Laban Lament (Original fanfic... is that a thing?!) COMPLETE

[MoonBlade]

So, after watching a review of both Silent Hill comics: Paint it Black and Among the Damned, I had an idea for a fanfiction story. I haven't wrote a SH fanfic in about 5 years, so I decided it was about time to put together a little something... uh, ok, maybe not *little*. It is still a work in progress and currently sits about 10k at 3/4 the way, but who knows when I'll finish actually writing it. Lemme give you a quick synopsis for you:

Ephraim Ward wanders through midnight trees, intent on ending his life when the sky breaks open and strikes him down before he can finish the job. When he awakes he is greeted by several echoes of the past in an empty and ever revolving town, Silent Hill. When Ephraim begins asking questions of his guides, they point him toward a painting; Misty Day, Remains of Judgment and claim that he is to paint it or suffer eternal punishment. Unable to be sure what is real and what is a fevered mind, he wonders through the fog of the town and in his mind.

Sound decent? Well, let's see if my writing can do any justice! Here is a little chunk of the story

Laban Lament
The light reflecting off the blade dimmed as a cloud passed over the moon, throwing the scene into shadows. Off in the distance, a coyote cried out in protest as a single man shuddered for a moment as the wind kicked up. His mud-caked boots sloshed through the black tar below him as he moved closer to the edge of the bluff. A little sound escaped his lips, swept away soundlessly as the wind carried it off where no one would ever discover it. His left arm hung limp, small knife still waiting for its moment. Ephraim reached out to catch hold of a low limb and hoisting it just high enough to raise up but not so high that it cleared his hat. The old hat was knocked loose and like the lost sound, was washed away on the night wind. Something that had become apart of him was at once removed and forgotten.

‘Won’t be able to take it with me anyway.’ the words sounded broken in his head. Even his internal thoughts sounded distant and cold.

The limb tore from his hand, the bark biting at the flesh on his palm. The night seemed to mock him, the sky opening up just long enough for him to look upon the unwanted cut on his palm as it began to pool black for an instant before he was once again dropped into pitch night. His tired eyes looked to the sky, darting around to see patches of the heavens peeking through the clouds. The past mocked him through those stars and he made no attempt to make up to them. He welcome--no, encouraged their discontent and discouraging gazes upon him.
For a moment, he thought he should make some attempt to plead with the collective above him. His mind formed them into more than just orbs of burning gas, but pairs of eyes glaring through dark hoods as they watched him move closer and closer to the edge of the bluff. He would die this night, whether there was moonlight or not. The heaviness of the heaven’s gaze grew more intense, weighing upon him as though it were fleshy hands pushing down on him, trying to drive him into the mud he was struggling through.

‘I never asked for much in my life.’ the voice in his head didn’t even sound like his own voice. It was hollow and had a strange vibration to it. ‘I wanted to be healthy, to be my own man and love Keri.’

“Maybe in wanting, I deserve what I lost.” His voice broke as he spoke.
Since the night the idea first popped up in his head, the idea to end his life, his voice had sounded differently. It took on a judgmental tone, even when speaking to himself when completely alone. As though he was slowly becoming someone different, like the forming of the thought from the very beginning had slowly began changing him into his father.

“You promise me something, boy.” His mother had said. Her voice was strained as she stared through the wall to where her husband’s body hung. “You will always fight.” Amelia continued without waiting for young Ephraim to comment.

He recalled the pale yellow light spilling slowly across the hardwood floors, time ticking away from the moment that his father’s life had ended.

“You hear me?”

“Yes ma’am.” He heard himself say, though he couldn’t feel himself forming the words as they wormed into his ears.

“You will be strong. You understand?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“I don’t care how hard it ever gets, you will do right be me and your father and you will never take the easy way out.” Her voice remained monotone, the words coming out in a perfect beat. A tear streamed down her face and landed onto Ephraim’s t-shirt, the area growing dark then the darkness quickly spreading.

Suddenly his mother’s hands were around his shoulders, shaking him.
“Do you understand?!” It was a tone that he had only heard twice in his life. As he stood on the bluff, he still remembered the way his heart froze for a moment, then with the next beat, flooded his entire body with the cold heat of fear.

As the sentiment sat in his mind, just starting to gestate, the sky opened up, his grip on the blade clenched and the knife was quickly brought down the inside of his exposed forearm. At first there was nothing. No pain and no blood. Just the muscles under the skin pressing upward and outward against the blade. Ephraim grinded his teeth together as he let the air slowly out of his lungs and relaxed his right arm. The moment his hand relaxed, black goo began to pump out of the open wound and drip down and all around.
Heavy drops fell to the mud below, lost forever as a slow itch crawled into the wound and fire began to pump through his veins. He slowly transferred the weapon to his right hand, the blade slipping around in the crimson covered hand. He raised the blade to his inner elbow, the skin of his left arm exposed. His fist balled as he drew in a deep breath.

“Forgive me, mother… forgive me, Keri--”

He pulled the blade down just as light and sound exploded behind him. His world rapidly explained as fear took over for the first time that night. His body acted on its own, whirling around quickly to see the trace of electrified tendrils pull up from the ground, a spider web of light staining the inside of his eyes. He slammed his eyes shut for only a second, buying himself only enough clarity to spot half of a large pine tree falling towards him, fire lighting up the area as though the sun were slowly rising over Ephraim’s head. A short gasp escaped his throat as he raised his arms as he shielded himself.
The forest would thin out, the grow thick. He was even sure at one point the saw a lighthouse peeking above the trees but had lost it before he gained the drive to see if it was indeed a lighthouse or not. As the night set in, he grew colder and ignored it. Fog began to roll in and he quickly found himself and everything around him drenched. The heavy mist was only seen as it was upon him in the moonlight. If not for the full moon and the strangely dense and low-lying fog, he would not have been able to see anything at all.
Once feeling was gone in over half of his body, nearly all of them limbs, he had fished out the knife that had been nestled in the small of his back, tucked into his waistband. The metal was warm enough from his core to bring some comfort to his palm.
All that was forgotten in the moments after the lightening struck the thirty foot pine. At first Ephraim’s mind accepted the pain that was about to come, the feel of the blade shaving through several layers of skin, fat, muscle and vein. But with the presentation of a looming danger overhead, his fight or flight mechanism kicked in and he was backing up rapidly, bloodied arms held over his delicate head and neck.
His boots sunk deep into the wet ground as he rocked back and forth trying to gain the moment quickly enough to beat the 9.8 m/s of tree hurtling towards him. Rocking quickly to the left, he feet the Earth give way as he slipped over the edge of the bluff. Panic flooded his body as his head grew light. He reached out all around him at everything as it flew by, but his hands would not grab anything. Anger flared in his mind as he grew confused and oddly tired in the situation.

‘Your hands can’t work anymore. You cut too deep.’

The open mouth of a bay below him opened and swallowed him whole. Where there had been only about a twenty foot drop into more forest before changed. Dark water rushed forward and choked on him in a moment. The fall had been no more than a blink of an eye.

‘Wrong…’ His mind tried to connect the dots, but nothing seemed to make sense.


***
Ephraim woke to see cream paint peeling on the ceiling of a room. The first sense to come to him was a strange nausea. Something was wrong. Something so small that he couldn’t guess if he was given an answer to the question. He wasn’t even sure which sense it was that could sense it. Like the overwhelming feeling of déjà vu when he would wake up after a nightmare or when he was in the middle of a job and he suddenly remembered something he did as a child, but the moment he tried to think on it, it was gone.

“Forgetting something that you never knew.” the voice spoke quietly.

He lifted himself up quickly, trying to sit upright and suddenly feeling strangely lethargic and as though the air was thicker than it should or ever could be.
His eyes quickly found the person who had spoken. A pretty little girl. No more than fifteen, she wore her dark brown hair in pigtails, small yellow bowties dotting the ends of each. She wore a white dress, the same pale butter-yellow as the ribbon, checked the dress. A sort of plaid color atop white stockings and white dress shoes. The very image of immaculate cleanliness, she wore a smile across her lips.
The most telling part of her was her face. He face caused a knot in Ephraim’s throat as he backed away from her, scurrying off the strange bed he had been laying on. Gravity welcomed him harshly as his legs buckled under him. The ground met his chin and chest quickly as his arm shot outwards under his weight. The wind quickly knocked from his chest, he continued to move away from the girl.

“What is wrong, mister?” her voice called out, no trace of emotion in her calls.

“You are not my daughter.” Ephraim said in hissing tones.“You are not my daughter!” His voice cracked as he screamed the words at the small figure.

She pulled back suddenly, her expression changing to hatred towards him. She had been standing perfectly still, no more than a yard from the edge of the bed, but now she turned and ran from the room.
Ephraim’s vision blurred, the image of her smearing across his field of sight. The girl seemed to move in slow motion, her voice even seem to smear into incomprehensible tones as she turned through a doorway and was gone. A pang of an old emotion rang through his chest, an instinct compelled him to chase after her. He called out the name that he hadn’t spoken in over three years.

Like it?
Hate it?

Tell me! I like knowing that I did well and what I need to fix. Also, once I finish it up and get the entire thing posted up somewhere, I'll drop a link in here. Until then, I'll post more as it seems well to do.

[jacobia]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, like it lots. Well written, and you little tease, what a place to stop!

[MoonBlade]

Thanks! And I had to leave a hook out in the water, right? :3

Once I finish it up, I'll post a link to the entire thing.

[jacobia]

Thanks! And I had to leave a hook out in the water, right? :3

Absolutely

Once I finish it up, I'll post a link to the entire thing.

Yes please

[MoonBlade]

Alrighty! After forever and a day, it is finished and *cough*kinda*cough* edited!

Laban Lament

That is the story in its entirety. I will be editing it again and that will result in inevitable change, but it will happen! I can't seem to be able to edit my work without changing large portions of the story. *shrug*

An excerpt!

“Ephraim, don’t do that.”

He did not need nor want to raise his head to see the person who spoke. He knew with absolute certainty that his mother stood before him, in a pale and sickly yellow copy of the same outfit his daughter and wife had been wearing. Her brown hair white at the temples from stress and age.

Amelia appeared the same age the last time he spoke with her. She had lived with him for a little over a week sometime after Keri and Violet had died. She’d only left after he stopped going home after work, choosing to instead stay at all night cafes or sleep in his car on the side of the road.

Ephraim had never forgiven his mother for what had happened with Father Joshua. He had left the family complex alone and it wasn’t until after she found out he had a daughter did she try to contact him through her brother. Amelia had continued to live with Father Joshua, even becoming one of his wives and bore a son for him, Manase. She’d also been inducted as a higher member of her faith. Ephraim had met his younger half brother only once. He had been a constant beside Amelia. He had been very aloof, often becoming frustrated and antsy when told to stay in one place and out of his mother’s reach. As though he was sure if she was gone from his line of sight, he’d forget she existed at all.

She had expressed the idea of Ephraim moving back into the complex and remarrying. She boasted that Manase already had three wives and six children by the age of sixteen, which had only served to put even greater distance between his mother and him.

“Well, don’t do it again anyway.” Her voice was cold, but floated on the air in a singsong way.

“Hello mother.” he said through his teeth, continuing to pry at the stitches in his arm with the blade.

“Oh, you aren’t going to call into question my authenticity?” she crossed her arms slowly, “Not like you did with Keri and Violet. They both came to me in tears over your treatment of them.”

Ephraim did not even bother trying to decipher what was off about his mother. He just let himself believe that it was her while knowing it wasn’t.

“When did you pass away, mother?”

“In about three weeks.” she freed a hand and placed it over her heart. “Don’t worry, it’ll strike while I am asleep.”

“How do you know?”

“Does it really matter?” she retorted.

“Guess not.”

“Stop it.”

Ephraim ignored her, finally working one stitch free. He set the knife on the ground between his legs and began to pull at the strands, freeing them from his skin. Yellow-brown puss broke free and began to leak out from the opened stitch. It wasn’t until the smell hit him that he felt his gag reflex reject his actions. The smell was indescribable. A pungent odor of rotting skin and stagnant blood. He wiped the area clean with his a bit of his shirt sleeve and continued to work through the smell.

The smell became worse, hanging in his nostrils between gulping breaths of air. He abandoned the first stitch and moved on to the next, pulling and tugging, using the blade to rip the stitch out of his flesh. The brownish liquid began to gush from that stitch and he moved on.

“You are being ridiculous.” Amelia said in mid sigh, her words disbelieving, as though he were recounting a made up story as a child. “Come on and give me that knife, boy.”

“No.”

He was short, part out of anger and part because he did not want to keep his mouth open any longer than he had to. He pulled at the second to last stitch on his right arm.

“Give me the knife, Ephraim.”

“No ma’am.”

“You will give it to me when I ask.”

“No ma’am.” he said, grunting as the final stitch popped free and the wound opened up. Puss gushed, soaking his sleeve and pant leg.

He coughed and choked as he tried to escape his own wounded arm.

“I warned you.” she said, taking a step backward before a large drop of brown gunk fell just where her peeling and aged white dress shoe had just been.

“Why are you here?”

“I am here to be your mother and get you to do what you need to do.” for a moment, Ephraim almost believed the airs she’d put on, feigning that her purpose was to protect his best interest.

“I meant in a greater sense. Why am I seeing you, Violet and Keri?”

“We all play our part son, it isn’t in your nature to ask God to explain himself to you. You are not that special.”

He gave a short tone of disbelief.

“I was special enough to be brought here.” he said as he began to roll down his sleeves quickly, buttoning it in place as he walked.

Back in the front room of the Historic Society, he searched for something to bandage the gaping wound. He found a telephone and yanked out the wire, wrapping it quickly around his sleeve and tying the ends together as best he could manage one-handedly. He returned to the other room and began the process again on his left forearm.

“Really now?”

“I want to go home.”

“No. You left home. You came here to do something special, remember.”

A knot formed in his throat. He recalled the promise and as if on cue, his mother repeated the conversation from the hallway.

“You will be strong. You understand?” the past echoed in her voice.

“Yes ma’am.” he found himself saying.

“I don’t care how hard it ever gets, you will do right be me and your father and you will never take the easy way out.” Her voice was monotone, the words coming out in a perfect beat once again. She waited a few beats, then screamed out at him. “Do you understand?!”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry doesn’t repair the promise I asked you to make.”

He found a roll of some sort of packing tape. He used it to wrap his left arm upon finishing ripping open the stitches. He tossed what remained of the roll on to the countertop and began digging around in the drawer that he had found the tape in originally.

“What are you looking for?” Amelia asked, as her hands worked quietly to press flat a few folds in the front of her sickly yellow dress.

“A key I guess.”

“A key?”

“Something to open the door.”

She let a small and low purr-like laugh roll through her body and press against him.

“What makes you think that the door can open?”

The question struck him suddenly. His hands stopped blindly searching through the cluttered drawer of papers and odd looking pens, dust slowly settling back down. He had not expected to not have the door open and with her raised question, he wondered what would be on the other side of the door should he open it. His mind stretched out, fabricating darkness that choked and bit at him behind his eyelids.

“The door has to open.”

“Your giving orders now? My, my. You sure have changed.”

He abandoned the counter and walked to the double doors. They held simplistic and patterned stained glass. Through the glass, the same dull haze of fogged sunlight filtered through. He pressed his hand against the glass and quickly drew his hand back, groaning in pain. Where his hand had made contact with the glass, each surface space was shiny and red, as though he’d touched something heated to a glowing red by fire. He looked to the glass and then again to his hand. He had felt nothing but the after effect of the burn.

“Your hands are still numbed.”

“Doesn’t matter much to me now.”

“Well it matters a great much to me. You’ll need those hands.”

“Why?”

“Misty Day” she hissed as a snake about to attack. He turned to look at her, a darkness streaking across her face. “Remains of Judgment.”