Evil Appetite

The crash of some sort of metal startled Harry awake in the darkness of the alleyway. It appeared to be the same one he was attacked by those things in, right before he’d woken up in the café. His eyes darted around, searching for some indication of where he really was. If he knew one thing about Silent Hill, it was that things weren’t always what they seemed. He stood up in a shivering sweat, though the weather in Silent Hill wasn’t as freezing and as barren as it looked. The snow that fell hadn’t been snow after all. Again, things weren’t what they seemed.

“This has to be a dream,” he murmured, reaching to turn on his flashlight only to find that he must have left it on for too long. The battery was dead. Damn it. His knees threatened to buckle beneath him, and his teeth chattered loudly in his skull. He felt his way in the darkness, fingers catching on the cold metal of a chain-link fence. Harry blindly followed, hoping none of those creatures would be around. He searched for his radio but was met with empty pockets. No gun, no ampoule, nothing. It was just as well. Properly armed or not, he'd find his daughter and get out of this god-forsaken place.

Harry continued forward taking deep breaths to calm himself. Luckily, the street the fence led him to was devoid of any monsters as far as he could tell. He just needed to know what to do. That nurse, Lisa might know of something that could help him. At the very least, he could find a med-kit or something. Or another radio, at least. Checking his map, Harry took a turn along the long street, squinting to see through the thick blanket of fog when a familiar plaid dress caught his eye.

“Cheryl!” he immediately gave chase as his daughter disappeared into the fog. Though he lost sight of her right away, he kept running, kept hoping. But she was once again nowhere to be found.

The obtrusive sound of the sirens assaulted his ears. Damn it, not again. His eyes darted all around him. He needed to find a place to hide, a place where he could feel relatively safe. Indoors. Harry sprinted toward the first door he saw and closed himself inside of the café from earlier.

Except that it wasn’t.

Not only was the glass storefront not broken, but the whole place seemed to be different. The walls peeled and cracked, underneath them a thick layer of rust. The stools were off-color and molded to the floor, which appeared to be wet with some kind of gooey grime that clung to his shoes as if reaching for his ankles. Harry took a step backward, only to back into a cold, disturbingly moist wall where the door used to be. Thankfully, it seemed he was alone in here. When things went back to normal (Well, as normal as they could be in this bizarre town) he would go back out and find his daughter. He would. And he’d take her home and they’d be a family again.

Harry sat at one of the less grimy tables and felt something cold bump his leg. Was it…a lead pipe? Like the one he’d lost earlier? No, that wasn’t possible. Besides, who cared where it came from as long as it helped defend him against those disturbing monsters outside? Beggars couldn’t be choosers. At least he had a weapon again. Harry sighed, trying to imagine that things could go back to normal after this; that this wouldn’t scar him and his daughter for years to come.

When he opened his eyes ago, he nearly jumped back out of his seat. Sitting across from him was a girl. Not his little girl, but one who looked eerily similar. Alessa Gillespie, according to the things he’d read, the people he’d talked to, the picture. But it didn’t make sense. Hadn’t she been in a fire? How was she sitting right in front of him, face pale and scar-free?

“I don’t understand…” Harry blurted. “Weren’t you-“

He stopped mid-sentence, as she reached across the table and placed a hand on his chest. Dumbfounded, Harry could only watch, feeling the cold seep in through his jacket. First he felt nauseous, like he’d had a little too much to drink. Then, his entire body began to tingle. Woozy, he closed his eyes for a minute, and when he opened them again, the room was growing around him. The café was growing, the booth was growing, even Alessa was growing. Unless…

Was he the one shrinking? What? As ridiculous as it sounded, the man now felt like a seven year old in the booth. The shrinking became more rapid now, and he soon found himself dangling from the edge of the table, heart racing, mind still expecting to wake up from some horrible dream.

With some effort, he pulled himself onto the dirty tabletop, catching his breath before instantly losing it again as he took in the sight before him. Alessa was still sitting at the table, but instead of a waif of a girl, she suddenly seemed hundreds of feet tall. Almost unfathomably big.

“Did you do this to me?!” he heard himself shout, but he knew it couldn’t reach her ears. He was too small, or his voice didn’t echo enough. In a small amount of time he had gone from sitting across from a mystery of a girl to standing before a goddess with eyes as cold as the shiver down his spine and the feeling that still lingered in his chest, clinging to him like a parasite. She watched him with dark eyes as he took a step backward and almost fell off the table. Immediately, he reached for the lead pipe he’d found under the booth. Somehow, it had shrunk with him. The rusty metal clung to his hand but he didn’t make a move.

Alessa reached down toward her lap and pulled up something between her first finger and thumb. Harry’s breath hitched in his throat at the sight of Cheryl dangling helplessly in the other girl’s grasp. “You let her go!” he shouted. He couldn’t see his daughter’s face but he knew she must have been terrified… His heart beat wildly in his chest as he gripped the pipe in both his hands and charged toward Alessa’s arm, which rested on the table.

The enormous girl lifted a finger and sent Harry flying through the air like he was nothing, knocking both the pipe out of his hands and the air from his lungs. She’d barely moved and he had been reduced to an insect, gasping for air as the giantess above him continued to study his daughter. Reaching again for his weapon, he turned his head just in time to see it roll off the table. He didn’t hear it hit the ground. No. No, no, this wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. And he didn’t stand a chance against Alessa. But real or not, he had to save his daughter from whatever Alessa planned to do with her.

He ran toward her hand again. There had to be something he could do to distract her long enough for Cheryl to escape. With all his might, Harry kicked and pounded at her knuckles, but to his chagrin, Alessa didn’t release his daughter. Instead, she left her dangling with one hand and raised the other.

Harry stared upward in horror and awe as a fist the size of a car came slamming down, missing him by only a hair and shaking him to the core. Dizzily, he skittered away as the hand came down again with crushing force. Harry continued to evade her and when he jerked his head up to check on Cheryl, he could see that behind that dark expression was the faint hint of a smile. She walked two fingers—each one bigger than Harry—along the dirty table and he could only stumble backward, to the edge of the table, before she captured him.

Harry screamed from the pressure, and, surprisingly, she let up a little, bringing him to her face to look him over before her features contorted into a heartless smile. Harry lost all his breath at that moment, gasping and choking for air.

“Please!” he sputtered between coughing fits. “Please, just let my daughter go. You can have me. Just let her go!”

Alessa’s smile twisted into a grimace. Harry felt himself being lowered down onto the table. Was this it? Was she going to let them go? Plummeting onto the grimy surface of the table, Harry barely had time to weakly stand before Alessa’s massive finger pinned him down on his back, the fingernails pushing too hard against him. Harry jerked and struggled, pushing at her finger with all his might but it was no use. He was pinned under a single one of her fingers. Even if he were to get free, who was to say she wouldn’t just trap him again? Her strength seemed limitless. In comparison, he felt helpless, like an insect.

Above, he could see his daughter squirm, but if she said anything, he couldn’t tell. His Cheryl had always been quiet. He watched on in horror and defeat, silent until the giantess opened her mouth. Besides having teeth the size of his head (at least), her mouth looked cavernous and dark—a place of no return. He heard himself scream when his daughter was lifted up toward Alessa’s mouth. He punched and clawed and struggled against the girl’s massive digit, redoubling his efforts as Alessa licked Chery’s side. And again.

Slowly, eyes on Harry the entire time, even as he screamed his throat raw, muscled aching from fighting against something so much more powerful than he was.

Harry could only hear his own screams and some sick, wet sound as the giantess slowly lowered the girl into her mouth, the slimy, powerful muscle tasting pushing one of the girl’s socks off as she tasted her. It fell silently onto the table. Harry wanted to puke but his stomach was empty. He wanted to fight but his body was weak against the crushing force of Alessa’s finger against his chest. He wanted to scream, to shout obscenities, or even to bargain with Alessa. But he found that he could no longer speak. Instead, a choking, strangled sob was forced out of his throat as he watched the Alessa’s tongue work Cheryl all the way into her mouth, and swallowing her with an audible gulp.

Harry’s body was racked with sobs even as he realized that he was being lifted up into the air. He stared down in horror at Alessa’s gaping maw, making one last vain attempt to escape before the hot breath that washed over him overheated and exhausted him further. He prayed to whatever God existed before he found himself plummeting headfirst into the awaiting mouth.

***

Harry woke with a horrified scream before he realized that he was inside the café. He was normal-sized, with his entire inventory within reach. He put his hands in his arms and steadied his breathing. “Just a dream…” If he’d only been dreaming could it mean that Cheryl was still out there? Was she alive, scared, waiting for him to save her? In spite of everything, Harry found himself laughing. There was hope. He wasn’t powerless, wasn’t weak or insignificant. He would go outside, battle any monster, no matter how horrifying. He would fight for his daughter.

Standing, Harry replaced the batteries in his flashlight and took a health drink from behind the café’s counter before heading toward the front door. Suddenly, the man stopped in his tracks. On a nearby table, barely even visible until he came closer, was a very, very small sock.