it in wispy plumes that remind me of exhaust. The helix he offers me trembles slightly when he walks and as appalled as I am by the thing I can't help but still feel another pang of hunger that jolts me and elicits a slight moan; God it's so disgusting but I want it. I've never been this hungry before in my life, never wanted something as badly as this. He smiles at me and as I see the pleasure seep its way over his face I instantly wish I had died and gone to hell, just as long as I wouldn't have to see something as sick as that again. He's enjoying this oh God he's just getting off on the thing.

He sets the pan down on the counter in front of me, retrieving a napkin from one of the pockets of his bulky overcoat and almost elegantly places it in front of the meal he's prepared for me, as if he's obediently setting a place for himself at a dinner table. The napkin is soiled and ripped, splotchy with blood and dirt. He looks at me keenly as he slowly folds his arm over the other, pinning them both onto his chest, and he lowers his chin down towards his collar; it's almost like he's pouting, a toddler on the brink of a temper tantrum. I stare back at him in confusion, my fingers tense and going numb. I can't feed myself considering my physical limitations.

"Promise me you won't make this difficult, Henry," the man says, his voice idyllic and almost, God should I say it, endearing. He sounds totally relaxed and even slightly dazed, lost in thought. Normally people with these types of inflections would soothe me but in this case it grates on my nerves and slices them into raw stubs. This is man possessed, a man fixated on a single goal. Everything else to him is meaningless. I can't tell if I'm in the way or if I'm a stepping stone that brings him closer to what he wants.

"How do you know—"

"Henry," he says again, a strain arising in his tone now. The look he spears me with is mockingly authoritarian; it's the kind of look some pompous teacher would give you in high school or a stuck up boss at work, glaring down at you from the length of their nose as if you're some garbage they collected on the bottom of their shoe. I almost want to punch the look right off his face and crush his nose with my fists and ram my heel into his eyes until they burst bloody, gelatinous tears down his face. "Don't talk." He warns me.

He points to the pan. "Now you're going to eat this."

Then he points to my chest. "And you're going to behave."

His hand rests. "Do you understand?"

"You're an insane person."

The man winces and draws back from me, folding inward like a flower in reverse bloom. His head hangs to the left, hair askew over his face; it's almost like he passed out on his feet. Then suddenly, quicker than I can see, his right hand lashes out across the counter and grabs a chunk of my scalp, his nails pressing deep into the skin. I grit my teeth and hiss in pain, spit oozing from the pursed pearl posts and down over my lips. I close my eyes right before my face slams into the rim of the pan, my bruised and swollen nose mostly striking the counter but my forehead and the lid of my left eye are glued to the hot metallic surface. It makes sense to scream, doesn't it? Any sensible person that could feel pain would do so, too.

The man holds me there and speaks slowly, loudly, loud enough to be heard over my shrieks. "You made me do this, you made me do this. You have no one to blame but yourself."

Finally he lets go and I buck myself up into as upright a position as I'm able to without losing my balance. My skin is burning—I can almost smell the burned hair and flesh. I can barely keep my left eye open anymore and for sure there's blisters dotting my forehead as I try to recover. The tears clump my eyelashes together, further gluing my damaged eye shut, but I keep on weeping regardless. Screw him; I don't care if I see what he's doing anymore. I just want to get out of this alive and with as little disfigurements as possible.

He's back again, this time with something else in his hands. A small plastic thing, white, with four loops at each corner that connect to thick crescents that hook inward; the middle parts have curved shelves that look painfully awkward, like they pry open something horizontally. It's almost like they'd fit over—

Teeth.

Oh shit.

I twist my head from side to side and scream as loud as I can, I don't even know if I'm actually saying anything I'm just shrieking and yelling and calling out to anyone that comes into my head, God Mother Mary Allah Jesus Krishna, but it doesn't do me any good. It never did me any good it does nothing. With one hand pushed against my brow to hold my head steady, the man shoves the contraption into my mouth, forcing it around my teeth and rubbing it painfully against my gums until they're sore. My cheeks puff outward, bloated and thick, and my lips are peeled back in a gaping snarl as a long line of drool unravels from my mouth.

Although this is hardly the time to be reminiscing I seem to recall having such an unpleasant device forced into my mouth when I was eleven and had to get braces like every other kid whose teeth were crooked and unruly. I hated it then and I hate it even more now.

My face becomes a wet, dripping mess, tears mixed with snot mixed with drool that all plop down in succession onto my lap. I peer with my remaining good eye at the man and watch as he slowly lifts up the disgusting, carmine coil and rubs the tip of it between his fingers idly. He holds it up for me to see, smiling like a maniac, before leaning in close and shoving the pulp into my mouth. Considering the apparatus I'm orally sporting I can hardly bring myself to chew the damn thing, much less spit it back out, and forcing it down is an impossible task. And so I let it sit there, dead weight on my tongue as he slowly feeds it in like you would lower a rope into a well. The taste is appalling, I can't help but retch. I'm almost sick all over the counter but no he's feeding me again, wasting little time and shoving more of the disgusting curl into my mouth.

I can't focus on anything anymore. The ink returns, opaque and oppressive, strangling my sight and filling my vision with a fog that's impenetrable. I can't see anything but I can still hear. Chanting again, hushed feverish whispers, the kind you hear in confessionals at a church, only these mutters are desperate, pleading, almost crazed with despair. I can feel the cool stone beneath me, as cold as the grave or a crypt and there's this solid sound like a sonic boom that echoes throughout the cell (cell?). Footsteps. So he's watching me (?) again.

But I can't make a noise, I can't make a sound. If he's watching that means I've done something wrong, that means that I've been bad and then I won't get to see my mommy. I have to behave I have to be good like that lady said, she told me how I can see my mother again but I keep messing up. I have to be good I have to behave I have to listen but I can't let him see me, I can't let him know I'm here. I don't like when he watches me, I don't like how he watches me. His breath is hot and thick and it stinks and he's always so scary, black bug eyes peering at us through the slit near the ceiling. I don't like how he watches me so much. I hate you I hate you I hate you I want my mommy.

VIII.

The sensations fade and my vision returns, blotchy and scratched. My mouth is almost numb from the thing this crazy bastard shoved into it, and I breathe rapidly through my nose, terrified of choking. I'll probably pass out from hyperventilation long before I choke, which isn't really that comforting of a thought. What's he feeding into me? It's horrible and sleek, pink like a pimple before the pus gathers, and the veins oh God. What the hell is this thing? My head's swimming and I can barely see, I'm going to pass out I just know it.

"Walter," I groan, my words just audible around the mass that's being fed down my throat. I say the name again, louder this time to get his attention. "Walter Walter Walter Walter WalterWALTER."

Walter—because that's his name, I know it now—smiles at me, the end of the fleshy cord held tight in his right fist. The smile lights up his face, brightens his eyes, and reveals his teeth that are yellow with neglect. For the first time he looks happy, sickeningly pleased. He leans in closer to me and turns his head to the side, his lips almost cupped around my earlobe. I can feel them scratch against the skin there as he speaks.

"You are the Receiver of Wisdom. You will understand me, you will be my eyes, you will be my hands, you will be my voice. And as you take in, so shall you give out."

Walter lowers the last of the umbilical cord—because that's what it is, it's his it's Walter's from when he was a baby left here on the floor to die—into my throat, and it's sucked down quickly, the bulk of it forming a mass in my stomach and chest.

"I need you, Henry. You're of great importance to me. See to it that you stay safe."

His lips brush against the curvature of my chin as he retracts, putting distance between us again. I can just see him through the tears and sweat, but he's fading fast, becoming a messy blur. It's almost as if someone's shaking me from a dream or smudging their finger across wet paint. I can't make anything out anymore, everything's indistinct.

IX.

Softness under me, a mattress, a blanket, a thin sheet. My head slowly rises from the pillow as I sit up and glance slowly around my room, lips dry and aching, head throbbing with unspeakable pain. I put my hand to my temple, certain that there's a wound there, and close my eyes, lowering my head. The atmosphere in my room is different somehow, almost malignant and leering. Something's going to happen, I just know it. I can feel it.

"Ohhh, man. What a dream..."