Chao Patties

PG • gen

And even now, Maria did not appear to be aware of the fact that two Pyramid Heads stood within spitting distance of her, and the Pyramid Heads did not seem to care that there was an easy target strung up between them.

If anything, they looked... bored. Like they were waiting for something. Or someone. Someone who wasn’t coming.

One possible ending of SH2.

---

Here was the path James would have gone down. There were the doors that did not lead where they should have. There was the elevator that would have taken him to the basement, where he would have found himself waist-deep in filthy stagnant water and equally filthy monsters. There was a stairway leading up out of the flooded basement, impassable on account of the raging flames that engulfed it and the raving Angela standing therein

strike the pyrotechnics, run it from the top

There was a stairway leading up out of the flooded basement, up into a burned-out husk of the ground floor. A short walk later, there was a wall that bore one of those perfectly nondescript and yet utterly unnerving red tiles.

No. Not one of them. Nine of them, arranged three-by-three. This did not bode well.

He wasn’t sure why, but James was glad he wasn’t there. He was even more glad when the view moved beyond the door to the left.

There was Pyramid Head, and there was Pyramid Head in duplicate. Pyramid Head and Pyramid Head flanked a sort of cage containing an upside-down Maria. Upside-down Maria did not seem all that concerned about her upside-down state, and Pyramid Head and Pyramid Head did not seem all that interested in her.

For the space of ten minutes, Maria hung upside-down and Pyramid Head and Pyramid Head stood like suits of rusty ornamental armor on either side of her. Occasionally, Maria would drum her fingers on the nearest bar of her cage, or yawn, or heave a great irritated sigh. And even now, Maria did not appear to be aware of the fact that two Pyramid Heads stood within spitting distance of her, and the Pyramid Heads did not seem to care that there was an easy target strung up between them.

If anything, they looked... bored. Like they were waiting for something. Or someone. Someone who wasn’t coming.

fast forward, might as well skip this part

The walls were blackened skeletons, studs and crossbeams only slightly less vulnerable to the flames than the ancient paneling that existed now only as a grayish mud staining the charred carpet. Miles of yellow tape wound around corners and cordoned off the cremains of what were once cafes and gift shops and cloak rooms. Eventually, the cinders and matchsticks led to a long hallway

cue SFX

where two voices ricocheted back and forth between its walls, bouncing all the way down and back, back and forth. The voices were his and Mary’s. His bounced off one wall, then Mary’s off the other, and the illusion that the walls themselves were talking, the illusion that one wall screamed and cried while the other tried to apologize, was unsettling, to say the least.

There were more stairs. In a way, it was funny--before, there were holes that went on forever. Now there were stairs that went on forever.

At the top of the stairs, there was Mary.

A year or a month or a day or an hour ago, he might have wept. He might have cried out her name. He might have flung himself over the railing. But now Mary was just another face on the screen, and besides, there were no railings over which to fling himself in this room.

fast forward

He was walking Laura to the car

rewind

He was walking Maria to the car

rewind

He was carrying Mary to the car, and when he got there he laid her body in the passenger seat and sat down in the driver’s seat and started the engine and put the pedal to the motherfuckin’ metal and crashed through the railing and plunged over the edge into the lake

rewind

He was carrying Mary to the rowboat, and when he got there he laid her body in the stern and sat down in the bow and rowed and the corners of two books, one red one green, peeked out of the backpack at his feet

rewind

He was looking out the reading room window and he happened to look at the strange blue stone he’d been carrying and then there were flying saucers and little gray aliens and some guy asking about his daughter--

“What the hell is that!? Change it.”

It changed.

There was that guy again, asking about his daughter. Asking a pretty blonde lady cop, asking a man in a black suit, asking a pretty nurse, asking a crazy old lady--

“Oh, not him again. Change it.”

There was the changed Brookhaven Hospital, much as James remembered it, except this time there was someone else wandering its blood-and-slime-stained halls, a blonde-haired kid, and in that storeroom on the third floor, there were no prizes to be found--just a filthy sink and a mirror-covered wall. The kid looked into the sink, said “eww,” and turned to leave.

Stuff crawled up out of the sink and over the walls, and James didn’t want to think too much about what manner of stuff it might be, and it looked like the kid didn’t either.

The stuff covered the walls and the floor and apparently, it hurt. The kid’s reflection stopped moving and turned black and red and--

“GAH JESUS GOD CHANGE IT!”

There was Pyramid Head, and there were Mannequins. James had seen enough of this already, and he said so.

There was an old guy wearing nothing but a battered hat, a trench coat, a tie, and a pair of boxer shorts talking to the blonde kid, who was wearing a costume like the girls in those goofy Japanese cartoons wore.

There was the pretty nurse again, and the man in the black suit, and the latter looked as if he was trying to grab the former’s arm but ended up grabbing her ass instead. Neither of them kept a straight face for long.

“Is that a sitcom? It’s lame. Change it.”

There was the blonde kid again, in a situation James found all too familiar--namely, standing in front of a disgusting clogged toilet that might have something important in it.

“Can you make her...”

The kid crouched down in front of the toilet.

Peered into the filthy depths.

Raised a hand toward the muck.

Then she stood up, looked right at James through the screen, and asked him who would even think of doing something so disgusting.

Well, she was smart, at least.

There was a guy staring at a strange hole in his bathroom wall.

There was a cartoon. There was the blonde kid, and the guy that was asking God and everyone about his daughter (who, apparently, was the blonde kid), and there was James peeking out from behind a curtain, and--

“--again with the stupid aliens change it.”

Maybe it was kiddie hour. There were big pink bunnies and big blue bunnies. Maybe it wasn’t kiddie hour. The bunnies’ mouths were stained with blood, and some of the bunnies appeared to be killing other bunnies.

There was Eddie stuffing a pizza into his face. Where had that pizza come from, anyway? James was pretty sure he didn’t want to know. The blonde kid seemed to agree, and said she didn’t feel like eating or drinking something from an alternate dimension.

There were two people standing outside a door, visible through the peephole. One was a girl--young, dark-haired, kind of pretty. The other was an old man that looked strangely familiar to James and, in fact, bore a striking resemblance to him. Father? Uncle? James didn’t remember. It didn’t matter.

There was Angela, and there was--no, he definitely didn’t want to see that.

There was the blonde kid again, running along the tracks of a dormant roller coaster. She failed to anticipate the bend in the tracks up ahead and just didn’t stop in time

rewind

There was the blonde kid again, running along the tracks of a dormant roller coaster. She rounded one bend, but failed to notice the next

rewind

There was the blonde kid again, running along the tracks of a dormant roller coaster. She veered right off the edge of the tracks onto the

“...you mind if I give that a try?”

rewind

There was the blonde kid again, running along the tracks of a dormant roller coaster. She followed the tracks a fair piece until the roller coaster switched itself back on and sent the train chasing after her, but by then there was a handy shed for her to leap onto, and thus she escaped intact.

There was a snorting noise behind James.

He shrugged. “Look, it’s no big deal. I have opposable thumbs and you don’t. They just make some things easier.”

“Grf.”

“So...” James eyed a particularly shiny green button to the left of a red lever. “What does this one do?”

“Ruf? ...rrf.”

James pressed the button.

A noxious red mist chased the blonde kid through a long and twisty hallway.

“Cool,” James observed, and the dog wagged her tail.

 

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