@mistyjudgement sent . . .
"You don't flinch when they call you worse. That's the funny part. Not funny-ha-ha. Funny like a bone snapping clean. They line you up next to another man and start counting bodies, like it's a game of tallies and intent. Like guilt is the only thing that makes murder heavy. You let them do it. You let them argue whether you're evil or stupid or both, because all of those words still assume participation. Choice. Awareness. You keep insisting you didn't know it was a nuke. As if that matters here.
Ignorance doesn't absolve the blast. The heat doesn't pause mid-air to ask what you meant. Skin still sloughs. Teeth still glow in the dark months later. Children still get sick long after the punchline wears off. You didn't pull the lever with malice, you pulled it with indifference. And indifference is quieter, wider, harder to escape.
You didn't feel guilty because guilt requires a self sturdy enough to crack.
You are hollowed out, scooped clean by repetition. Violence so constant it became furniture. A couch you sink into. A routine. Wake up. Errand. Blood. Milk. Apocalypse. Go home. Shrug.
You didn't want the world to burn.
You just didn't care if it did.
That's what makes you worse, if anyone's keeping score. Not the numbers. Not the bomb. Not even the fallout drifting into lungs that never saw you coming. It's that nothing inside you rose up to say stop. No revulsion. No awe. No fear. Just mild inconvenience when things got messy.
You laugh because laughter fills space. Because silence might force you to notice the crater you carry around with you. Because if you ever slowed down long enough to ask what you've done, the answer wouldn't scream, it would sit there, patient, glowing softly, counting years instead of bodies.
Paradise is poisoned.
Not because you hated it.
Because you walked through it like it was already dead.
And here's the part you don't expect: I'm not here to punish you.
I'm here because places like this recognize their own.
You didn't end the world out of rage or ideology or despair. You ended pieces of it the way people knock over ashtrays. By accident. By habit. By never looking down.
That kind of damage doesn't fade.
It lingers.
Just like you."
How long has it been since the fall of Paradise ? Days ? Weeks ? Maybe even months. Time blurred since then — days slipping past so easily, he barely thinks about them. The memories of that town were sealed away, packed into a box and shoved onto the highest shelf in the storage of his brain. A shitty week, one he has no interest in revisiting.
Since then, Dude's been on the search for another town to call home. He can't live on the road forever, no matter how much he pretends otherwise. Walmart's already filed multiple complaints about his trailer squatting in their parking lot. So, for the last few days, he's been weighing his options, scanning maps, hoping to find somewhere that isn't crawling with lunatics like his hometown had. ( Doesn't he count as one, too ? ) One town kept calling to him.
Silent Hill.
As in fashion with his luck, his car breaks down the moment he gets close. How convenient. He can almost laugh if he wasn't so pissed. Without a vehicle, he's forced to continue on foot, irritation simmering further as he wonders whether there's anyone around who might be able ( or willing ) to help him get back on the road.
Yet the farther he walks, the slower he is. The confident brisk dulls and becomes more cautious. Something's wrong here. Silent Hill doesn't look like Paradise, but the comparison worms its way into his head anyway. It haunts him like a ghost he thought he'd abandoned.
It's there, as he's pushing through the mist, does he realize something in particular that is amiss.
The voice isn't there.
That constant presence in his head — the one that hasn't shut up since the moment he left Paradise — has been uncharacteristically quiet this entire journey. Strangely, albeit not so willingly admitted, Dude misses it. He'd take its obnoxious and immoral chattering over this suffocating stillness.
His hand plunges down, fingers brushing the familiar cool steel of his pistol. The weapon sits safely in its holster, but he can't bring himself to withdraw his hand. Unease sinks into him, goosebumps rising while his chest constricts. Maybe it's just habit. He isn't used to enjoying a stroll anywhere without someone trying to shoot his ass off.
❝ Fuck those people, ❞ he finally mumbles under his breath,❝ no one in that town was worth saving anyway. ❞
This isn't a punishment, he's certain. He doesn't feel regret — and if someone ( or something ) expects him to, it can go straight to hell. He'll be damned if he lets anything decide how he's supposed to live.
This isn't a punishment.
