<em>In my dreams, I am always dead.<br/><br/>The scenery passed by in a nondescript blur of browns and greens.  I wasn't really paying attention.   Linda often told me, toward the end, that I always seemed out of it, zoned out, on autopilot, as if I was having a daydream from which I never bothered to wake up.  <br/><br/>Linda.<br/><br/>We were so happy, at first.  The perfect couple, Linda and I.  High school sweethearts.  The world at our feet.  Plans to get married someday.  We even had our kids' names picked out: Walter if it was a boy, Claudia if it was a girl.<br/><br/>Then something changed.  I'm not sure when.  It didn't happen overnight.  It was a gradual process.  I think it started right about the time I started having those...dreams.  Strange, fractured dreams.  Recurring.  In it, a central character.  A man in a gas mask.<br/><br/>I don't know why my unconscious mind is so fixated on the gas mask.  But think about it: it's a strange, perverse, alien thing.   There's the two huge glass eyeholes, and the extended mouthpiece, almost like a proboscis.  On a man, it makes him look like a giant, two-legged insect.  </em><br/><br/><div align="center">(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_uEU0duz-G3g/Ro6W-lV6m2I/AAAAAAAAAPo/yEANBkl5pwI/s400/gasmask.jpg)</div><br/><em>Who is this man? What does he want?  Every time he appears, there is an aura of...danger, of silent threat.  But I don't know if the threat is to me,  or...someone else.<br/><br/>I don't remember the first few weeks after Linda left.  I was barely aware of the passage of time.  My life passed by me in a blur of browns and greens.   My mother insisted that I see a psychiatrist; I went along with it just to shut her up.  I thought it was a huge waste of time.<br/><br/>When Dr. Munigant suggested that I take a field trip with a few of her other patients, I was all set to say Fuck You and Fuck That (but politely of course).  But then she mentioned the place where we would be going--Silent Hill.<br/><br/>Silent Hill.  Why did that name sound so familiar?  I think I heard it mentioned on the news, once, about some disappearances there.  A quaint little tourist town with a reputation for swallowing tourists.    And I knew, then, that I would be going.<br/><br/>Silent Hill.  I can hear it calling me, even now.   The question is, is it calling me because it wants to consume me...<br/><br/>...or is it calling me home?</em><br/><br/><div align="center">(http://www.bunnylicious.org/public/2008/10/gas-mask.jpg)<div align="center"></div></div>