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The enemy is down the street. I take a deep breath and observe for now.
I'm supposed to be afraid. As the white humanoid blobs aim their white spray guns and coat a high gloss sheen over the gutter. They coat the one tree the city planted to try and fake like it cared about nature. They coat the black top and the otherworldly paint hisses from the heat of the oppressive summer sun stored in the material.
Their efforts create a perfect white silhouette of what once was. A complete and perfect lack of texture that reflects the sun painfully in my eyes. It is still a city, under it all, but it's a city of white. You can't tell the sidewalk from the street, the signs from the walls.
I wonder what they are trying to hide, as I count the bullets I've been given. I am ashamed of the designers here. A surplus of ammo. I have ten bullets in the clip and there are six enemies.
As soon as they see me they will want to cover me in that paint. That can't be good. It's inevitable though. They want white. They need white, and here I am with black clothes and red hair. If we were going by recent comic book standards I represent anger and death.
…..I suppose I have a gun.
….I suppose I'm always angry. It's only fair that they want me dead.
Still, I have ten bullets.
You don't have a survival horror game if you have enough bullets to win. That's just an action game. I'm not scared. These are small time enemies, the kind a single head shot will do in. Humanoid enemies with a short range paint gun. Six head shots and the paint stops. Easy peasy.
So I take aim and fire. A deafening boom and then a subtle crack. The white humanoid creature closest to me takes a round in the side of the head. Standing strangely still as the head rocks on the loose neck. The bullet hole sending a series of dramatic cracks through it's white outer shell and the shell shatters.
Under the shell is a teenager. A blond haired kid with only a dumbfounded look on his face as his brain drools out of the wound in his head and he collapses to the ground.
Honestly…I'm a little surprised. Are they all such nice looking people under the film? They begin shambling toward me with paint guns in tow. I try for a non lethal wound on one with a spare bullet. Hit in the shoulder the creature stumbles back and it's shell shatters.
Under it stands a creature that looks like a skinned bear stuffed into the shape of a man. Eyeless black sockets and slathering fangs as it roars in anger from the bullet wound in it's already bloody exposed muscle and sinew. It's cry of pain speaks of more then just the pain of the wound.
It speaks of the pain of being alive with no skin, of being exposed to the sun's heat directly with nothing to reflect the light away. If it was ever human I pity it more then the teenager as I put the next bullet between its eyes.
It's scream is silenced forever as the figure slumps to the ground, one of the other white shelled creatures covers the two bodies in paint, as if it feels enough emotion to be ashamed of my crime and wants to forget about it.
They must have varying states of mutation under the paint…..I won't know who is still human until I break the polish.
I'm wasting ammo and I know it, but I have to try. I graze the paint on the remaining enemies one at a time to see who is what as they approach. The first of the last 4 gets grazed in the foot, it's shell shatters and it is revealed as another skinless monster. I kill it.
The next is the same. As the bullet glances it's side and it is revealed as another fanged beast I start to sweat. This can't be. I couldn't have killed the only remaining human amongst them. I reveal another freak and kill it with my face twisted in anger and disgust. Only one chance left.
I aim at the final creature, who is still covering the dead bodies as I create more and more. I aim at the head first, but I turn the gun to the side. The shot grazes the white creatures cheek and the polish shatters. Revealing a normal human woman.
She smiles between the hanging strands of her brown hair, a trickle of blood dripping from the wound on her cheek from my bullet and I breath a sigh of relief.
She then lifts up the paint gun and advances on me. I take a step back and lift my gun back up, knowing it's empty as she approaches with her cheerful smile turning into a sick grin as she brings the paint gun to bear. I try to dodge but I'm soon knocked off of my feet and covered by the suffocatingly thick white wash. One more casualty to the war on color and life.
Soon the white shell hardens and my body is pulled to stand, I can see the brown haired woman turn the gun on herself. Covering her body in paint again. Her participation in all of this apparently voluntary. She looks oddly content as she turns the paint gun on her face and pulls the trigger. Once more hardened into a herald of enforced purity.
As my polished hands pick up a paint gun without my consent I make a decision. I bite off my tongue. Blood streams from my mouth as the shell pulls me forward without concern for the damage.
I'm afraid now as I slowly bleed to death while painting the scenery white. I see what the game designers were going for here….you don't have to be in serious danger of death for survival horror to make you afraid. It just has to be hard to continue living.
YOU DIED
Continue?
Mi is feeling: Afraid
Mi is listening to: Marilyn Manson – Great Big White World