Silent Hill Wandering will be written from Alessa's point of view to start with. This story takes place before and during Silent Hill 1. I've done some research since finishing Silent Hill Innocence, and have a better grasp of what has happened. However, I know very little about SH Origins, so I won't be using much from that.

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S . I . L . E . N . T . H . I . L . L . W . A . N . D . E . R . I . N . G

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Flame Purifies All

By these remains
may a person
find the road to Paradise.

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I couldn't tell you where I was. I floated for a long time, in a dark and scary place that seemed to make every nightmare I'd ever had seem like fairy magic. I couldn't give you details. I don’t really remember it too well. What came after is what I remember with clear detail.

To everyone, even my own mother, I was in a coma. To myself, I could see and hear and speak as clearly as everyone. I heard the Doctor speak of 'third-degree burns' that wouldn't heal. I knew he was talking about me. I still remember the day I died clearly. The house, the fire, the man who saved me, my mother feigning joy as she cradled my destroyed and ruined body to her chest. I knew I looked like the monsters I saw, to everyone else that is.

To myself, I still look like me, before the burning. Short black hair, dark eyes, clear skin. I'm still me.

Aren't I?

--

I woke up in hospital. I didn't recognise the room, but I understood the machinery around me; the hospital bed with the railings on the sides that I didn't understand, the cabinet in the corner near the door that held little orange bottles with labels that didn’t make sense to someone who usually earned a D in Science.

At the time I had thought I had been asleep for a long, long time. The walls where wrong, the cabinet was wrong, the bed, the sheets, the machinery was all wrong, wrong, wrong. Everything was old, and rusted, and decrepit I had to lift my hand and expect a wrinkled and age-worn hand - maybe knarled slightly with arthritis.

When I found my hand whole and young I began to panic. Where was I? I tried to sit up and found I couldn't. I had panicked more. My breathing came faster, my chest rising and falling rapidly, my mind spinning. I realised as my mind was clearing that I had woken with fuzziness, and I scrambled mentally for that feeling.

Something was building inside me, as the cloud fuzz left me. It was a familiar feeling and it made me cry to feel this build up. Dread built with it too, though that wasn't the primary feeling.

And then it hit me. Hard.

Fire.

Pain.

The pain ripped into my body so quickly I thought I could see something hovering in the air above me, slicing my stomach open with knife-like talons. The lack of noise in the air felt so loud I imagined this being above me to be screaming and screeching at me; deafening me and causing me more pain. I bled everywhere, the decrepit room soaking from floor to ceiling with blood and the scream that had erupted from my throat gurgled quiet as liquid red spewed out like a fountain. The pain was intoxicating. My voice found a way to scream again through the blood that streamed undyingly. My eyes where frozen open; even as the blood splattered down into my open lids. The walls where soaked with red, and they seemed to pulse as if alive. Things squirmed underneath. The light from the naked bulb above my head struggled to throw out the darkness.

I was aware of voices shouting around me, though no one except the horrifying being suspended above me that sliced my insides apart was present in the room. The voice of the Doctor, and a woman I didn't recognise, where panic-stricken.

"We have to give her a sedative! She's dying!"

"We give her nothing. Dahlia says it must be this way."

"But look at her!"

"This is the effect of the drug. It'll pass. Be patient."

The words did nothing to ease my suffering, the voice of the woman was scared to death, the Doctor sounded ill. Why wouldn't they stop this? How did they stand there and allow themselves to be covered in blood this way. Why wouldn't they get the monster away from me!

And then a sensation, separate from the pain, pierced my arm. It felt cold.

"What are you doing?!"

"I can't stand this! I'm stopping the drug!"

"No! She needs this!"

"I'll go nuts if I hear her scream for another minute!"

And then the monster was screaming differently, its voice decreased in volume; and slowly it became a moan. It stopped after another short while, and then it was gone. The monster was gone, it stopped cutting me, and was as if it was never there. The pain was gone with the monster, and I loosened my face from its scrunched in agony position. I squeezed my eyes close to block out the squirming and wriggling blood walls around me, and snapped them open again.

The room was back to normal, as if I hadn't bled enough to drown myself. The peeling wallpapers sat with dust upon it as it had when I woke up. I was still breathing heavily, and I struggled to control my breathing. With a huge sigh, I managed the control.

"She's returning to normal." The woman's voice.

"Shit, you'd better hope Dahlia doesn’t find out about this." The Doctors voice.

"I won't tell if you won't." Their was a slight edge of strained humour in the pleasant female voice.

"Don't do that again."

The voices fell silent, and I was left feeling confused. I blacked out, though I tried to stay awake.

--

I don't know how long I was like this for. I don't know how many days, or weeks or years I remained on that bed. All I knew was that as time passed, my room got darker. Though the bulb threw out the same light as it had when I first woke up, the walls seemed to darken, take a reddish tint, the machines around me rusted and fell to pieces, the once pleasant picture on the wall of a landscape becoming something different and obscene, the bed's railings rusted too, and the sheets started to fall apart, a sound whistled through the room like a windy night through windows, though there was no draft.

When I felt an explosion of pain, I saw myself for who I really was. A blackened, charred mess of a dead child, covered with filthy bandages, where my open wounds regularly oozed blood and pus.

I would go a long time without pain, I'd began counting these as days. When the pain fired, I called these my nights.

Sometimes, the same creature screaming and slicing me would appear, sometimes different monsters -like a skinned dog with its head split down the middle would tear at my belly as if it held treasure-, sometimes something inside my stomach would wrench at me from the inside with claws like steel.

Sometimes, the pain would last for hours and hours at a time, with no one to end it, where when it came to an end I was nothing more than a quivering, whimpering bundle on the broken bed, sometimes I couldn't stop screaming.

Sometimes, when the nice lady was in the room; the pain would begin flaring, a creature would stalk to my side or sit on top of me, and then a sharp, cool jab on my arm would send the monster away and numb the pain.

My sanity was slipping fast. As was my will to live. I wanted to die, to end it all and fall into white light forever if it would just end this ruthless pattern. I didn't feel like myself anymore. I felt like half of myself, and the other half was missing somewhere else, and it caused me tremendous sadness to not have it with me. At times I screamed at whatever creature was tearing me inside out to kill me, insulting it as much as I could, using words I'd never dreamed of saying to enrage it. Though it would become furious, though it would hack at me more; though I watched a dozen times as some part of me was blown away in bloody chunks - I didn't die.

The only times I felt a margin of peace, was when Nurse Lisa attended to me.

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Lately I had begun seeing footprints that disturbed the dust in my ever darkening room. It took me a while to be sure that it was footsteps, but I became certain when more appeared as if from nowhere. A little while later sounds would accompany those prints. High-heels clacking against tiles. Sometimes it would be boots against tiles that I heard, though not as often.

Then, very recently, when the nice lady was in the room, when she was humming or singing songs to entertain me; I could see her. When she was silent I couldn't see her, but when she interacted with me directly I could see her. About 5'6, slim, very attractive with long blonde hair and smiling eyes, she wore a long red cardigan that hid her frame. For a while I called her Red Lady. Then when she was talking to me about something her friends had said; she referred to herself as Lizzy. That was short for either Lisa or Linda. I preferred Lisa, a pretty name.

I could see her now, she was changing my bandages and cleaning my wounds. I didn’t know this at first, but when she started doing strange movements over me; I got extremely agitated and tried to squirm away from her. She'd smiled at me and said my bandages needed to be changed, so I could get better. I had calmed down. I didn’t see the bandages -except when the pain spiked me and I could see myself clearly- but I took her word and hoped that with regular care my wounds would heal and I would be taken out of this hell. I'd daydream that one day Lisa would pick me up from my bed, cradling me, and take me out of the door from my hell into her heaven. Lisa always seemed to glow when she was around me, especially when she smiled.

I hoped within my heart that God looked like Lisa.

Lisa looked at me suddenly, frowning. She left my leg and peered at my face, then her face brightened and she beamed happily at me.

"My word, Alessa!" she exclaimed, clapping her hands together, "You're smiling!"

Another downside to my Hell (like there wasn't enough) was that anything I did Lisa couldn't see, or anything I said Lisa couldn't hear, except when I screamed. I still couldn't move from my lay-down position, but I could twitch and jerk. I could speak clearly like anyone else but Lisa never heard me.

I smiled a lot when Lisa was around, but normally she never saw. My smile widened.

"This is a definite improvement! And look;" Lisa said excitedly, she was back at my leg again, "The wounds aren't seeping as much as yesterday!"

She started humming a happy tune. Practically dancing around me as she redressed my wounds. I felt like dancing too, though I knew I couldn't.

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