Prologue

Jeff the Killer's Dream

You know when you're dreaming about something that you've never seen before, but it feels really significant to you? That's what happened the first night I dreamt about Freddy Krueger.

To be honest, I don't usually dream about anything when I drift into my darkened, dream world. For the past few years, I've just had dreamless nights with no important or reoccurring dreams like those of my friends or comrades, so when I awoke on that deserted, dark human street with a deep emerald-coloured street sign on the corner that said 'Elm Street', I was extremely confused, but I was also curious as to where I was. I was in the black-vest and shorts that I'd fallen asleep in just moments before, and the chilly, rough ground felt so vivid and clear under my paper-white feet, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I wasn't awake.

There was just something about this place I was in that made me believe that I was slap-bang in the middle of a dream. There was something that felt strange about how my body felt; it was as if I were in the middle of the road, but my existence wasn't actually there. My mind was in the street, but my physical being was somewhere else. I couldn't explain it, but I knew that my brain was resting and my actual body was breathing gently on my comfy bed, in the shared room, in the house that I earned, working my butt off for Slenderman.

I instinctively tried to reach in my non-existent hoody pocket for my knife, just to ensure my security and safety as I always tended to do when in an uncomfortable situation, however I instantly realised that I had neither my white hoody or my trusty weapon with me in this human street.

"Shit…" I muttered under my breath.

The only thing I could do before I woke up was to wonder down the abandoned area and try to figure out where in the human world I was; I was guessing America since I remember that when I lived among the ordinary people – before I was happily taken down to the Under-Realm – my old street had the same sort of environment. The large, almost picture-perfect houses, the well-kept, thriving shrubbery and trees surrounding the kind and friendly neighbours' homes, the wide, spacious roads that were so large that car accidents were almost a challenge to cause; I may have been away from my old home for a long time, but I remembered everything about my old, mundane life so distinctly that someone listening to me speaking about it might think that I was there yesterday.

The one thing that was definitely making me feel uneasy was the fact that no one was around. It may have been the dead of night and I may have been able to view the shimmering moon reflecting light onto the dimmed roofs of the houses, but in the Under-Realm, that didn't mean a damned thing. No matter what time it was back there, there was always at least a few hundred proxies out and about, whether they were out doing tasks for their superiors or – if they were narks – Zalgo, or they were out drinking or having a good time, there would always be at least someone out on the streets. I guessed that the human world was slightly different. Humans actually needed sleep to function and didn't just use it as a refreshing break like pure-blooded proxies did. Those lucky bastards.

I managed to walk for around half a minute before the crying began.

Suddenly, in the short distance behind me, I heard, what sounded like, a child sobbing to himself. That was something that I hadn't heard in a long time. The Under-Realm did have child-proxies, however they never cried; the instant that they were born into their murderous existence or travelled from this world to my world, they threw away any kind of remorse, depression or sadness and knew that once they began to feel any negative emotions, that the state encouraged them to kill others as a form of release with a supervisor. It was just our nature. Humans wouldn't understand that, especially the human children.

I rotated my body and turned towards the child that I hadn't seen or heard before just then. He was sat in the middle of the road where I was when I woke up standing and realised where I was. A chill ran up my spine when I laid my eyelid-less eyes upon this young boy; the first thought that appeared in my head was that I knew he wasn't sat there crying a moment ago and that I hadn't even heard him move to that spot either. I was wondering how in the hell he had managed to sneak past me when I was an expert at moving around my environment undetected myself. No one could sneak around a master of sneaking around.

Another thought that flashed in my head was why there was a human child alone in a dark street like this. I thought that human parents actually cared about their kids and kept them near in case they got hurt in order to protect them. I quickly shook my head back and forth to check if his parents or anyone I could've dumped the kid on were nearby. They weren't.

I studied the child before making any kind of movement towards him. He seemed to be quite young, maybe a pre-teen. His face was tucked into his knees, so I couldn't see it, but I saw his sparkling, blond hair glisten in the moonlight and could instantly tell that he probably had a cute face. Most blond human kids did. He was wearing dark cloths and a stripy, black and grey scarf that was so lengthy that it sprawled itself around the sobbing child, almost like a barrier on the ground between him and the rest of the world, including me.

Something about his look seemed familiar to me, but I couldn't quite put my finger on why. I just shook that notation out of my brain and began to walk towards the kid. He seemed innocent enough. He might have needed help, and besides, maybe I could get some information on where I was out of him.

I was just hoping that my face didn't scare him too much. I didn't look like a human anymore. My skin was as white as the moon shining above me and the young blond boy; my eye-lids had been burnt off, making my big, bright eyes look permanently intense and, as my friend from back home, Ben, would say, 'like they're staring straight into your soul'. Plus, I had carved a permanent smile on my face years ago, so that no matter what expression I was attempting to wear, my scars would always allow me to display a smile. In the Under-Realm, I wasn't any different from anyone else; everyone down there has a story to tell and scars to prove it, but in the human world, I was a considered many things, and terrifying for children to look at was one of them.

Once I was near enough to the kid that he wouldn't feel too frightened by me and as if I was entrapping him, but close enough that he knew I was here to help, I placed my pasty hand on my hip and asked "Hey, you alright there, kid?"

The sobbing stopped the instant I spoke. I assumed that he realised that he finally had help and was about to look up at me and ask me to provide him with assistance with finding his parents. That wasn't what happened at all. He didn't even look up. The runt just sat there as still as a statue, his head still tucked into his scrawny knees so that I could see his face and I noticed that his hands also clenched when he realised that he wasn't alone in the street.

After a few moments of witnessing no change to this stranger's position, I began to get slightly irritated. It was clear that he'd heard me and knew that I was there, and yet he was still trying to not talk to me? What a little shit.

"Hey." I tried again. "What're you crying about? You lose your Mommy and Daddy or something?"

Still nothing. This time, there was absolutely no reaction. Now I was really starting to get annoyed. I hated being ignored, especially by snot-nosed, little brats from the human world, and what made it worse was that it was the one time when I was trying to help someone out for once instead of trying to kill them. The very least this twerp could do was look at me when I was talking to him.

"Hey!" I raised my voice slightly as I bent down and grabbed his shoulder. "It's rude to not look at your elders when they talk to you, you know!"

The blond twitched. A twitch that felt as though his whole body had cracked and was so strong that I thought I could hear his bones snap as it happened; I froze as I was reminded of The Rake when that pale, lanky monster clicked his bones. I always found it so disgusting and cringe-worthy that I always told him to stop it whenever it happened – not that the idiotic creature ever understood what I was saying. He wasn't the brightest crayon in the box as far as proxies went.

Gradually, my wish was coming true and then the blond slowly but, surely lifted his small head upwards. As his fringe became more visible, I began to feel some sort of nostalgia. I felt as though I had seen this kid somewhere before, but I couldn't put my murderous finger on where or when. His hair, his clothes, his scarf…they all seemed so familiar.

It was only when he lifted his head up completely that I realised.

My heart skipped a beat. I gasped silently. I think if my eyes could go any wider, they would've.

"L…L…Li…u..."

The little brat, crying in the streets, was my brother, Liu.

My dead brother.

The brother that I killed.

His bright, verdant eyes stared up at me as he gave me a large grin, only made wider by the scares on each side of his mouth; like me, he had an eternal smile carved onto his face – a smile that I remember carving on him the night I killed him – except, his had been stitched up, meaning that his seemed more clean and less bloody than mine did. Although, this wasn't the only scar on his face. All over were stitched from where I had cut him on the day of my first massacre; they ran from his cheeks, to his forehead all the way back down to his chin and up to his ears, appearing like a child's first scribbles. The stitched had been made with such precision that it seemed likely but was illogical to think that a doctor had looked at him after his death and fixed him right up.

His pupils had become small and intense – nothing like I remembered them to be when I was an ordinary human. This made his smile all the more disturbing.

"Hello, brother…" he whispered in a menacing tone.

I jumped up and away from him. I would've fallen on my ass if I hadn't of still had my guard up. I had learnt back in the Under-Realm to never think that you're safe and this was a massive example of when to follow that rule.

Liu couldn't have been there. I had killed him. I remembered the whole night intensely and knew that I had defiantly murdered him. I cut him up and watched his eyes lose their shine and his breathing slowly stop as he cried and I covered his mouth to prevent him from screaming until the point when he was in so much pain that he couldn't have possibly made any noise that was notable for our neighbours to hear.

I remembered that night all too well.

I couldn't talk. I could only look at my broken, beaming, creepy-ass brother sit on the floor and tilt his head slightly with a look of wonder in his eyes.

"Jeff…" he almost sang. "Why are you running away from me? Do I scare you? You're the one who made me like this, remember?"

"No…" My voice was shaking for the first time since that night. The fact that I was actually feeling fear was so surprising that I was shocked that I didn't fall over and cry. "No…Liu…you can't be here…"

Just then, the tiny golden-haired child began to rise to his small feet, his head still slightly tilted to the side and his smile still going from ear to ear; I wanted to run away from him so desperately, but my damned legs wouldn't move an inch. If it wasn't for the fact that I knew that I had definitely killed my younger brother and this kid couldn't possibly be standing where he was, or breathing as he was, or grinning as he was, it was because that freakin' grin was creeping me out.

"What do you mean, Jeff?" he asked as he stood, almost lifelessly in the middle of the dimmed road. "I'm standing right here…even Mom and Dad are here…see?"

The thing that I was convinced wasn't Liu gradually pointed behind me into the darkness of this 'Elm Street' and brought his head back up in a semi-normal position as his dead, but shimmering eyes peered behind me. I didn't want to turn around. In fact, I winced at the idea. The thought of actually rotating my body, making it completely defenceless for this creature to attack me seemed extremely idiotic.

"Jeff…"

I jolted. I knew that voice almost too well.

Suddenly, I swung around, taking my wide eyes off of this imposter of a brother, and feasted my eyes on the most horrific sight I had ever seen – and I lived in a world of demons and violent killers, so saying that this is the most horrific sight I had ever seen was really saying something.

"M…Mom…Dad…"

My parents.

My dead parents.

My parents were stood in the middle of the road, still but rocking slight, as if they were finding it difficult to stand up by themselves. Like Liu, they had scars and cuts all over their bodies from where I had stabbed them that night, however they seemed to be more disorientated than Liu was and much more out of it.

My Mom's large, sapphire eyes had become a dulled, pale blue and they weren't fixated on anything specific; when she glanced in my direction, it was as if she wasn't sure if I was really there or not. Her short, chestnut coloured hair was almost falling out, leaving small bold patches all over her scalp; her skin was nearly as pale as mine and she was in the same violet, night-dress as she was the night she died, with a dried, crimson liquid staining around the stomach area of it and small splashes staining the sides, mixing the light purple with deep red. Her head tilted just like Liu's, causing my eyes to want to avoid her face and switch straight to my Dad.

My Dad's dark hair seemed as though it had been rustled, as if he had just woken up; his dimmed caterpillar of a moustache was still under his large nose, but it had grey hairs in it. He looked so much older for some reason. What I had to assume was dried blood had been marked all over his plane, dull, grey t-shit and azure, chequered pyjama bottoms, but he seemed to not care at all. It was strange seeing him without his dark, rimmed, wide glasses; they used to make him look like such a nerd, and I would beg him to wear contacts constantly so that when I was seen with him, he wouldn't embarrass me, but he never listened to what I said. I couldn't even believe that I remembered that when I saw him. I'd thought that I'd forgotten everything about them and moved on to become a good proxy.

I became ridged. I could hear the Liu imposter chuckling behind me, although I didn't do anything to stop him; I couldn't take my expanded eyes off of my impossibly alive parents who were now stumbling towards me.

Before I knew it, the Liu imposter was right behind me, close enough for me to be able to hear his breathing along with his continuous cackling; it didn't sound anything like Liu anymore. His voice had become even more menacing and demonic, as if he was from the Under-Realm like me. For a second I could've sworn I was talking to Ben or even Laughing Jack after they had committed one of their kills.

"You know, Jeff…" The now-obviously-not-Liu leaned into my discoloured ear; his lips were caressing my ear-lob, causing me to shiver, but the softness of his touch made me relax my body immediately. "…I don't think you really know how pathetic what you did was…"

At this moment, my disfigured parents paused their movements and stood where they were. Their blank and unfocused eyes stayed wondering their surroundings as if they couldn't see Liu or myself right in front of them; my heart began to thump with such damage and resonance that my ears were in pain. The throbs of the blood-pumping organ travelled around my body and made me weak.

I had never felt such…fear before. I didn't know if it was because I hadn't faced my family's death by this point and had spent the majority of my time in the Under-Realm trying to run away and forget about that night, or because I was finding it difficult to look at such devastatingly suffering bodies wondering around meaninglessly, but I was more frightened than I had been in a long time. My teeth were chattering, my body was trembling and my eyes couldn't be moved from my zombified Mom and Dad.

"I…I…" I attempted to speak, but ended up stuttering and finding it difficult. My face became slightly pink at the embarrassment of showing such weakness, but I couldn't help it. The sheer horror of my parent's state was slowly damaging my body. "I…what I did…w-wasn't pathetic…"

"Oh it was…" Liu continued with such confidence in his voice that he made me sound like a child auditioning for their first school play in comparison. "And do you know why?"

All of a sudden, I felt a chilling, metallic blade gently brush my skin. I immediately looked downwards and saw a lengthy, finger shaped, shimmering knife-like blade curled around my paper-white neck; the bright moonlight reflected off of it, which was glamorous and shining so brightly that I was sure it nearly blinded me.

Instantly, when I realised that this blade was at my neck, I turned my head to expect to see Liu holding a large weapon, to which I knew I would've been screwed since I didn't have my knife on me, and my movements were still limited because of the shock of seeing Liu and my parents after so long. Although, when I turned to look at my brother…

He wasn't my brother.

He was still in my brother's clothes and he was still my brother's height, but he wasn't him. His young, scarred face had been replaced by that of a middle-aged, severely burnt man with a filthy, deep brown hat on his injured, dull red and pink head. My pupils wondered to the blade that was still curved around my neck and, to my surprise, there wasn't just one blade, but four, and they were attached to an auburn, leather glove on the mystery-man's wrinkly, scarred hand.

I swallowed my saliva so loudly that I could hear it as clearly as I could see that this man wasn't my brother. He smirked and bought the blade closer to my skin, nearly slicing into my neck.

"I could've killed your parents so much better than you did…"

~:~

"AH!"

I awoke with a jump.

That was the first time I had woken up form a dream by sitting up and sweating; I thought that kind of thing only ever happened in those weird human-horror movies that I had watched when I lived in that world; humans always did like to exaggerate things like that for what they liked to call 'dramatic effect'. My breathing was jagged, my pale brow was covered in cold sweat and I felt like throwing up. I hadn't had a nightmare in so long that I'd forgotten how afraid they could make me feel. My last nightmare was back in the human-world when I was still a kid, but I had never had one this frightening before, even back then.

"Jeff! Are you okay?!"

I turned to my side and saw my best friend, Ben, stood next to my bed, looking extremely worried. He had the body of a child, so we were at the same level, even though I was sat on my bed and he was stood up on the ground – that short-ass.

His ruby-red pupils surrounded by his deep, pitch-black eyes were fixated on me, but mine were fixated on his tiny hands. He was holding my black, sleeping mask that had "Go To Sleep" written on it in white, which he must've taken off of my eyes whenever he noticed that something was wrong with me when I was sleeping. I glided the back of my hand against my forehead and sighed with relief that I was back in mine and Ben's room, safe and sound from that psychopathic, burnt man, my undead parents and that chilling street.

"I'm okay…did I talk in my sleep of something?" I asked, wiping the last of the cold sweat off of my forehead.

Ben didn't respond. He simply stared at my face as if I were a ghost – not that he would've been too shocked at seeing one of those since we lived in a world of demons; ghosts weren't too rare where I lived, but they were irritating – they always flew around, turning invisible and ease-dropping so that they could gossip amongst themselves. I scrunched my face up and frowned with irritation; I knew that my face was terrifying to humans, but Ben had known me long enough to be able to cope with seeing my burnt, pale, scarred mug every day.

"What?" I aggressively asked.

My best friend leaned forward and placed one of his small, creamy hands on my grim duvet and used the other one to reach out and gently caress my cheek with his tiny finger, carefully poking me. I flinched and fell backwards, holding myself up with my hands that laid on my bed behind me.

"What are you doing?! You freak!"

Hesitantly, Ben lifted his finger up for me to see. I froze when I realised that dripping down his little finger was blood – blood that had come from me.

"Did you cut yourself in your sleep?" he asked, clearly concerned.

I instantly touched my own face, pulled my hand away and saw the same coloured blood splashed around my hand – it was the first time in a long time that I actually didn't want to be touching blood, mainly because it was mine. I hadn't bled in such a long time that I didn't even remember how it felt to bleed; that must have been why I never noticed that the crimson liquid was running down my face. I couldn't see it at the time, but I could feel that on my left cheek was a large slash with a light amount of blood dripping down it to the bottom of my face. The shape of it seemed like it had been made by a blade – an extremely thin and slick blade.

I ignored Ben for a moment and simply stared at my now blood-covered hand. Ben was asking me a huge amount of questions and trying to get me to listen to him, but I just forgot that he was there and thought back to my dream and the blade that my brother – no, that imposter of my brother – was wielding. I knew that it was around my neck just before I woke up, which did make me wonder why my throat wasn't slit, but something in my gut was telling me that he was the one who damaged my face.

But it was impossible.

Even in the Under-Realm there weren't any dream-demons or anything like that, so it seemed idiotic for me to even think of this, but I couldn't help it. It seemed like the only logical explanation. My fingernails weren't long enough for me to cut myself while sleeping, and deeply enough to draw blood, and I'd never done it before either, so it just didn't seem to piece together.

I couldn't say anything except for one statement.

"W…What the fuck…?"