Friends Like These Freddy watched the spitting & sputtering fuse withdraw into the sheath of his glove. Each handcrafted blade was buried to the root in his gut, and he thought for a moment that he could taste the cold steel in the back of his throat as he muttered, "Kids." Then he blew up. Life was a dream for Freddy, and this corporeal body threaded together from the fabric of his consciousness, the body that had just been shredded by a pipe bomb, meant no more to him than a pair of socks. He wasn't sad to see it go; in fact, he was relieved. Once again, he'd been set free. ******* Freddy found himself miles from the boiler room. He'd been hurled across the dreamscape and into the grimy, crackling corridors of memory. Snarling, Freddy dodged a tongue of synaptic lightning that arced down from the ceiling and surveyed the hallway: a white, tiled hallway much like that of a hospital. Things were very cold and clinical down here. He didn't visit much. The place had largely fallen into ruin as memories of his former life were discarded, as Krueger reveled in the godlike power he wielded in his boiler-room sanctuary. Leaning against a rust-eaten door that probably led to some bloody beating from his pre-pubescence, he called out for the demons. "WHERE ARE YOU?!" A giggle resonated off the walls. Jesus, these guys were like fucking kids. He grabbed the handle of the door and rattled it with a sound like thunder. "GET DOWN HERE!!" The bastards knew he meant business, yet they took their sweet time coming through the labyrinth, weaving in and out of his memories and cackling at the most humiliating of the bunch. Freddy sat on the floor and massaged his temples. The dream demons, the trio of ghouls, brothers from the nether, hollow faces trailed by synaptic fire and the sounds of cruel laughter - they screeched around the corner and wailed at him in unison. "FREDDY!" "I wanna go home." He snapped, and instantly regretted it. He sounded like a twelve-year-old; no matter how goddamn ridiculous these little bastards were, their power - the power they had bestowed upon him - always stirred up a bit of fear in his core. "This IS home, Freddy," the lead one cried. Lead one. Hrmph, they all looked the same. He'd thought about them from time to time as he lay at rest, wondered about their origins. They were probably all the same being, some three-headed goon from Hell who was smoking in the boys' room & hadn't yet been caught. And they were having more fun than he was, the worms. He longed now for rest - for the "dead time" between victims, between dreams, when it was just Freddy. He often used that time to build up the boiler room. What was once a crude recreation of the Springwood Power Plant had become a monolithic cathedral, a testament to his godhood. Complex pipeworks curled around endlessly-spiraling stairways, and catwalks stretched forever into a living, breathing steam; he even controlled the lighting, that sickly red hue which drenched the entire room. And then, when a young one went to sleep with the seeds of Freddy's horror planted in his or her mind - then, the doors were flung open and Krueger prepared to welcome his newest child. And now, he lay at the mercy of the dream demons in his own loathsome memory. "You've failed." One of the other demons cried. "You've finally failed! We can't save you, Freddy - you belong to Them now!" "To who? What do you mean?" He sat up, splaying his claws. He'd tear them to fucking pieces if he had to- - "You belong to HELL!" The third demon howled, and then they streaked back down the hall in the direction from which they'd come, leaving Freddy screaming and gnashing his teeth in the labyrinth of his hated subconscious. Leaving him revealed for what he truly was, more gruesome and mangled than before - his skin no longer leathery scar tissue but a raw, red mess of meat barely clinging to the bone; his eyes bloodshot and aching from the lightning overhead; his teeth splintered so that they resembled animal fangs. Freddy's spirit was alone and exposed and trapped in his mind. His Hell. ******* How many years went by? How long did it take him to break down the walls? How long did he scour the depths of Hell for the one who could help him? How long had it been since he was trapped in a physical body, crippled by corporeal existence? Freddy stared into the face of Lori Campbell and groaned. He felt the machete go all the way through his neck, through muscle and spine, and he saw the glassy surface rushing up to meet him as his head dropped into Crystal Lake. Freddy felt the water rushing around him, the blood bubbling from the stump of his throat, the pressure as he drifted further down into the depths... The lake took on a crimson glow, as if he were cascading through great currents of blood. But he knew what it really was. He heard their laughter from far away, carried by the water. "Freddy!!" Krueger waited for his head to turn so that he could see the demons, like obscene tadpoles, their tails flailing about as they circled him. "Little bastards...you don't have any power over me. You abandoned me - REMEMBER?!!" Their chortling enraged him like never before. Abandonment, rejection - the story of Fred Krueger's life. He had never seen his love reflected in the eyes of his victims. They had always bled out with only terror etched on their cherubic faces. The demons did laps over Freddy's head as he continued to sink. He'd been fucking decapitated - why was he still here? Why hadn't he been returned to the boiler room, or even his memory? Anything would be better than this suffocating misery with his former mentors weaving over him. "That's right," one of them yelled, "we have no power over you!" They all roared as if it were some brilliant inside joke. Freddy barked through the water. "Then why the fuck are you here?!" "We're here to take back what's ours," came the reply. "No more escapes - no more dreaming!" Freddy screamed. The demons came closer, brushing against his face, his eyes, snapping at him with their toothless mouths, making a ring around his severed head. This was it. His power - his godhood - his children - all gone. Only Hell to keep him company throughout eternity. Freddy thrashed as much as a floating head can, snapping back at the demons, trying to chase them away with fearsome cries. But they were determined to reclaim their gift to him. Then, the whole world turned upside-down. Literally. Freddy felt cold tendrils gripping his pate and he was yanked out of the ring of demons. They wailed, their horrible laughter caught in their throats, their faces agape. Freddy didn't know what was happening, but he knew enough from reading their expressions. "FUCK YOU!!!" Freddy Krueger yelled before he was swallowed by darkness. ******* His head broke the surface of the lake. He was barely there, barely able to move and unable to speak. No surprise, since his throat was gone. But he couldn't speak in his mind either - so the demons were gone. Their link to him was shattered. He was free. And yet, he still felt the power within him - but how? Those cold tendrils still grasped his skull. Freddy looked up. Jason Voorhees was carrying him out of the lake. He was a goddamned trophy. Yet somehow, this undead goon's hand had spared him from the demons and from Hell itself. Freddy knew the retarded sonofabitch was good for something. He stared into a hazy morning horizon and thought of the dream demons as he'd last seen them. He pictured them there, gawking at his salvation. Freddy smiled at them, relished the imagined anguish of the worms. He winked.