route_1065 | Weird triggers.

Current Location: Ecruteak

Entry tags:

Weird triggers.

Who:

no_ufo_ending
Where: A dinky little diner in Ecruteak City
When: Backdated to November 2nd, early morning.
Summary: Blackmail and horrible chocolate milk-induced flashbacks are best shared between friends. Right?
Rating: PG13 because Silent Hill

Log:

See Henry.

See Henry smirk.

Smirk, Henry, smirk.

Like a cat on top of a pile of fresh laundry, Henry Townshend waited at one of the little tables in the Ecruteak diner for his adoptive sister to return with his promised breakfast. He leaned back in the chair and sort of molded into it. He was still slogging through his sugar-crash from Halloween. The poke'gear holding incriminating footage of miss Mason acting like a bird hopping in and out of their hotel window was safe in his shirt pocket. As he waited, he tugged it out and started fiddling with it.

8I Maybe he would take a picture of his victory breakfast.

Burger lounged at his feet with his long creepy tail wound hazardously around his trainer's legs. He was watching a hole in the far side of the room. He'd seen a purple rat disappear through it. >8I HE KNEW HE DID. Also, he was the best Glameow.

A huge yawn forced Henry to take a break from being a smug son of a bitch. He stretched his arms high above his head and oozed halfway out of the chair so that his knees buckled awkwardly. People staring? Fuck the police. At least for right now. He'd probably grow twitchy and withdrawn again eventually, but right now he was a BOSS.

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In her several lives, Heather had experienced a lot of things.

Some normal, and quite a few not so normal.

But one thing she had never experienced until yesterday, not even once... was living with somebody who was willing and had the capability of tattling on her to her father. She'd been an only child her whole life. Sure, getting in trouble with Daddy had always been a looming threat, considering that she'd been one of those kids who found ways to MAKE trouble if there wasn't enough actively occurring at any given time, but usually it was just a matter of whether SHE was good enough at hiding the evidence.

An outside factor, like saaaay... a tattle-happy older sibling? Never a thing.

... Until now.

Which was why she was standing in line at the counter with a tray in hand, glaring at the menu on the wall. And occasionally shooting a dark look over her shoulder at Henry.

It wasn't even like her dad didn't know that she and Kaito had stolen all that junk! ... It was just that she didn't entirely remember what ELSE they'd done, and she wasn't entirely keen on video evidence being on the table.

When Henry caught those looks he just smiiiiiled at her.

c:

Henry wasn't much of a smiler. His default expression was this sort of spacey, thoughtful frown. Not gloomy, mind you, but not terribly cheerful. Watching Heather squirm gave him a horrible joy though. He was sure he'd pay for it later, but he was going to try enjoying living in the Now. Like Heather and Harry did!

Oh, he'd pay. He'd pay.

But behind the righteous rage, she was a liiiiittle proud that he was breaking out of his shell enough to be sassy. ... She just sort of wished he wasn't practicing on HER.

When their number was called at last and the girl behind the counter slid two sublimely gorgeous golden waffles onto the plates on the tray, Heather slid her 'Gear over briefly to get the charge put on it, then headed over to the glass fridges where the drinks were kept, sticking her tongue out at Henry in passing.

It wasn't long before she arrived at the table, tray in hand, bearing the breakfast along with two bottles.

"The plain one's yours. Mine has chocolate chips."

BI Yeah she got chocolate chip for herself and didn't bother getting one for him. WHAT.

Ignoring everything else for the moment, including the liquid trauma, Henry's hand instantly went for the waffle that was his. He didn't even process what she'd said fully until it was halfway in his mouth.

>8c HEY.

"Why don't I get chocolate chips?"

Edited 2011-11-18 09:08 (UTC)

"Because I'm mad at you and you didn't say anything in your terms about chocolate chips."

She sat down opposite him, pulling the plate with the chocolate-filled waffle over to her just in case he got any funny ideas about stealing it.

"So deal with it."

Smirk.

"I didn't know it was an option." He held the waffle out for her with an obvious bite taken out of it. If she didn't take it, he'd try to place it on her plate. "Bring me a better waffle."

While he did that, he grabbed up one of the bottles. It wasn't until he stopped trying to heckle Heather into getting him a new waffle and just be satisfied with the fact that he'd gotten the upper hand on a god-killer in the first place that he noticed what was in his hands. Henry stopped smiling. Henry stopped moving.

He had even started to twist it open. The seal had broken. He could smell it. Instead of the cool, perhaps nostalgic smell of chocolate milk, all he could smell was bubbling, popping flesh and charred wood.

She wrinkled her nose and shoved the plate back at him-- it had some smudges of melted chocolate on it from Heather's waffle.

"Screw you, I already paid for this one. You're not getting another. Put some syrup on it and be happy."

She rolled her eyes, tugging her own bottle over to her. They'd been out of regular milk-- but hey, she'd never minded chocolate, and she figured Henry wouldn't, either. What kind of weirdo didn't like chocolate milk?

It wasn't until she'd already screwed the cap off of her own and picked up a fork to cut into the waffle that she noticed the scruffy photographer had gone still. Scraping the fork back and forth across the plate to get it all the way through the crispy pastry, she gave him an odd look.

"Hey... what's the matter?"

Henry slowly sat the bottle down as if it were full of some kind of extremely sensitive explosive material. He then had a very tiny war with himself.

It's just a drink.

You love chocolate milk, Henry.

Chocolate anything is awesome.

But it had been the very last thing that poor tweaker kid had. He remembered him hovering there turning black and growing smaller and smaller as the flames ate him up. It had also been the last thing in his own fridge after he'd lost the wine bottle. You know. Besides the CAT BODY. He'd been pretty proud of himself so far. He hadn't had that many outbursts. He hadn't been caught muttering to himself. He hadn't shaved his head. These were all things Henry had expected of himself after dealing with the horrors of Silent Hill.

THE CHOCOLATE MILK WAS SILENT HILL.

Burger let out a scream when Henry stomped on his tail on his way out of the diner with a hand plastered against his face. He looked after his trainer. DB WHAT WAS THAT FOR? He hadn't even left a hairball in his shoes this week! The glameow let out a pitiful mewl and looked up at Heather.

... And Heather just... sat there and watched as the guy who thirty seconds ago had been smiling like a kid getting away with taking all the cookies from the jaw got up and walked out of the building without a word.

She knew Henry was flighty, but... this was sorta new.

Looking down at the Glameow briefly, Heather bit her lip and stood up, wiping her hands off on her jeans and hurriedly following Henry out the door, leaving the plates on the table.

Grumpiness aside, her fellow Silent Hill survivor was more important than breakfast.

Burger dashed after her, coiling his tail up carefully in a slightly crooked swirl so that nobody else stepped on it. 8c "Gl'yamoow!" Wait for him!

Henry hadn't made it very far. The young man could be found maybe a few buildings away leaning over a little decorative fence and coughing into somebody's flower bed. He hadn't had breakfast yet so all he managed to do was make his throat sear. He spat and coughed and gagged. Oh, God. Oh, God, it was in his nose, it was in his mouth he could TASTE Jasper burning like a stuttering hotdog. It was just like being there all over again.

This was so stupid! How could something like a bottle of chocolate milk do this to him? This was so stupid. Why couldn't he stop heaving? He felt like an idiot. People freaked out during storms. People freaked out when they heard squealing tires or snarling dogs or even gun shots.

People didn't freak out over the Johto version of a Yoo-hoo! It'd even had a happy little Miltank on the lable. Who didn't love a happy cow? What the fuck.

Edited 2011-11-18 10:42 (UTC)

She totally just wasted her money on a meal that was probably going to have been cleared away by an annoyed table-busser by the time they got back, but whatever.

Heather stopped a few yards away from Henry, just in case he was having some kind of... episode or something. She knew how twitchy he was even on a good day, and she didn't want to get too close and send him into like... a comatose state of terror or something.

"Hey... hey, are you ... are you sick?"

Was it the waffle? Maybe something bad had been in that bite he'd taken out of the waffle.

Henry's lips felt numb. "...No."

Not sick-sick. He didn't want to face her. He didn't say anything for a while. He waited for the shuddering to stop. Henry swallowed several times to get his throat to stop burning. He ignored Burger winding around his feet.

"I didn't expect that to happen." He felt like somebody had ripped an enormous scab off of one knee. "Holy shit."

"Yeah, uh... neither did I."

... Heather, now's not the time for dry statements.

When she was reasonably sure he wasn't going to scream and hit her in the face with a brick from that flowerbed if she tried to approach, she took a few steps closer.

".... What WAS that?"

I WAS ATTACKED BY A BOTTLE OF HERSHEY'S AS A SMALL CHILD.

No.

Henry rubbed his face, then let his arms dangle over the fence. It was a hard experience to put into elegant words. Henry was a photographer, not a poet.

"I gave this guy I met in the woods a bottle of chocolate milk so he would give me some information. He said thank you. Then he set himself on fire."

... Okay, so... she's pretty sure he's talking about something having to do with Silent Hill. Given the wtf factor, that would make sense.

But since he didn't actually MENTION Silent Hill, it sounds like something that might have happened to him while stoned in the woods while he was in college or something.

.... BUT yeah she'll go with it being something related to his Otherworld adventure.

"... I, uh..."

What exactly did one say to something like that?

"... I'm sorry."

Henry let that hang in the air for a while. Then, he pressed his palms into his eyes. "He drank it first--that was normal, I guess. But the smell...it took me right back there. I hadn't even thought about it. At all. Not until right now. He set himself on fire. He carved his number into his chest. Then he died. Walter made him do it. I know it. He said he'd met the devil."

Henry finally unhooked himself from the fence and sat down on the path. He rubbed under one arm. It sort of hurt.

"He became one of the ghosts. He followed me and he burned and he smelled like-- people shouldn't burn. Ever. Oh, God." He couldn't be sick again. He had nothing left in him to be sick with. Burger tried to push his head under one of Henry's hands and for a while his trainer ignored him. Eventually he took one hand away from his face and stroked the cat's head.

"I'm sorry, Heather. I'll pay for breakfast."

She stood there and watched him, brows peaking.

Heather almost always had SOMETHING to say about everything, but she'd never been particularly good at comforting people. Even though she wanted to. He had seen horrors just like he had-- just like her father had. Nobody else in this world could understand what they had all been through, except for each other.

When he spoke again, she shook her head.

"No, it's okay. S'already paid for. ... I... are you... are you gonna be okay?"

"That came out of nowhere. I'm sorry." He hoped he wouldn't have any more random freak-outs over ordinary things. Like golf clubs or vending machines. He finally looked up at Heather. "It still feels like a bad dream."

There was a pause, but then she nodded slowly.

"... I know."

And she did.

As real as she knows it all was, returning to the 'real world' after Silent Hill had been like waking up after a night of gruesome and terrifying nightmares. You staggered out into the daylight looking like crap, and no one but you knew all the horrors you'd been through between sunset and sunrise. And you couldn't talk to anybody about it.

... After a moment's consideration, she dropped down on her knees next to Henry.

She hadn't been sure, for a moment, whether they were at the point where hugging would be okay as opposed to just extremely awkward. But you know what? Fuck it. Henry's as good as family, considering everything. He's gonna get a tentative hug right now.

Even if the topic was the grimmest topic he knew of, he was glad to be taken seriously for once. He wasn't that stoner kid or that hipster guy. He was a fucking Silent Hill survivor. He had so much WTFery to tell her. So much to explain. He didn't know if she wanted to hear it or not, but some days he felt like he might explode if he didn't share his experiences with watermelon-sized slugs or weird floating men that sang with someone.

And then Henry got something he hadn't expected. He tensed up for a second. Once he was sure he wasn't about to be put into a headlock, he ragdolled there against the fence. This was a safe place. If you were still, patient, and spoke softly enough, strays would eventually let you touch them.

Henry decided he liked hugs.

"Hnnn."

It wasn't always a matter of what any of them wanted.

The fact that here, in this world, they could share their stories with each other-- could just not be alone anymore-- sort of meant they had to. Somehow NOT talking about it just wasn't really an option-- although of course the other nice thing about this place was that they didn't have to talk about it ALL the time. They could be normal, too. ... For once.

Heather gave him a tighter squeeze once he failed to start spasming or screaming at the physical contact.

It was a good thing he liked hugs, because so did she and he'd be getting plenty of them now.

... When he wasn't blackmailing her, anyway.

Henry was content to space out there for a while in the god killer's arms. 8[ Ghosts couldn't get him here.

"I think he still had that chocolate milk with him as a ghost." he said after a while. "He gargled a lot. The other ghosts didn't do that."

However, the other ghosts hadn't been on FIRE.

"... So there was a ghost following you around that was constantly gargling chocolate milk, and on fire?"

... She said it earnestly at first.

... And then she sort of realized what she had just said.

Oh god oh god no she couldn't laugh.

That might make him feel bad and as much as she usually didn't even bother thinking about that sort of thing she didn't want to scare him off oh god HURRY UP THINK OF ABANDONED PUPPIES OR SOMETHING...!

"Yeah...it was weird." He rubbed his face again. He needed to shave. "So much of it was weird. People crawling out of the walls, these dogs that sounded like cougars..." Then, he looked lost. Henry stared into the vastness that was this strange multiverse they existed in and said, hollowly, "and the butt monsters."

There was...

...no other way he could describe a clammy grey ASS with hands chasing him down a hall.

It had been a butt monster.

Since he seemed to be a little more talkative while she was holding him with her scrawny punk teenager arms, she went ahead and sat down all the way. Getting the seat of her pants all dirty on the hard November earth was better than trying to kneel the whole time. Besides, it distracted her from the automatic giggle threatening to erupt at the mental image of a flaming ghost floating around and gargling chocolate milk. It looked almost cartoony in her head and that was not okay.

This was Henry's experience and even mundane, stupid-sounding things became horrible and disturbing when you confronted them in the Otherworld. Even with her usually-unashamed terrible sense of taste, she knew it wasn't fair to-- what the hell did he just say.

There was a sort of stunned pause... and then when she spoke, it was in a tight, choked voice.

"... Butt monsters?"

Henry leaned a little and turned so that he could look Heather in the eye. He wasn't angry, but he was making sure she did, in fact, hear him right. Heather was about to learn why Henry tended to stare blankly and say, "What the hell?" when he encountered most obstacles.

"They were these grey...things with butts for heads and huge hands. They were a little like this other monster that was an enormous pair of hands with two baby heads and a cloak...they acted sort of alike."

Oh god, Henry, don't look at her like that... don't look at her like tha-- aw fuck.

She couldn't help it.

Her mouth sort of went into a wonky line for a couple seconds before she finally let her head dip forward with a PFFFHTFFFF- sound, followed by snickering. She wasn't laughing at him. At all. Just-- ... just, butt-monsters.

Dear god.

"Oho my god... I'm s-sorry..."

Henry's face did not crumple with anger. He just kept his glassy-eyed stare. The words were coming easier now. Once they wafted out into the land of 'out loud' he understood that they were...weird. Really weird.

It had all been so weird.

What the hell.

"It's okay. All the monsters there had something to do with Walter...but I don't know what. Especially the monkeys." He paused. "Some of them looked like they had two heads too."

Everything was weird in Silent Hill. Even the normal things.

She was sort of giggling now. Her shoulders were shaking.

"Monkeys... what the fuck, Henry. Why are our lives so fucked up?"

It was one of those things where you just sort of had to laugh, because if you didn't, you'd scream. ... Or go glassy-eyed like Henry.

"I gotta tell you about some of the monsters I'VE fought..."

"I don't know. I wasn't even involved with the cult." He heaved a huge WHAT ARE OUR LIVES sigh. Maybe taking photos in town had cursed him. It had been such a nice town. 8( Nice to go biking in. You know. Back when he did the physical exercise thing. "I just picked the wrong apartment, I guess."

He was quiet for a while.

"What did you fight?"

"Sometimes that happens... people being in the wrong place at the wrong time, I mean... heck, Dad just had the misfortune of being... a nice enough guy that he picked up a baby from the side of the road..."

She wasn't sure if either of them had ever actually told Henry that she wasn't Harry's biological daughter, but well. Not like it was some huge secret.

"And uh... oh, man. What DIDN'T I fight..."

She paused, ticking things off on her fingers slightly.

"Uhhh... dogs with their heads split down the middle, like if someone'd gone at them with an axe... deformed... nurse things.... giants with bendy-straws for heads and giant meat-clubs for arms ... A penis the size of a subway train..."

... Yes.

Edited 2011-12-10 15:58 (UTC)

Henry's brows rose just a little. No, he didn't know that Heather was adopted. That juts made Harry seem so much more awesome in his eyes. He listened quietly as she described the horrors she faced in That Town and his expression, for the most part, was unchanging. He looked neither horrified or bored. He only looked slightly ill because eugh bile taste in mouth do not want.

But she said something.

Something that made him tilt his scruffy head. And then he said, "The giant penis you fought sounds like it was bigger than the giant penis I saw."

The Greedy Worm was much longer, sure, but it hadn't seemed terribly imposing. It had never attacked him. But. 8I Yeah. It was ttly a dick.

Yeah, when you're cruising around in the Otherworld, fighting off Freudian imagery left and right ... you eventually reach a point where you just need to go '... Okay. That's not even a monster anymore. That's just a giant penis.'

"Really? Man, phalluses all around."

She'd sort of thought it was symbolic of something. ... And maybe it still is.

... But she'd rather just assume that Silent Hill just had lots of dicks.

Henry sighed. He felt like he understood maybe...one or two things from his time there and reading the things he found. But most of it was just somebody else's nightmare that he'd ended up head-first in.

He was so glad he had someone to talk about it with. Even if he started feeling a bit guilty. Henry rubbed his arm.

"I hope Eileen ended up in some weird colorful world with nice people in it."

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Weird triggers.

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;-; AND NOW I CAN TAG THIS AGAIN hhbrbrbb

AND NOW -I- CAN TAG THIS AGAIN DLFGHFLG;;HLGH ;-;

YOU LIIIIIIVED <3

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