Category Archives: Restless Dreams

CHAPTER TWELVE: MOUTH

In that moment when the camera stops and James accelerates away from it, he appears, naturally, smaller and even more enveloped by the fog. If Silent Hill is “alive”, a malevolent but intangible sort of entity, designed after James’ own mind to consume, digest and excrete him remade, in this long, wide shot, of anContinue reading “CHAPTER TWELVE: MOUTH”

CHAPTER TEN: OROSCO

Three days ago, in a fit of rage, I threw my coffee table across the room and it bent one of its legs. I’m resting my feet on it now while I’m writing and it keeps rocking and buckling, but I’m not going to get a new one. About halfway through the long initial walkContinue reading “CHAPTER TEN: OROSCO”

CHAPTER NINE: DREAM AND THEN A NIGHTMARE

My nightmares always begin as dreams, and announce their onset by exactly the same meteorological slash atmospheric metaphor, whereby the warm and sunny weather I’m enjoying in my dream instantaneous- and inexplicably becomes overcast and cold. More than turn grey, the sky seems to die, that is putresce; likewise the landscape — which in theContinue reading “CHAPTER NINE: DREAM AND THEN A NIGHTMARE”

CHAPTER EIGHT: YOU GET ALL IN YOUR HEAD ABOUT IT

Writing something like this it’s like jamming or actually very calmly and tenderly inserting my fingers into my throat to make myself sick when I have a stomach ache. I think everyone has something that if they were told or even worse if they just one day realised they couldn’t do it, were never ableContinue reading “CHAPTER EIGHT: YOU GET ALL IN YOUR HEAD ABOUT IT”

CHAPTER SEVEN: GROPING AROUND INSIDE MY SKULL

Like a lot of Silent Hill 2’s soundtrack, the music that begins playing partway along the run down the mountain is repetitive and monotonous, a slow, churning sort of sound that crests and recedes, crests and recedes in a heavy and even pattern. I’ve written already about the eponymous town’s consumptive, sentient behaviour, the wayContinue reading “CHAPTER SEVEN: GROPING AROUND INSIDE MY SKULL”

CHAPTER SIX: VOLUNTEERING

Honouring a great videogame tradition, this week’s RESTLESS DREAMS was repeatedly delayed. Contrary to some of what I’ve already written in this book, videogames are arguably very adept at inculcating their players to the mindsets of their characters, but typically this is enabled owing to the simplicity of the characters and the purity of theirContinue reading “CHAPTER SIX: VOLUNTEERING”

CHAPTER FIVE: LOVING REGARDLESS

I don’t think that James is supposed to be depressed. I don’t think that he is grieving, in the pathological sense, or afflicted by anything which easily could be given a name. James to me, rather than ill or suffering from a specific or set of specific conditions, is like someone who is acutely miserable.Continue reading “CHAPTER FIVE: LOVING REGARDLESS”

CHAPTER FOUR: “SPECIAL PLACE”

Once we leave the men’s toilet another cutscene begins. In the background, a vista of Silent Hill. The bathroom is parallel to a car park, within which James has secured presumably a nondescript light-blue sedan. Small in the frame, our protagonist leans against a short wall and gazes out over the town, our villain. Mary,Continue reading “CHAPTER FOUR: “SPECIAL PLACE””

CHAPTER THREE: STILL HEALTHY

But also we are not James. We are not James. Reads the instruction manual to Williams Entertainment’s 1995 port to the PlayStation of Doom: “You’re a space marine, one of Earth’s toughest, hardened in combat and trained for action. Three years ago you assaulted a superior officer for ordering his soldiers to fire upon civilians. WithContinue reading “CHAPTER THREE: STILL HEALTHY”