Restless [Silent Hill 2, Genderswitch AU, NC-17]
Title: Restless
Author/Artist: rosehiptea
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: AU, genderswitch, het smut, non-con (including violent monster death rape), voyeurism, bloodplay, violence, gore, profanity, character death, suicide, spoilers.
Word count: 7,760
Summary: Jenny Sunderland travels to the town of Silent Hill in search of her dead husband.
A/N: For the prompt: Silent Hill, Pyramid Head or Maria/James: genderswitched AU - revisited events. I thought this was pretty much the greatest prompt ever, and I can only hope I did justice to it. I took a fairly serious approach, despite sarcastic titles on my rather short chapters, and I hope that works too.
I decided to do several scenes from the game, basically covering the whole story in an extremely AU way, and throwing in a few of my own ideas just for the sake of gratuitous smut. Plus several endings, since this is Silent Hill. I did switch scenes and timelines around heavily, especially toward the end, and there’s a lot missing as I left out any equivalent of Eddie or Angela. The actual geography of Silent Hill has also been messed with very severely. (It’s also not necessarily set in exactly the same time period as Jenny has a cell phone.) I did riff off the game script for obvious reasons but I tried to create original dialogue.
While I hope it will be clear what's going on... for a bit of intro: We have Jenny Sunderland, who is looking for her dead husband Mitchell, and instead finds Mike, who bears a striking resemblance to him. We also have Pyramid Head, who wears the same helmet but has different bits under the apron. There's also a little boy named Ian, who isn't really Laura. As stated, Eddie and Angela have been spared appearances and are off in a better fic somewhere. Pairings include Jenny/Mike, implied Jenny/Mitchell, female!Pyramid Head/Mike, and of course female!Pyramid Head/male!mannequin monster.
Arriving in Silent Hill: My Baby, He Wrote Me a Letter
Jenny Sunderland drives down the freeway still turning the words of the letter over in her mind.
Jenny,
Do you remember Silent Hill? I always said we should go back, but you kept telling me you were too busy, that we should just forget it. I'm waiting for you there now... I'm sure you know exactly where, that special place. Please come and meet me.
Mitchell
The thing is, Jenny doesn't remember the trip to Silent Hill with Mitchell very well. They had gone there for the weekend, because of some ad on the radio that made it sound romantic. And it was OK: a decent hotel, and a park or something like that, and some bars. Nothing too exciting, but maybe all romantic couples really want is a park to walk through and a hotel room with a big bed. But she doesn't remember anywhere special, so she actually has no idea what he would mean.
The other thing is, Jenny doesn't understand how she could get a letter from Mitchell at all, since he's been dead for three years. But no matter how many times she tells herself that it’s impossible, she can’t just forget about it. What if he is waiting for her somehow, and she could really see him again? In the end she had looked up Silent Hill on the old map in the car and here she is, on the offramp, almost there.
But when she actually drives into town, she realizes why she hasn't heard a radio ad for the place in a while. There’s nobody there anymore - it’s just deserted, with the buildings looking abandoned and the road a broken mess. Everything looks empty, with no people and no other cars but hers. Finally she sees a wall ahead of her that stretches right over the road. Jenny stops the car and gets out. It’s time to turn around, but of course she isn’t going to.
"Is there anybody here?" There isn't, of course. There are stores around her, with faded names promising various ordinary services, but the glass is broken in half the windows and there’s faded yellow grass sprouting in the sidewalks.
Jenny listens to the stock reports, but not much other news unless she really has to. Maybe there's been some kind of accident here, and the whole place has been abandoned. It’s not like she would hear about it; she hasn’t even thought about this place in so long. But who would build a wall over a road… and is it to keep something out or keep something in?
She shakes her head and sighs. Probably the people here all moved out for some reason, like those little towns in the Midwest she had seen movies about that just sort of die and sit there vacant. And the wall is to make sure squatters don’t invade the place or something. But rational explanations aren't helping much as she tries the door of a dirty nameless building and walks in. Something is wrong, even more wrong than a letter from a dead husband. She opens a door with a bathroom symbol on it and stares into the filthy mirror.
"What the hell would you be doing in a place like this, Mitchell? This is even creeping me out; you'd never spend five minutes here."
The wall blocking the street has a door in it, and when Jenny turns the knob it opens. So much for keeping anything out.
"Don't go in there," she says to herself. "Call the police." But you can't report your dead husband as a missing person.
She walks through the door. On the other side are just more abandoned buildings and more broken road. But there are still no people, and definitely no Mitchell. Jenny finally decides this is futile, ridiculous, but when she turns and goes back to the door, it’s locked after all.
“How did that happen? I didn’t even see a lock.” She shakes her head. “You have to keep going, anyway. You have to find Mitchell. He might be stuck in this place wondering why you never came for him.”
Jenny keeps walking down the road, past abandoned storefronts - restaurants, a dress shop, a bar. Now and then she tries a door but none of them open. Then, passing an alley, she sees motion out of the corner of her eye. Against the wall halfway down the alley there’s a dumpster and she is certain she can see a figure sitting behind it. Jenny turns and runs toward it.
“Mitchell?” Nothing moves from behind the dumpster as she approaches. “Is it you, Mitchell? What the hell is going on?”
Then the person runs out and shows themselves. Except it isn’t a person. Whatever it is has gray skin, no arms, and is way too thin to be human. Jenny freezes in place.
“Oh god… what the fuck is that?” She turns to run but the thing is after her, and she feels some kind of gross liquid spray over her back. The smell is horrific. Against the wall of the alley she sees a stick with a nail in it. Desperate, she grabs it as she runs, then turns and hits the thing in its deformed head. It hops backward, and from its mouth it spits out another stream of the disgusting substance. She hits it again, over and over, and finally it slumps to the ground. Jenny approaches it, kicks it to make sure it’s dead. It doesn’t look like anything she’s ever seen before, but she isn’t going to sit there and study it. There could be more of them somewhere.
She runs back to the street before she finally bends over and vomits. Then she grabs her cell phone from her pocket, but there’s no signal. At this point that doesn’t surprise her at all. Putting the phone away, she continues walking down the street. Wherever Mitchell is, did the monsters attack him too? The letter doesn’t sound like he’s afraid, but then the letter doesn’t make sense anyway. Now she knows for certain that she had to find him, and that the police aren’t going to help her. No one is.
When Jenny passes a sporting goods store she decides it is time to break another window. When she gets in she grabs a green jacket and uses it to replace her fouled blouse. Then she gets what she really came in for: a shotgun and as many shells as she can stuff into the pockets of the jacket. Her father had taught her to shoot when she was younger, and even if she is no expert she at least knows how to load and fire the thing without hurting herself. It will be better than nothing.
Wood Side Apartments: Vagina Dentata
Eventually Jenny leaves the business district and passes into a residential area, but it doesn’t look any better. Now the weather has turned cold, with fog starting to move in. She doesn’t remember weather like this the last time she’d been here. Chain-link fence blocks her way into most of the buildings, and she has no reason to believe anyone is in them anyway. But then as she passes a sign that says “Wood Side Apartments” she hears a sound like a child laughing. Do teenagers come here to break into places and do all the shit they like to do? But the voice sounds even younger than that.
There is a break in the fence here, and Jenny goes through it. The main door of the apartment complex opens easily. She can’t hear the voice anymore, and looking at the place there is no way she can picture a family living here, even a desperate one. It’s full of filth and graffiti and smells like graveyard dirt. But then does that mean there is some child lost in here alone? Jenny keeps going, trying doors that don’t open and listening for the sound again. On the second floor she sees that the hallway is blocked by a set of bars like in a prison. That makes no sense, but neither does anything else anymore. And then behind the bars, as she squints into the darkness, she sees it - a child.
“Who are you?” she asks. “Are you all right?”
It’s a boy, and he just laughs at her. And she is certain it is her he is laughing at, because he is looking right into her eyes. This child doesn’t look homeless, and he doesn’t look upset or lost either. He is wearing clean clothes and has a decent haircut under a baseball cap.
“Who are you?” she yells, grabbing the bars. “What happened in this place?”
“Why are you standing over there?” the kid asks, as if he doesn’t even see the bars. “And what do you mean, what happened here?”
The boy is crazy, or has something else wrong with his mind, Jenny decides. He probably wandered off from some kind of home and now he needs help. But she can’t even reach him, and then he laughs and runs off down the hall into the darkness. She puts her face in her hands. “I can’t take this anymore. I don’t even know what’s happening.”
But then she hears a sound like a thump and a scrape, and takes her hands away from her face. Something else is standing behind the bars, and it isn’t a kid. It isn’t a grey monster, either. This thing is a woman.
“Are you-“ Jenny breaks off when she absorbs the whole picture. The woman-thing has a huge triangular helmet over her head, and is carrying an enormous knife. It doesn’t have ordinary clothes on, just an apron covered with dark stains. Did this thing hurt that kid? But Jenny didn’t hear a scream.
It faces her silently and Jenny realizes that it holds no answers, only serious danger. She turns around, runs to the stairwell door, but it doesn’t open. Heading down a different hallway instead, she finds another set of stairs, but when she goes down she can’t open the door at the bottom. Jenny almost panics. There is no getting out of this place. She starts running almost blindly now, up stairs and down them, past doors that won’t open and through doors that shows only empty apartments full of rusty appliances and no way out.
Finally she opens another random door - Room 307. She doesn’t even know where she is anymore, or what she expects to find. When she goes further inside she hears some kind of sick fleshy sound and sees a glint of metal in the darkness. Panicking again when she realizes she isn’t alone, she runs into a closet. She looks out through the slats of the door and sees it - the helmeted woman. And the apron is gone; Jenny can see its white ass and large breasts as it bends over the kitchen counter. But there is another thing moving on the counter, too. It looks almost like a man, with a muscular pair of legs and a man’s chest. But it’s not human, it’s headless like a mannequin. Yet it isn’t motionless and it isn’t dead either. It is squirming and writhing, and the helmeted monster is straddling it and moving.
Jenny gags when she realizes what she’s watching. The monster who she faced through the bars is fucking that man-thing… except the thing doesn’t even want it; it’s trying to get away. As the triangular helmet moves and the monster beneath it growls, blood oozes from between its legs where it rides the cock of the headless man. And Jenny is certain it is the man-thing that is bleeding, and she sees its struggles weaken as the blood pours over the counter. The mannequin thing is dying, as the helmeted monster gives a groan of what sounds like lust.
Overcoming her disgust and terror as much as she can, Jenny loads the shotgun and shoots through the closet door. The creature in the pyramid whirls and stands naked before her, thighs still coated with blood. It growls, grabbing for the knife where it leans against the counter.
“I’ve got nowhere to run. I’m going to die in this closet.” Jenny struggles to reload the gun as quickly as possible. When she looks up the thing is still standing there, wearing the apron now, as if it doesn’t give a damn about shotgun shells.
“I can’t kill it, can I?”
To her shock, the monster doesn’t even open the closet door, but grabs the knife and begins to move away, dragging itself slowly. Jenny only stares, breathing shallowly, and waits until it seems to be gone. When she opens the closet door, the man-like thing is lying sprawled over the counter, its crotch a massive wound oozing blood. It seems to still be moving slightly, and Jenny can barely keep herself from vomiting. Finally she wastes two shells killing it.
Before she leaves the apartment, Jenny looks in the closet again. There had been something in there with her, some kind of clothing. It turns out to be a man’s suit, gray with pinstripes, with a vest. It is perfectly clean, unlike everything else here. There shouldn’t be anything scary about a suit, Jenny reflects to herself. Except that it’s Mitchell’s suit. He paid way too much for the damn thing, and she would recognize it anywhere.
“You really are here…” Jenny breathes. Now she can’t leave this town, not even after what she has just seen.
Rosewater Park: Someone Left the Cake Out In the Rain
The Woodside apartments are like a giant maze, and as Jenny tries to find her way out she passes a pool with an abandoned wheelchair lying at the bottom, and once sees another headless man-monster that runs when she shoots at it. Eventually she makes her way back to the street and just keeps on walking, not sure anymore what she hopes to find. At one point she finds a gas station and wonders if there might be a map of Silent Hill there. When she breaks into the office - she’s getting good at that - she actually finds one. It’s torn, but she can see street names and some of the landmarks.
“Mitchell walked in the park with me. I remember him picking a rose for me there. Maybe that’s where he’s waiting.” She cradles the shotgun in her hands. Rosewater Park is on Nathan Avenue, and it isn’t very far from where she is now.
As she makes the turn onto Nathan, she sees him again - that kid, sitting on a wall.
“Hey! Who are you? What are you doing here?”
The kid just grins. “I’m Ian.”
“Where are your parents? You can’t be here by yourself. It’s dangerous.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean why? Didn’t you see that crazy woman with the knife?”
“I see a crazy woman all right,” says Ian with a laugh.
“Are there people here besides you?” Jenny asks finally.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m looking for someone. He’s my husband.”
“Oh, sure, your husband Mitchell. The one you never loved.” The kid jumps off the wall.
“What the hell are talking about?” yells Jenny.
Ian runs down the street, calling over his shoulder. “Mitchell only married you for your money.”
Jenny chases him for half a block before she gives up.
“How could he know Mitchell? And no one ever said any such bullshit thing to me, not where I could hear. My husband didn’t need my damn-“ She stops and pants. “I’m going to the park. Maybe that’s where this kid met Mitchell.”
The park is shrouded in fog, not very sunny or romantic now. But when she walks down one of the paths, she sees a figure in the distance, a man with blonde hair. Jenny runs toward him. “Mitchell! Damn it, you scared me, what are you-“
“Mike. My name is Mike.”
Jenny stares. This man looks like Mitchell all right. He has the same face, the same green eyes that always got Mitchell so many compliments. But Mitchell would never have dressed like that, in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt that clung to his chest. And he wouldn’t have worn his hair that long, either. Plus this guy obviously spends more time in the gym than Mitchell ever did. He has a tattoo on his arm, too, a dog or something… you couldn’t have paid Mitchell enough money to get a tattoo.
Mike raises an eyebrow. “Why are you looking at me like that? Do I remind you of someone? Your date run out on you?”
“Do you think I have a date in a place like this? I’m looking for my husband. And you… you look exactly like him. Except for your hair, and he wouldn’t have worn that shirt.”
“I’m sorry you have a problem with my shirt, lady.”
“Jenny. Jenny Sunderland. I didn’t mean anything by that, it’s just--”
He nods. “And I might be a little sorry I’m not your husband, too, Jenny.” He winks. Mitchell would never have done that, either. He never flirted; he thought there was no point to games.
“Look, it’s just weird, that’s all. Mitchell died three years ago, and now here you are and you’re exactly alike.”
“If he’s dead, then why are you looking for him?” Mike seems oddly unsurprised though, just gives her another lazy grin.
“He sent me a letter. He said he’d meet me in our special place.”
“And this park was your special place?”
“I don’t even remember. We came here to Silent Hill once together, but…”
“Did you stay at the Lakeview Hotel?”
“Yes! You know where that is? It isn’t on this map.”
“Sure. I’ll bet your Mitchell spent a lot of time in your special place, there at the Lakeview, didn’t he?” Mike leers a little and Jenny steps backwards.
“This isn’t a dirty joke. My husband might be here somewhere, with all these monsters, and I need to find him.”
“Well, I can help you find that place. And protect you from monsters.”
Jenny lifted the gun. “I don’t need you. I’ve got this.”
“A tough lady. Well, maybe you can protect me then. The Lakeview is that way.” He gestures.
She shakes her head to clear it. “I still don’t understand this. You could be Mitchell’s ghost.”
Mike’s warm hand closes around her arm. “Do I feel like a ghost?”
Jenny sighs. “No.”
Brookhaven Hospital: And You Thought House Was A Jerk
They can’t just walk straight there. Everywhere they go there’s another wall, or the sidewalk and street are too broken to let them continue. Jenny opens her mouth several times to ask Mike who he is, why he’s here, but she’s not sure she wants to hear the answer. She just watches him as he moves, walking a little faster than Mitchell would, but still so much like him that it hurts her.
They end up on Carroll Street, near a hospital. Jenny never wants to go into another hospital again, especially in this place, but then she sees a baseball cap. It’s Ian, at one of the windows, looking down at them.
“That kid is up there,” she says.
“What kid? What would a kid be doing here?” Mike asks her in her husband’s voice.
“Don’t fucking ask me. But he’s here. And I think he knows where Mitchell is.”
“You really think your dead husband is here in this town somewhere?” Mike asks her with raised eyebrows.
“Is that any weirder than everything else going on here?” she yells.
He holds up his hands. “OK, OK. We’ll go look for the kid.”
“There’s no ‘we’ in this, Mike.” But she lets him follow her through the doors.
“If there’s a child here,” Mike is saying, “the maybe he needs help.”
“There’s something wrong with him, if you ask me, but I don’t think he needs any help.”
“Not a motherly type, are you?” Mike says.
“Fuck you.”
Mike just laughs, doesn’t pick on her for swearing the way Mitchell used to. Jenny opens a hallway door, and to her amazement someone in a white coat is there, heading away from her.
“Hey… hey, is this place still open?”
The person turns, and it’s a nurse… but not really. Not in the sense of having a face, or a body that looks particularly human. Jenny loads the gun, but the thing is running at them already, and it jumps on Mike and knocks him over. It’s got a scalpel in one hand, and it’s trying to stab Mike with it, aiming for the crotch. He grabs its wrist but he looks damned terrified and Jenny’s ready to scream herself. All she can think is that this nurse will mutilate Mike, kill him, and then come after her. But if she shoots it she’ll get Mike too.
Finally she gathers her nerve and jumps on the nurse herself, grabbing its neck. It doesn’t even seem bothered at first, probably doesn’t need to breathe, but Jenny’s strong enough to pull it off Mike, and even manages to throw it against the wall. It hits the wall hard and slides down leaving a smear of blood. Jenny is all over it then, stomping the wrist with the scalpel, kicking its non-existent face, listening to ribs crack. Finally Mike grabs her.
“Look, it’s dead, OK? It’s dead. Calm down.”
Jenny backs off. “Yeah. Let’s head for the third floor. I think I saw Ian up there.”
But halfway down the hallway, Mike doubles over and coughs.
“Did that nurse hurt you?” Jenny asks urgently.
“No, I’m fine.” He takes a pill bottle out of his pocket, puts one in his mouth and swallows it dry. “Too much tequila last night, that’s all.”
Jenny stares at his hand. “Tequila shouldn’t make you cough up blood.”
“I must have got the worm,” he mutters.
She puts a hand on his back. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
Jenny doesn’t believe him, but she doesn’t have time to worry about it right now. They head for the elevator and Jenny is surprised when the doors open.
“Shouldn’t there have to be electricity for this thing to run?”
Mike shrugs. “Maybe there is electricity. The power plant probably isn’t here in the town anyway.”
“What exactly do you know about this place?” Jenny finally asks him as the doors close.
“I know fuck-all about this place. I’m just … here.”
“What do you mean you’re ‘just here’” Jenny asks in an irritated tone. “You must have come here for some reason?”
He just puts a hand on her face. “Don’t worry about where I come from, lovely Jenny.”
Mike’s going to kiss her; she can tell, and as much as she wants him to she still smacks his hand away. That’s when the elevator stops and goes dark.
“Oh shit,” says Jenny. And then there’s a booming voice.
“Jenny and Mitchell Sunderland, this is your song!”
“What the hell?” she yells.
A few strains of music begin to play and she claps her hands over her ears. “Stop it!” She feels Mike’s arms around her, and he’s trying to say something into her ear.
“Stop it!” she screams, at the elevator, at Mike, at everything.
Suddenly the elevator starts again and reaches the third floor. The doors open and Jenny stumbles out with Mike still trying to hold onto her.
“Calm down, Jenny. It’s just a song. Did they play that at your wedding or something?”
“We got married at the courthouse. Mitchell didn’t even like music. And you can get your fucking hands off me now.” She stomps down the hall.
He’s still following her though. “What kind of guy doesn’t like music?”
“A practical kind of guy. Mitchell was a good person.”
“You could have afforded a better wedding with all your money…” said Mike.
“Who told you I had any money?” she snaps.
He shrugged. “Maybe nobody.”
“I hate hospitals,” she says, trying to change the subject.
“Doesn’t everybody?”
“The last time I was in one, I was visiting Mitchell,” she says.
“What did he die of, anyway?” asks Mike with a little sympathy in his voice.
“Lung cancer,” sighs Jenny. “And he didn’t even smoke.”
She walks down the hallway with Mike following her, starts opening random doors, but the locks are mostly broken. Finally one swings open. It’s just a little room big enough for one patient, with sheets on the messy bed. Mike walks in and sits down on the edge, beginning to cough again.
“I think I’d better stay here for a while,” he says.
“You know this place?”
“Maybe…” he says.
Jenny’s getting tired of hearing that word from him. But he looks pale, and there’s a line of prescription bottles on the bedside table.
“I don’t feel right just leaving you here,” she says.
He grabs her hand, presses it to his face. “I’ll be all right.”
“Your skin is so cold. You really must be sick.”
“I’m fine. Anyway, what can we do? Call an ambulance? Or maybe a nurse?” He laughs until he coughs again.
“Well, I’ll lock the door on my way out,” she says.
As she’s leaving, he calls after her.
“Say, Jenny… what are you going to do if you don’t find Mitchell?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know. I don’t even know what I’m going to do if I do find him.”
“Well, you’re going to be happy then,” Mike murmurs sleepily.
“Yeah, right.”
She still hasn’t found Ian and decides to try the roof, careful to take the stairs this time. But there’s nothing there, it’s just dirt and air and blackness under her feet. But just before she goes back down she hears thumping sounds and the scrape of metal. There’s nowhere to run, Jenny is right by the edge of the roof. It… she… is there behind her, with fresh blood on the apron. Jenny starts to load the gun but it’s too late; the thing picks her up like she’s a doll and she’s over the edge.
On the way down she figures this is probably one of the more pleasant ways to die in this town.
But later she wakes up on the ground by the hospital, feeling a little bruised but able to move all her limbs. That makes no sense, she should be dead or paralyzed, but she isn’t. In a few minutes she’s even able to sit up, though with a pain in her head like the world’s worst hangover.
That’s when she sees Ian.
“I was looking for you!” she tells him angrily.
“I was right here,” he says. “Look, I have something for you. It’s from Mitchell.” He’s holding a videotape. Jenny stares at it.
“What’s this?”
“What’s it look like, stupid?” Ian asks.
“Why would Mitchell give you a videotape?”
“Maybe you should watch it.”
“Yeah, like I’m going to find a working VCR in this town?” she asks sarcastically.
“There’s one at the Lakeview.” Then the kid runs off, before she can even pick herself up off the ground to follow him.
Jenny goes back into the hospital to try to find Mike but the room he was in is empty now. Without him, she isn’t certain she can find the Lakeview Hotel at all, but the lake seems to be on the map so she just heads in that direction. It makes as much sense as anything else.
The Prison: Boys Behind Bars
She ends up on a back road somewhere, and then that’s blocked too, by a building marked “Silent Hill Historical Society.” But this still seems to be the right direction, so Jenny opens the door and goes in. The place is freaky. There’s old medical equipment that looks more like torture devices, and some religious relics that make her stomach hurt when she looks at them. On the wall there’s a painting, and there are two figures in it just like the woman she’s been seeing - giant aproned creatures with pyramids for heads. One of these is female, and the other looks male, and they stare out from the painting like they’re both waiting for her.
“They’re real… but who painted a picture of them?”
There’s a back door to the place, but it leads to a stairway going down. “A basement?” she thinks. Going underground in this place seems like it must be the worst idea ever. She’s already in hell and what’s below that? But she has to find the Lakeview Hotel, so she keeps going.
It’s not just a basement. There are a bunch of tunnels down here, winding around, yellow stone stretching out forever. She tries to draw a map to keep track of where she’s going but she’s pretty certain she’s screwing it up. Then she comes to a bunch of bars lining the path. These are prison cells, mostly empty but in some she sees piles of bones. Jenny tries not to think about who was locked up here for what, whether they were left here just to starve. It must have been a long time ago though. The bones are dry and fleshless, though the place still smells like rotten meat.
Then she hears a groaning sound and runs toward the next cell. Immediately she wishes she hadn’t, because she didn’t want to see this - Mike is in there, his clothes tossed to the side of the cell, with the Pyramid creature straddling him. She’s about to scream for it to let him go when she realizes this isn’t a bit like what the thing did to the mannequin. Mike is sitting and the thing is in his lap with its legs wrapped around his hips. She can see where it’s thrusting itself over Mike’s cock, but he isn’t trying to get away. And there’s no blood, except for the dried blood coating the creatures body. He seems to be licking that, pretty enthusiastically, his own face getting bloody as he runs his tongue down the creature’s breasts, head halfway under the thing’s helmet. Jenny stares at the dog tattoo on Mike’s arm as the pyramid monster buries a scarred hand in his hair.
The thing is making sounds like it’s being pleasured, and Mike is groaning like a man about to come, and all Jenny can think of is how that must feel, his cock buried inside her like that and his face on her chest. Then she loads the gun, begins to shoot at the bars, not caring which one of them she hits, trying not to look as she reloads and shoots again and again. But when she does look, instead of mangled naked bodies there is nothing, just a little dried blood and the smell of sex and metal and gunpowder.
Suddenly she almost wants to cry, staring at the empty cell. “I’m crazy. That’s the only explanation.” But when she speaks she hears a sound from a cell down the row.
“Jenny?”
Mike is down there, clothed and whole, clean or at least not covered with blood. Jenny stares.
“I saw you. I saw you fucking her.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“The pyramid thing. She was on you and you were-“
“You’ve got to be out of your mind,” he says.
“I saw it!”
Mike shakes his head. “You saw a lot of things I didn’t see, Jenny. I was fucking some monster? What would that make me?”
His face is pressed up against the bars and Jenny walks toward him. “I… you’re saying you weren’t…” She’s too confused to think clearly.
“I don’t think Silent Hill is a great place to get laid, Jenny. But on the other hand, you’re no monster, and if you’d let me out of this cell…” He reaches through the bars, strokes her face. She leans in toward him, kisses him. He doesn’t taste of blood, and she lets him slide his tongue into her mouth. Then she presses closer to the bars and he begins to stroke her arms, run his hands over her chest.
Her heart starts to race as he opens his mouth further, not letting the kiss end, reaching under the jacket to find her breasts, pinching at her nipple through the cloth of her bra.
“I could show you a good time, Jenny. As good a time as you’ll have here, anyway.”
This is insane, but it’s all insane, and she just kisses him again so he’ll stop talking. Now he puts his hand under the waistband of her pants and slides his fingers into her panties, pressing on her clit. She spreads her legs out for him, feeling herself getting wet in anticipation. He pulls away from the kiss and grins as he pushes a finger inside her.
“Is that good? Do you want more? Do you want me inside you, Jenny, fucking you?”
Mitchell never talked about sex, never talked dirty; he just did it and got it over with. Mike, on the other hand, is another story, and even picturing the pyramid monster riding him doesn’t keep her from wondering what it would be like to be fucking him herself.
“I want-“ she says.
His fingers work in and out of her slowly. “I know everything you want. Just find the key, and let me out of here… we’ll find a bed somewhere, the hotel maybe…”
At those words she pulls his hand out of her pants and backs away from the bars.
“I’ve got to get to the Lakeview. I’ve got to find Mitchell.”
Mike rolls his eyes. “You’re never going to fucking find Mitchell.”
“Shut up. I’ll let you out, but only so you can tell me where the Lakeview is.”
He just laughs. When she goes down the corridor further she sees a ring of keys hanging on a hook on the wall, and she can’t believe it’s going to be that simple. But when she brings them back to the cell, it’s empty. She looks through all of them, runs through the maze of cells until her legs and lungs hurt, but there’s no one in any of them.
Lakeview Hotel: Sex, Lies and Videotape
There’s a stairway up out of the prison, surprisingly enough, and when she walks far enough she finds not only the shore of the lake but a boat dock. It’s foggy as hell now but on the other side of the lake she can just barely see the outline of a building. She gets into one of the boats and unties it. Jenny has never rowed a boat in her life, not that she can remember, and her arms hurt after only a couple of minutes. But if she keeps going, she’ll be at the Lakeview and see Mitchell. And she still has the videotape stuffed into a pocket of the jacket.
When she gets there she remembers the place after all. It has a nice little garden, which doesn’t even look overgrown, and the inside is old-fashioned with wood paneling everywhere. All the doors seem to be locked, though. She shouts for Mitchell but there’s only silence. Once she hears something thumping through the hallways, reaches for the gun, but then everything is quiet again. Finally one door opens, Room 312. When she gets inside she wonders if this is the room they stayed in all those years ago.
“All the rooms probably look alike,” she tells herself. Then she sits on the bed and puts the tape into the VCR.
It’s Mitchell, looking into the camera, oddly formal like he always was, wearing the grey suit.
“Today we’re in Silent Hill at the Lakeview Hotel. And… we went to the historical society today, didn’t we, and found out about the religious history of this place and… why are we doing this, Jenny?”
Her own voice is off camera, encouraging him to just play along.
“All right, well, we’re having a good time on our vacation. This is a nice place, really. Very peaceful, and I like it here.” He coughs then, and Jenny winces as she watches him.
Then the scene changes. Mitchell is lying in bed, not the bed here but somewhere else. He’s under the covers, wearing pajamas. At first Jenny can’t figure out what’s going on. They’d never have taken a sex video. Mitchell would have had a fit at the very idea. Then she sees herself, holding a pillow. Now she knows exactly what this is a videotape of. She wants desperately to close her eyes but she can’t; she just watches in horror as she presses the pillow down over Mitchell’s face. He’s struggling… oh, god, she remembers how long he fought her; it seemed like forever even though he was so weak by then.
Finally Mitchell lies still and the tape ends in static. Jenny just sits there, trying to cry, but she can’t. Finally she leaves, wanders down the stairs, tries to figure out what happens now. When she walks into the restaurant, Ian is there.
“Did you find Mitchell?” he asks.
“I watched the tape. Mitchell isn’t here. He’s dead because… because I killed him.”
Ian just nods. “And not three years ago. Three days ago.”
“I felt sorry for him; he was in so much pain...”
“But he didn’t want you to kill him. He said he’d live with the pain if he could spend his last few days with you.”
“You make him sound so romantic-“ she protested.
“But he said it.”
Jenny just nods.
“You never did anything for Mitchell. He didn’t even want that much, and you complained about every little thing,’ Ian says.
“That’s not true, I-“
“You kept promising him someday you’d have a baby, but you were lying. You never wanted any children at all.” Ian says. “All he wanted was a son, someone-“
“To name after that grandfather of his. Ian Sunderland.” Jenny looks over at the chair but of course it’s empty now.
Finally she gets up. There’s nowhere to go… even if she could get back to the boat dock, find her car, what would happen then? Can she go back to the world knowing what she did? But she passes into the next room anyway, a banquet hall, and shuts the door behind her. There’s a little stage, and they’re on it, and it’s no surprise.
“Jenny!”
It’s Mike, with the pyramid thing behind him, an arm wrapped around his neck. “Jenny, help me!”
She just stares. The thing runs a hand up Mike’s thigh and rubs his crotch. A tongue protrudes from under the helmet and licks his neck. He screams. “Don’t! Jenny, don’t let this thing-“
“It’s over,” says Jenny flatly. “It’s finished.”
Pyramid Head raises the knife and stabs Mike in the back, the blade running out through his chest, blood pouring over the stage. Jenny just watches as Mike falls with dead horror in his eyes.
“Your turn,” she says to Pyramid Head, raising the gun. She shoots, but it only walks off the stage, drops to the ground, keeps walking toward her. Jenny reloads, shoots again, keeps going. The bullets clang off the helmet but Pyramid Head doesn’t stop walking toward her. Finally she’s face to face with it, and she knows the gun is no use. Then the monster lifts the knife and Jenny waits for the pain - but instead it slits its own throat. Blood pours out over the apron as Jenny stares. Now she’s properly sickened, watching the thing fall to the ground in a red pool, and she runs from the room, finds a white hallway that shouldn’t be there and just keeps running.
She can hear voices as she runs.
“Jenny… stop visiting me, I’m no good to you anymore…”
“Mrs. Sunderland, the insurance isn’t going to cover anything but hospice care now…”
“I’m costing you too much money, aren’t I Jenny?”
“At least let me come home to die…”
At the end of the hallway there’s a door, and when she opens it she finds herself blinking in sunlight.
The Ending: In Water
She’s in front of a store, right there in Silent Hill. And she sees him, in his suit, waiting for her.
“Mitchell...?”
“I don’t think so. I think Mitchell is dead, since you killed him.”
It’s just Mike, in that T-shirt, getting closer and closer to her.
“I thought you were dead, Mike,” Jenny says. “And you might as well be.”
“What do you mean by that? I thought you wanted me, wanted to see if I was any better in bed than he was. Just think how much fun we could have, Jenny. And I wouldn’t even spend as much money as he did.”
“You’re not Mitchell,” she replies flatly.
“But you never wanted Mitchell anyway… So just shut the hell up about your husband. You can’t have him!”
She can see Mike’s face ripple and change, turn white and fanged. He’s just another monster, or maybe he always was. Jenny doesn’t even hesitate, just lifts the gun and shoots at him.
He’s still moving, and something sharp stabs her. Mike has claws now, but he’s bleeding all over, and when she shoves him away he falls to the ground and stares up at her with eyes that aren’t dead yet.
“Jenny...”
She’s heard that voice too often. Jenny reloads and shoots Mike in the face, and he doesn’t even scream. Now he looks almost human again, a human corpse covered with blood and gore. And she still doesn’t want him.
The car is right there behind her, and she gets in, turns the key. All the walls are gone now; all the streets are whole, so she just keeps driving. She wonders if she could even drive away from Silent Hill, but she has no intention to. After a few turns she finally sees the lake and that’s exactly what she wants. She drives right up to the dock, boards rumbling under her tires, and just keeps going over the edge.
Mitchell’s voice is in her head. “I love you, Jenny. I didn’t mean to get sick, to lie there in that bed, to be such a damned trial to you.”
She only hopes her breath will be gone quickly.
“Mitchell… I’m sorry…” she murmurs as the car sinks into the water.
Another Ending: And You Thought That New York Was Hard to Escape From
Finally she gets up. What if she could get back to the boat dock, find her car, what would happen then? Can she go back to the world knowing what she did? But she passes into the next room anyway, a banquet hall, and shuts the door behind her. There’s a little stage, and they’re on it, and it’s no surprise.
“Jenny!”
It’s Mike, with the pyramid thing behind him, an arm wrapped around his neck. “Jenny, help me!”
She walks forward, gets onto the stage herself. “It’s over. It’s finished.”
Mike makes a small whimpering sound as Jenny walks forward and reaches out her hand. Pyramid Head holds out the knife and Jenny receives it. It’s incredibly heavy, and she needs both hands to hold it. Staring for one moment into Mike’s terrified eyes, she runs forward and stabs the knife through both of them. It runs through easily, and they fall, still locked together, with blood everywhere. She looks at them for a minute, the apron fallen aside to revealing that white body again, covered in Mike’s blood. The helmet is almost off, but Jenny refuses to look at the thing’s face. “It’s over,” she repeats into the silence.
She runs down a white hallway that shouldn’t be there and at the other end she finds her car. It’s where she left it, just by the wall. Jenny gets in, turns the key. Now she can find the main road, escape this town. Then she can forget about everything that happened, including her husband who would have been dead in a week anyway.
“I can’t believe this. I’m finally out of there.”
She is almost to the freeway when she sees him by the side of the road. He’s got the T-shirt, and a tattoo of something, and tight jeans. Jenny pulls the car over and opens the passenger side window.
“Mike?” she asks.
The man just looks confused, and now Jenny sees that his hair is darker and worn in a ponytail, even though he has the same green eyes.
“Mark. My name is Mark.” He coughs into his hand. “I’m just looking for a ride.”
Jenny hesitates just for a second, and then opens the door. “Get in.”
Short Ficlet: Omake Ending
Finally she gets up. There’s nowhere to go… even if she could get back to the boat dock, find her car, what would happen then?
She decides to go out of the restaurant through the kitchen, finds herself in front of a door with a strange symbol on it like an animal’s claw. When she opens it, she sees something out of a science fiction show - huge control panels covered with lights and dials. There is one chair in front of them, and in it sits a cat wearing headphones.
“So, this was all your work,” Jenny says.
The cat runs toward her, and she scratches it behind the ears. Then she sits down and lets it curl up on her lap.
As she pets it, it begins to purr. “You know,” Jenny murmurs, “I never was much of a dog person anyway.”
Short Ficlet: Omake Extra: Heaven's Night Flashback
“This is Ladies’ Night,” Mitchell mutters. “I’m not supposed to be here.”
“Stop fussing. I’m sure other women brought their dates,” says Jenny.
“I’ll bet they didn’t,” he replies.
“I’m so tired of you being this hung up about everything.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to watch a woman do this either,” says Mitchell.
“That’s exactly my point!” says Jenny.
Mitchell disappears into the crowd of women, headed for the bar, and Jenny doesn’t really care.
A voice says, “Ladies, tonight we bring you, Policeman Mike!” A dark-haired man wearing nothing but a badge and a tiny pair of underwear dances out onto the stage. She holds out a twenty-dollar bill and waves it.
“Oh yeah, Policeman Mike. Come to Mama…”
Author/Artist: rosehiptea
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: AU, genderswitch, het smut, non-con (including violent monster death rape), voyeurism, bloodplay, violence, gore, profanity, character death, suicide, spoilers.
Word count: 7,760
Summary: Jenny Sunderland travels to the town of Silent Hill in search of her dead husband.
A/N: For the prompt: Silent Hill, Pyramid Head or Maria/James: genderswitched AU - revisited events. I thought this was pretty much the greatest prompt ever, and I can only hope I did justice to it. I took a fairly serious approach, despite sarcastic titles on my rather short chapters, and I hope that works too.
I decided to do several scenes from the game, basically covering the whole story in an extremely AU way, and throwing in a few of my own ideas just for the sake of gratuitous smut. Plus several endings, since this is Silent Hill. I did switch scenes and timelines around heavily, especially toward the end, and there’s a lot missing as I left out any equivalent of Eddie or Angela. The actual geography of Silent Hill has also been messed with very severely. (It’s also not necessarily set in exactly the same time period as Jenny has a cell phone.) I did riff off the game script for obvious reasons but I tried to create original dialogue.
While I hope it will be clear what's going on... for a bit of intro: We have Jenny Sunderland, who is looking for her dead husband Mitchell, and instead finds Mike, who bears a striking resemblance to him. We also have Pyramid Head, who wears the same helmet but has different bits under the apron. There's also a little boy named Ian, who isn't really Laura. As stated, Eddie and Angela have been spared appearances and are off in a better fic somewhere. Pairings include Jenny/Mike, implied Jenny/Mitchell, female!Pyramid Head/Mike, and of course female!Pyramid Head/male!mannequin monster.
Arriving in Silent Hill: My Baby, He Wrote Me a Letter
Jenny Sunderland drives down the freeway still turning the words of the letter over in her mind.
Jenny,
Do you remember Silent Hill? I always said we should go back, but you kept telling me you were too busy, that we should just forget it. I'm waiting for you there now... I'm sure you know exactly where, that special place. Please come and meet me.
Mitchell
The thing is, Jenny doesn't remember the trip to Silent Hill with Mitchell very well. They had gone there for the weekend, because of some ad on the radio that made it sound romantic. And it was OK: a decent hotel, and a park or something like that, and some bars. Nothing too exciting, but maybe all romantic couples really want is a park to walk through and a hotel room with a big bed. But she doesn't remember anywhere special, so she actually has no idea what he would mean.
The other thing is, Jenny doesn't understand how she could get a letter from Mitchell at all, since he's been dead for three years. But no matter how many times she tells herself that it’s impossible, she can’t just forget about it. What if he is waiting for her somehow, and she could really see him again? In the end she had looked up Silent Hill on the old map in the car and here she is, on the offramp, almost there.
But when she actually drives into town, she realizes why she hasn't heard a radio ad for the place in a while. There’s nobody there anymore - it’s just deserted, with the buildings looking abandoned and the road a broken mess. Everything looks empty, with no people and no other cars but hers. Finally she sees a wall ahead of her that stretches right over the road. Jenny stops the car and gets out. It’s time to turn around, but of course she isn’t going to.
"Is there anybody here?" There isn't, of course. There are stores around her, with faded names promising various ordinary services, but the glass is broken in half the windows and there’s faded yellow grass sprouting in the sidewalks.
Jenny listens to the stock reports, but not much other news unless she really has to. Maybe there's been some kind of accident here, and the whole place has been abandoned. It’s not like she would hear about it; she hasn’t even thought about this place in so long. But who would build a wall over a road… and is it to keep something out or keep something in?
She shakes her head and sighs. Probably the people here all moved out for some reason, like those little towns in the Midwest she had seen movies about that just sort of die and sit there vacant. And the wall is to make sure squatters don’t invade the place or something. But rational explanations aren't helping much as she tries the door of a dirty nameless building and walks in. Something is wrong, even more wrong than a letter from a dead husband. She opens a door with a bathroom symbol on it and stares into the filthy mirror.
"What the hell would you be doing in a place like this, Mitchell? This is even creeping me out; you'd never spend five minutes here."
The wall blocking the street has a door in it, and when Jenny turns the knob it opens. So much for keeping anything out.
"Don't go in there," she says to herself. "Call the police." But you can't report your dead husband as a missing person.
She walks through the door. On the other side are just more abandoned buildings and more broken road. But there are still no people, and definitely no Mitchell. Jenny finally decides this is futile, ridiculous, but when she turns and goes back to the door, it’s locked after all.
“How did that happen? I didn’t even see a lock.” She shakes her head. “You have to keep going, anyway. You have to find Mitchell. He might be stuck in this place wondering why you never came for him.”
Jenny keeps walking down the road, past abandoned storefronts - restaurants, a dress shop, a bar. Now and then she tries a door but none of them open. Then, passing an alley, she sees motion out of the corner of her eye. Against the wall halfway down the alley there’s a dumpster and she is certain she can see a figure sitting behind it. Jenny turns and runs toward it.
“Mitchell?” Nothing moves from behind the dumpster as she approaches. “Is it you, Mitchell? What the hell is going on?”
Then the person runs out and shows themselves. Except it isn’t a person. Whatever it is has gray skin, no arms, and is way too thin to be human. Jenny freezes in place.
“Oh god… what the fuck is that?” She turns to run but the thing is after her, and she feels some kind of gross liquid spray over her back. The smell is horrific. Against the wall of the alley she sees a stick with a nail in it. Desperate, she grabs it as she runs, then turns and hits the thing in its deformed head. It hops backward, and from its mouth it spits out another stream of the disgusting substance. She hits it again, over and over, and finally it slumps to the ground. Jenny approaches it, kicks it to make sure it’s dead. It doesn’t look like anything she’s ever seen before, but she isn’t going to sit there and study it. There could be more of them somewhere.
She runs back to the street before she finally bends over and vomits. Then she grabs her cell phone from her pocket, but there’s no signal. At this point that doesn’t surprise her at all. Putting the phone away, she continues walking down the street. Wherever Mitchell is, did the monsters attack him too? The letter doesn’t sound like he’s afraid, but then the letter doesn’t make sense anyway. Now she knows for certain that she had to find him, and that the police aren’t going to help her. No one is.
When Jenny passes a sporting goods store she decides it is time to break another window. When she gets in she grabs a green jacket and uses it to replace her fouled blouse. Then she gets what she really came in for: a shotgun and as many shells as she can stuff into the pockets of the jacket. Her father had taught her to shoot when she was younger, and even if she is no expert she at least knows how to load and fire the thing without hurting herself. It will be better than nothing.
Wood Side Apartments: Vagina Dentata
Eventually Jenny leaves the business district and passes into a residential area, but it doesn’t look any better. Now the weather has turned cold, with fog starting to move in. She doesn’t remember weather like this the last time she’d been here. Chain-link fence blocks her way into most of the buildings, and she has no reason to believe anyone is in them anyway. But then as she passes a sign that says “Wood Side Apartments” she hears a sound like a child laughing. Do teenagers come here to break into places and do all the shit they like to do? But the voice sounds even younger than that.
There is a break in the fence here, and Jenny goes through it. The main door of the apartment complex opens easily. She can’t hear the voice anymore, and looking at the place there is no way she can picture a family living here, even a desperate one. It’s full of filth and graffiti and smells like graveyard dirt. But then does that mean there is some child lost in here alone? Jenny keeps going, trying doors that don’t open and listening for the sound again. On the second floor she sees that the hallway is blocked by a set of bars like in a prison. That makes no sense, but neither does anything else anymore. And then behind the bars, as she squints into the darkness, she sees it - a child.
“Who are you?” she asks. “Are you all right?”
It’s a boy, and he just laughs at her. And she is certain it is her he is laughing at, because he is looking right into her eyes. This child doesn’t look homeless, and he doesn’t look upset or lost either. He is wearing clean clothes and has a decent haircut under a baseball cap.
“Who are you?” she yells, grabbing the bars. “What happened in this place?”
“Why are you standing over there?” the kid asks, as if he doesn’t even see the bars. “And what do you mean, what happened here?”
The boy is crazy, or has something else wrong with his mind, Jenny decides. He probably wandered off from some kind of home and now he needs help. But she can’t even reach him, and then he laughs and runs off down the hall into the darkness. She puts her face in her hands. “I can’t take this anymore. I don’t even know what’s happening.”
But then she hears a sound like a thump and a scrape, and takes her hands away from her face. Something else is standing behind the bars, and it isn’t a kid. It isn’t a grey monster, either. This thing is a woman.
“Are you-“ Jenny breaks off when she absorbs the whole picture. The woman-thing has a huge triangular helmet over her head, and is carrying an enormous knife. It doesn’t have ordinary clothes on, just an apron covered with dark stains. Did this thing hurt that kid? But Jenny didn’t hear a scream.
It faces her silently and Jenny realizes that it holds no answers, only serious danger. She turns around, runs to the stairwell door, but it doesn’t open. Heading down a different hallway instead, she finds another set of stairs, but when she goes down she can’t open the door at the bottom. Jenny almost panics. There is no getting out of this place. She starts running almost blindly now, up stairs and down them, past doors that won’t open and through doors that shows only empty apartments full of rusty appliances and no way out.
Finally she opens another random door - Room 307. She doesn’t even know where she is anymore, or what she expects to find. When she goes further inside she hears some kind of sick fleshy sound and sees a glint of metal in the darkness. Panicking again when she realizes she isn’t alone, she runs into a closet. She looks out through the slats of the door and sees it - the helmeted woman. And the apron is gone; Jenny can see its white ass and large breasts as it bends over the kitchen counter. But there is another thing moving on the counter, too. It looks almost like a man, with a muscular pair of legs and a man’s chest. But it’s not human, it’s headless like a mannequin. Yet it isn’t motionless and it isn’t dead either. It is squirming and writhing, and the helmeted monster is straddling it and moving.
Jenny gags when she realizes what she’s watching. The monster who she faced through the bars is fucking that man-thing… except the thing doesn’t even want it; it’s trying to get away. As the triangular helmet moves and the monster beneath it growls, blood oozes from between its legs where it rides the cock of the headless man. And Jenny is certain it is the man-thing that is bleeding, and she sees its struggles weaken as the blood pours over the counter. The mannequin thing is dying, as the helmeted monster gives a groan of what sounds like lust.
Overcoming her disgust and terror as much as she can, Jenny loads the shotgun and shoots through the closet door. The creature in the pyramid whirls and stands naked before her, thighs still coated with blood. It growls, grabbing for the knife where it leans against the counter.
“I’ve got nowhere to run. I’m going to die in this closet.” Jenny struggles to reload the gun as quickly as possible. When she looks up the thing is still standing there, wearing the apron now, as if it doesn’t give a damn about shotgun shells.
“I can’t kill it, can I?”
To her shock, the monster doesn’t even open the closet door, but grabs the knife and begins to move away, dragging itself slowly. Jenny only stares, breathing shallowly, and waits until it seems to be gone. When she opens the closet door, the man-like thing is lying sprawled over the counter, its crotch a massive wound oozing blood. It seems to still be moving slightly, and Jenny can barely keep herself from vomiting. Finally she wastes two shells killing it.
Before she leaves the apartment, Jenny looks in the closet again. There had been something in there with her, some kind of clothing. It turns out to be a man’s suit, gray with pinstripes, with a vest. It is perfectly clean, unlike everything else here. There shouldn’t be anything scary about a suit, Jenny reflects to herself. Except that it’s Mitchell’s suit. He paid way too much for the damn thing, and she would recognize it anywhere.
“You really are here…” Jenny breathes. Now she can’t leave this town, not even after what she has just seen.
Rosewater Park: Someone Left the Cake Out In the Rain
The Woodside apartments are like a giant maze, and as Jenny tries to find her way out she passes a pool with an abandoned wheelchair lying at the bottom, and once sees another headless man-monster that runs when she shoots at it. Eventually she makes her way back to the street and just keeps on walking, not sure anymore what she hopes to find. At one point she finds a gas station and wonders if there might be a map of Silent Hill there. When she breaks into the office - she’s getting good at that - she actually finds one. It’s torn, but she can see street names and some of the landmarks.
“Mitchell walked in the park with me. I remember him picking a rose for me there. Maybe that’s where he’s waiting.” She cradles the shotgun in her hands. Rosewater Park is on Nathan Avenue, and it isn’t very far from where she is now.
As she makes the turn onto Nathan, she sees him again - that kid, sitting on a wall.
“Hey! Who are you? What are you doing here?”
The kid just grins. “I’m Ian.”
“Where are your parents? You can’t be here by yourself. It’s dangerous.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean why? Didn’t you see that crazy woman with the knife?”
“I see a crazy woman all right,” says Ian with a laugh.
“Are there people here besides you?” Jenny asks finally.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m looking for someone. He’s my husband.”
“Oh, sure, your husband Mitchell. The one you never loved.” The kid jumps off the wall.
“What the hell are talking about?” yells Jenny.
Ian runs down the street, calling over his shoulder. “Mitchell only married you for your money.”
Jenny chases him for half a block before she gives up.
“How could he know Mitchell? And no one ever said any such bullshit thing to me, not where I could hear. My husband didn’t need my damn-“ She stops and pants. “I’m going to the park. Maybe that’s where this kid met Mitchell.”
The park is shrouded in fog, not very sunny or romantic now. But when she walks down one of the paths, she sees a figure in the distance, a man with blonde hair. Jenny runs toward him. “Mitchell! Damn it, you scared me, what are you-“
“Mike. My name is Mike.”
Jenny stares. This man looks like Mitchell all right. He has the same face, the same green eyes that always got Mitchell so many compliments. But Mitchell would never have dressed like that, in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt that clung to his chest. And he wouldn’t have worn his hair that long, either. Plus this guy obviously spends more time in the gym than Mitchell ever did. He has a tattoo on his arm, too, a dog or something… you couldn’t have paid Mitchell enough money to get a tattoo.
Mike raises an eyebrow. “Why are you looking at me like that? Do I remind you of someone? Your date run out on you?”
“Do you think I have a date in a place like this? I’m looking for my husband. And you… you look exactly like him. Except for your hair, and he wouldn’t have worn that shirt.”
“I’m sorry you have a problem with my shirt, lady.”
“Jenny. Jenny Sunderland. I didn’t mean anything by that, it’s just--”
He nods. “And I might be a little sorry I’m not your husband, too, Jenny.” He winks. Mitchell would never have done that, either. He never flirted; he thought there was no point to games.
“Look, it’s just weird, that’s all. Mitchell died three years ago, and now here you are and you’re exactly alike.”
“If he’s dead, then why are you looking for him?” Mike seems oddly unsurprised though, just gives her another lazy grin.
“He sent me a letter. He said he’d meet me in our special place.”
“And this park was your special place?”
“I don’t even remember. We came here to Silent Hill once together, but…”
“Did you stay at the Lakeview Hotel?”
“Yes! You know where that is? It isn’t on this map.”
“Sure. I’ll bet your Mitchell spent a lot of time in your special place, there at the Lakeview, didn’t he?” Mike leers a little and Jenny steps backwards.
“This isn’t a dirty joke. My husband might be here somewhere, with all these monsters, and I need to find him.”
“Well, I can help you find that place. And protect you from monsters.”
Jenny lifted the gun. “I don’t need you. I’ve got this.”
“A tough lady. Well, maybe you can protect me then. The Lakeview is that way.” He gestures.
She shakes her head to clear it. “I still don’t understand this. You could be Mitchell’s ghost.”
Mike’s warm hand closes around her arm. “Do I feel like a ghost?”
Jenny sighs. “No.”
Brookhaven Hospital: And You Thought House Was A Jerk
They can’t just walk straight there. Everywhere they go there’s another wall, or the sidewalk and street are too broken to let them continue. Jenny opens her mouth several times to ask Mike who he is, why he’s here, but she’s not sure she wants to hear the answer. She just watches him as he moves, walking a little faster than Mitchell would, but still so much like him that it hurts her.
They end up on Carroll Street, near a hospital. Jenny never wants to go into another hospital again, especially in this place, but then she sees a baseball cap. It’s Ian, at one of the windows, looking down at them.
“That kid is up there,” she says.
“What kid? What would a kid be doing here?” Mike asks her in her husband’s voice.
“Don’t fucking ask me. But he’s here. And I think he knows where Mitchell is.”
“You really think your dead husband is here in this town somewhere?” Mike asks her with raised eyebrows.
“Is that any weirder than everything else going on here?” she yells.
He holds up his hands. “OK, OK. We’ll go look for the kid.”
“There’s no ‘we’ in this, Mike.” But she lets him follow her through the doors.
“If there’s a child here,” Mike is saying, “the maybe he needs help.”
“There’s something wrong with him, if you ask me, but I don’t think he needs any help.”
“Not a motherly type, are you?” Mike says.
“Fuck you.”
Mike just laughs, doesn’t pick on her for swearing the way Mitchell used to. Jenny opens a hallway door, and to her amazement someone in a white coat is there, heading away from her.
“Hey… hey, is this place still open?”
The person turns, and it’s a nurse… but not really. Not in the sense of having a face, or a body that looks particularly human. Jenny loads the gun, but the thing is running at them already, and it jumps on Mike and knocks him over. It’s got a scalpel in one hand, and it’s trying to stab Mike with it, aiming for the crotch. He grabs its wrist but he looks damned terrified and Jenny’s ready to scream herself. All she can think is that this nurse will mutilate Mike, kill him, and then come after her. But if she shoots it she’ll get Mike too.
Finally she gathers her nerve and jumps on the nurse herself, grabbing its neck. It doesn’t even seem bothered at first, probably doesn’t need to breathe, but Jenny’s strong enough to pull it off Mike, and even manages to throw it against the wall. It hits the wall hard and slides down leaving a smear of blood. Jenny is all over it then, stomping the wrist with the scalpel, kicking its non-existent face, listening to ribs crack. Finally Mike grabs her.
“Look, it’s dead, OK? It’s dead. Calm down.”
Jenny backs off. “Yeah. Let’s head for the third floor. I think I saw Ian up there.”
But halfway down the hallway, Mike doubles over and coughs.
“Did that nurse hurt you?” Jenny asks urgently.
“No, I’m fine.” He takes a pill bottle out of his pocket, puts one in his mouth and swallows it dry. “Too much tequila last night, that’s all.”
Jenny stares at his hand. “Tequila shouldn’t make you cough up blood.”
“I must have got the worm,” he mutters.
She puts a hand on his back. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
Jenny doesn’t believe him, but she doesn’t have time to worry about it right now. They head for the elevator and Jenny is surprised when the doors open.
“Shouldn’t there have to be electricity for this thing to run?”
Mike shrugs. “Maybe there is electricity. The power plant probably isn’t here in the town anyway.”
“What exactly do you know about this place?” Jenny finally asks him as the doors close.
“I know fuck-all about this place. I’m just … here.”
“What do you mean you’re ‘just here’” Jenny asks in an irritated tone. “You must have come here for some reason?”
He just puts a hand on her face. “Don’t worry about where I come from, lovely Jenny.”
Mike’s going to kiss her; she can tell, and as much as she wants him to she still smacks his hand away. That’s when the elevator stops and goes dark.
“Oh shit,” says Jenny. And then there’s a booming voice.
“Jenny and Mitchell Sunderland, this is your song!”
“What the hell?” she yells.
A few strains of music begin to play and she claps her hands over her ears. “Stop it!” She feels Mike’s arms around her, and he’s trying to say something into her ear.
“Stop it!” she screams, at the elevator, at Mike, at everything.
Suddenly the elevator starts again and reaches the third floor. The doors open and Jenny stumbles out with Mike still trying to hold onto her.
“Calm down, Jenny. It’s just a song. Did they play that at your wedding or something?”
“We got married at the courthouse. Mitchell didn’t even like music. And you can get your fucking hands off me now.” She stomps down the hall.
He’s still following her though. “What kind of guy doesn’t like music?”
“A practical kind of guy. Mitchell was a good person.”
“You could have afforded a better wedding with all your money…” said Mike.
“Who told you I had any money?” she snaps.
He shrugged. “Maybe nobody.”
“I hate hospitals,” she says, trying to change the subject.
“Doesn’t everybody?”
“The last time I was in one, I was visiting Mitchell,” she says.
“What did he die of, anyway?” asks Mike with a little sympathy in his voice.
“Lung cancer,” sighs Jenny. “And he didn’t even smoke.”
She walks down the hallway with Mike following her, starts opening random doors, but the locks are mostly broken. Finally one swings open. It’s just a little room big enough for one patient, with sheets on the messy bed. Mike walks in and sits down on the edge, beginning to cough again.
“I think I’d better stay here for a while,” he says.
“You know this place?”
“Maybe…” he says.
Jenny’s getting tired of hearing that word from him. But he looks pale, and there’s a line of prescription bottles on the bedside table.
“I don’t feel right just leaving you here,” she says.
He grabs her hand, presses it to his face. “I’ll be all right.”
“Your skin is so cold. You really must be sick.”
“I’m fine. Anyway, what can we do? Call an ambulance? Or maybe a nurse?” He laughs until he coughs again.
“Well, I’ll lock the door on my way out,” she says.
As she’s leaving, he calls after her.
“Say, Jenny… what are you going to do if you don’t find Mitchell?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know. I don’t even know what I’m going to do if I do find him.”
“Well, you’re going to be happy then,” Mike murmurs sleepily.
“Yeah, right.”
She still hasn’t found Ian and decides to try the roof, careful to take the stairs this time. But there’s nothing there, it’s just dirt and air and blackness under her feet. But just before she goes back down she hears thumping sounds and the scrape of metal. There’s nowhere to run, Jenny is right by the edge of the roof. It… she… is there behind her, with fresh blood on the apron. Jenny starts to load the gun but it’s too late; the thing picks her up like she’s a doll and she’s over the edge.
On the way down she figures this is probably one of the more pleasant ways to die in this town.
But later she wakes up on the ground by the hospital, feeling a little bruised but able to move all her limbs. That makes no sense, she should be dead or paralyzed, but she isn’t. In a few minutes she’s even able to sit up, though with a pain in her head like the world’s worst hangover.
That’s when she sees Ian.
“I was looking for you!” she tells him angrily.
“I was right here,” he says. “Look, I have something for you. It’s from Mitchell.” He’s holding a videotape. Jenny stares at it.
“What’s this?”
“What’s it look like, stupid?” Ian asks.
“Why would Mitchell give you a videotape?”
“Maybe you should watch it.”
“Yeah, like I’m going to find a working VCR in this town?” she asks sarcastically.
“There’s one at the Lakeview.” Then the kid runs off, before she can even pick herself up off the ground to follow him.
Jenny goes back into the hospital to try to find Mike but the room he was in is empty now. Without him, she isn’t certain she can find the Lakeview Hotel at all, but the lake seems to be on the map so she just heads in that direction. It makes as much sense as anything else.
The Prison: Boys Behind Bars
She ends up on a back road somewhere, and then that’s blocked too, by a building marked “Silent Hill Historical Society.” But this still seems to be the right direction, so Jenny opens the door and goes in. The place is freaky. There’s old medical equipment that looks more like torture devices, and some religious relics that make her stomach hurt when she looks at them. On the wall there’s a painting, and there are two figures in it just like the woman she’s been seeing - giant aproned creatures with pyramids for heads. One of these is female, and the other looks male, and they stare out from the painting like they’re both waiting for her.
“They’re real… but who painted a picture of them?”
There’s a back door to the place, but it leads to a stairway going down. “A basement?” she thinks. Going underground in this place seems like it must be the worst idea ever. She’s already in hell and what’s below that? But she has to find the Lakeview Hotel, so she keeps going.
It’s not just a basement. There are a bunch of tunnels down here, winding around, yellow stone stretching out forever. She tries to draw a map to keep track of where she’s going but she’s pretty certain she’s screwing it up. Then she comes to a bunch of bars lining the path. These are prison cells, mostly empty but in some she sees piles of bones. Jenny tries not to think about who was locked up here for what, whether they were left here just to starve. It must have been a long time ago though. The bones are dry and fleshless, though the place still smells like rotten meat.
Then she hears a groaning sound and runs toward the next cell. Immediately she wishes she hadn’t, because she didn’t want to see this - Mike is in there, his clothes tossed to the side of the cell, with the Pyramid creature straddling him. She’s about to scream for it to let him go when she realizes this isn’t a bit like what the thing did to the mannequin. Mike is sitting and the thing is in his lap with its legs wrapped around his hips. She can see where it’s thrusting itself over Mike’s cock, but he isn’t trying to get away. And there’s no blood, except for the dried blood coating the creatures body. He seems to be licking that, pretty enthusiastically, his own face getting bloody as he runs his tongue down the creature’s breasts, head halfway under the thing’s helmet. Jenny stares at the dog tattoo on Mike’s arm as the pyramid monster buries a scarred hand in his hair.
The thing is making sounds like it’s being pleasured, and Mike is groaning like a man about to come, and all Jenny can think of is how that must feel, his cock buried inside her like that and his face on her chest. Then she loads the gun, begins to shoot at the bars, not caring which one of them she hits, trying not to look as she reloads and shoots again and again. But when she does look, instead of mangled naked bodies there is nothing, just a little dried blood and the smell of sex and metal and gunpowder.
Suddenly she almost wants to cry, staring at the empty cell. “I’m crazy. That’s the only explanation.” But when she speaks she hears a sound from a cell down the row.
“Jenny?”
Mike is down there, clothed and whole, clean or at least not covered with blood. Jenny stares.
“I saw you. I saw you fucking her.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“The pyramid thing. She was on you and you were-“
“You’ve got to be out of your mind,” he says.
“I saw it!”
Mike shakes his head. “You saw a lot of things I didn’t see, Jenny. I was fucking some monster? What would that make me?”
His face is pressed up against the bars and Jenny walks toward him. “I… you’re saying you weren’t…” She’s too confused to think clearly.
“I don’t think Silent Hill is a great place to get laid, Jenny. But on the other hand, you’re no monster, and if you’d let me out of this cell…” He reaches through the bars, strokes her face. She leans in toward him, kisses him. He doesn’t taste of blood, and she lets him slide his tongue into her mouth. Then she presses closer to the bars and he begins to stroke her arms, run his hands over her chest.
Her heart starts to race as he opens his mouth further, not letting the kiss end, reaching under the jacket to find her breasts, pinching at her nipple through the cloth of her bra.
“I could show you a good time, Jenny. As good a time as you’ll have here, anyway.”
This is insane, but it’s all insane, and she just kisses him again so he’ll stop talking. Now he puts his hand under the waistband of her pants and slides his fingers into her panties, pressing on her clit. She spreads her legs out for him, feeling herself getting wet in anticipation. He pulls away from the kiss and grins as he pushes a finger inside her.
“Is that good? Do you want more? Do you want me inside you, Jenny, fucking you?”
Mitchell never talked about sex, never talked dirty; he just did it and got it over with. Mike, on the other hand, is another story, and even picturing the pyramid monster riding him doesn’t keep her from wondering what it would be like to be fucking him herself.
“I want-“ she says.
His fingers work in and out of her slowly. “I know everything you want. Just find the key, and let me out of here… we’ll find a bed somewhere, the hotel maybe…”
At those words she pulls his hand out of her pants and backs away from the bars.
“I’ve got to get to the Lakeview. I’ve got to find Mitchell.”
Mike rolls his eyes. “You’re never going to fucking find Mitchell.”
“Shut up. I’ll let you out, but only so you can tell me where the Lakeview is.”
He just laughs. When she goes down the corridor further she sees a ring of keys hanging on a hook on the wall, and she can’t believe it’s going to be that simple. But when she brings them back to the cell, it’s empty. She looks through all of them, runs through the maze of cells until her legs and lungs hurt, but there’s no one in any of them.
Lakeview Hotel: Sex, Lies and Videotape
There’s a stairway up out of the prison, surprisingly enough, and when she walks far enough she finds not only the shore of the lake but a boat dock. It’s foggy as hell now but on the other side of the lake she can just barely see the outline of a building. She gets into one of the boats and unties it. Jenny has never rowed a boat in her life, not that she can remember, and her arms hurt after only a couple of minutes. But if she keeps going, she’ll be at the Lakeview and see Mitchell. And she still has the videotape stuffed into a pocket of the jacket.
When she gets there she remembers the place after all. It has a nice little garden, which doesn’t even look overgrown, and the inside is old-fashioned with wood paneling everywhere. All the doors seem to be locked, though. She shouts for Mitchell but there’s only silence. Once she hears something thumping through the hallways, reaches for the gun, but then everything is quiet again. Finally one door opens, Room 312. When she gets inside she wonders if this is the room they stayed in all those years ago.
“All the rooms probably look alike,” she tells herself. Then she sits on the bed and puts the tape into the VCR.
It’s Mitchell, looking into the camera, oddly formal like he always was, wearing the grey suit.
“Today we’re in Silent Hill at the Lakeview Hotel. And… we went to the historical society today, didn’t we, and found out about the religious history of this place and… why are we doing this, Jenny?”
Her own voice is off camera, encouraging him to just play along.
“All right, well, we’re having a good time on our vacation. This is a nice place, really. Very peaceful, and I like it here.” He coughs then, and Jenny winces as she watches him.
Then the scene changes. Mitchell is lying in bed, not the bed here but somewhere else. He’s under the covers, wearing pajamas. At first Jenny can’t figure out what’s going on. They’d never have taken a sex video. Mitchell would have had a fit at the very idea. Then she sees herself, holding a pillow. Now she knows exactly what this is a videotape of. She wants desperately to close her eyes but she can’t; she just watches in horror as she presses the pillow down over Mitchell’s face. He’s struggling… oh, god, she remembers how long he fought her; it seemed like forever even though he was so weak by then.
Finally Mitchell lies still and the tape ends in static. Jenny just sits there, trying to cry, but she can’t. Finally she leaves, wanders down the stairs, tries to figure out what happens now. When she walks into the restaurant, Ian is there.
“Did you find Mitchell?” he asks.
“I watched the tape. Mitchell isn’t here. He’s dead because… because I killed him.”
Ian just nods. “And not three years ago. Three days ago.”
“I felt sorry for him; he was in so much pain...”
“But he didn’t want you to kill him. He said he’d live with the pain if he could spend his last few days with you.”
“You make him sound so romantic-“ she protested.
“But he said it.”
Jenny just nods.
“You never did anything for Mitchell. He didn’t even want that much, and you complained about every little thing,’ Ian says.
“That’s not true, I-“
“You kept promising him someday you’d have a baby, but you were lying. You never wanted any children at all.” Ian says. “All he wanted was a son, someone-“
“To name after that grandfather of his. Ian Sunderland.” Jenny looks over at the chair but of course it’s empty now.
Finally she gets up. There’s nowhere to go… even if she could get back to the boat dock, find her car, what would happen then? Can she go back to the world knowing what she did? But she passes into the next room anyway, a banquet hall, and shuts the door behind her. There’s a little stage, and they’re on it, and it’s no surprise.
“Jenny!”
It’s Mike, with the pyramid thing behind him, an arm wrapped around his neck. “Jenny, help me!”
She just stares. The thing runs a hand up Mike’s thigh and rubs his crotch. A tongue protrudes from under the helmet and licks his neck. He screams. “Don’t! Jenny, don’t let this thing-“
“It’s over,” says Jenny flatly. “It’s finished.”
Pyramid Head raises the knife and stabs Mike in the back, the blade running out through his chest, blood pouring over the stage. Jenny just watches as Mike falls with dead horror in his eyes.
“Your turn,” she says to Pyramid Head, raising the gun. She shoots, but it only walks off the stage, drops to the ground, keeps walking toward her. Jenny reloads, shoots again, keeps going. The bullets clang off the helmet but Pyramid Head doesn’t stop walking toward her. Finally she’s face to face with it, and she knows the gun is no use. Then the monster lifts the knife and Jenny waits for the pain - but instead it slits its own throat. Blood pours out over the apron as Jenny stares. Now she’s properly sickened, watching the thing fall to the ground in a red pool, and she runs from the room, finds a white hallway that shouldn’t be there and just keeps running.
She can hear voices as she runs.
“Jenny… stop visiting me, I’m no good to you anymore…”
“Mrs. Sunderland, the insurance isn’t going to cover anything but hospice care now…”
“I’m costing you too much money, aren’t I Jenny?”
“At least let me come home to die…”
At the end of the hallway there’s a door, and when she opens it she finds herself blinking in sunlight.
The Ending: In Water
She’s in front of a store, right there in Silent Hill. And she sees him, in his suit, waiting for her.
“Mitchell...?”
“I don’t think so. I think Mitchell is dead, since you killed him.”
It’s just Mike, in that T-shirt, getting closer and closer to her.
“I thought you were dead, Mike,” Jenny says. “And you might as well be.”
“What do you mean by that? I thought you wanted me, wanted to see if I was any better in bed than he was. Just think how much fun we could have, Jenny. And I wouldn’t even spend as much money as he did.”
“You’re not Mitchell,” she replies flatly.
“But you never wanted Mitchell anyway… So just shut the hell up about your husband. You can’t have him!”
She can see Mike’s face ripple and change, turn white and fanged. He’s just another monster, or maybe he always was. Jenny doesn’t even hesitate, just lifts the gun and shoots at him.
He’s still moving, and something sharp stabs her. Mike has claws now, but he’s bleeding all over, and when she shoves him away he falls to the ground and stares up at her with eyes that aren’t dead yet.
“Jenny...”
She’s heard that voice too often. Jenny reloads and shoots Mike in the face, and he doesn’t even scream. Now he looks almost human again, a human corpse covered with blood and gore. And she still doesn’t want him.
The car is right there behind her, and she gets in, turns the key. All the walls are gone now; all the streets are whole, so she just keeps driving. She wonders if she could even drive away from Silent Hill, but she has no intention to. After a few turns she finally sees the lake and that’s exactly what she wants. She drives right up to the dock, boards rumbling under her tires, and just keeps going over the edge.
Mitchell’s voice is in her head. “I love you, Jenny. I didn’t mean to get sick, to lie there in that bed, to be such a damned trial to you.”
She only hopes her breath will be gone quickly.
“Mitchell… I’m sorry…” she murmurs as the car sinks into the water.
Another Ending: And You Thought That New York Was Hard to Escape From
Finally she gets up. What if she could get back to the boat dock, find her car, what would happen then? Can she go back to the world knowing what she did? But she passes into the next room anyway, a banquet hall, and shuts the door behind her. There’s a little stage, and they’re on it, and it’s no surprise.
“Jenny!”
It’s Mike, with the pyramid thing behind him, an arm wrapped around his neck. “Jenny, help me!”
She walks forward, gets onto the stage herself. “It’s over. It’s finished.”
Mike makes a small whimpering sound as Jenny walks forward and reaches out her hand. Pyramid Head holds out the knife and Jenny receives it. It’s incredibly heavy, and she needs both hands to hold it. Staring for one moment into Mike’s terrified eyes, she runs forward and stabs the knife through both of them. It runs through easily, and they fall, still locked together, with blood everywhere. She looks at them for a minute, the apron fallen aside to revealing that white body again, covered in Mike’s blood. The helmet is almost off, but Jenny refuses to look at the thing’s face. “It’s over,” she repeats into the silence.
She runs down a white hallway that shouldn’t be there and at the other end she finds her car. It’s where she left it, just by the wall. Jenny gets in, turns the key. Now she can find the main road, escape this town. Then she can forget about everything that happened, including her husband who would have been dead in a week anyway.
“I can’t believe this. I’m finally out of there.”
She is almost to the freeway when she sees him by the side of the road. He’s got the T-shirt, and a tattoo of something, and tight jeans. Jenny pulls the car over and opens the passenger side window.
“Mike?” she asks.
The man just looks confused, and now Jenny sees that his hair is darker and worn in a ponytail, even though he has the same green eyes.
“Mark. My name is Mark.” He coughs into his hand. “I’m just looking for a ride.”
Jenny hesitates just for a second, and then opens the door. “Get in.”
Short Ficlet: Omake Ending
Finally she gets up. There’s nowhere to go… even if she could get back to the boat dock, find her car, what would happen then?
She decides to go out of the restaurant through the kitchen, finds herself in front of a door with a strange symbol on it like an animal’s claw. When she opens it, she sees something out of a science fiction show - huge control panels covered with lights and dials. There is one chair in front of them, and in it sits a cat wearing headphones.
“So, this was all your work,” Jenny says.
The cat runs toward her, and she scratches it behind the ears. Then she sits down and lets it curl up on her lap.
As she pets it, it begins to purr. “You know,” Jenny murmurs, “I never was much of a dog person anyway.”
Short Ficlet: Omake Extra: Heaven's Night Flashback
“This is Ladies’ Night,” Mitchell mutters. “I’m not supposed to be here.”
“Stop fussing. I’m sure other women brought their dates,” says Jenny.
“I’ll bet they didn’t,” he replies.
“I’m so tired of you being this hung up about everything.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to watch a woman do this either,” says Mitchell.
“That’s exactly my point!” says Jenny.
Mitchell disappears into the crowd of women, headed for the bar, and Jenny doesn’t really care.
A voice says, “Ladies, tonight we bring you, Policeman Mike!” A dark-haired man wearing nothing but a badge and a tiny pair of underwear dances out onto the stage. She holds out a twenty-dollar bill and waves it.
“Oh yeah, Policeman Mike. Come to Mama…”