Account 3
Masky's Account
"Alright everyone…let the master do his work."
Jeff was using his skills of sneaking into other's houses unnoticed, without leaving a trace – which in the human world would be considered the work of a criminal, and an expert criminal at that, whereas in the Under-Realm, that was just the work of someone who knew how to do their job well – in order to get us all into Ruby Johnson's house. It was the middle of the night in the human world, as opposed to the Under-Realm, which was currently in the middle of the day, so no one was really around to see us sneaking into the place; also, we were sneaking in through the back way, so we had even less of a chance of being seen unless there were neighbours of Ruby who liked to monitor her back garden regularly – which I did doubt. Jeff was the one who decided to sneak into the house at this time and through the back – he clearly knew what he was doing. It was nice to see him excel at and enjoy something that wasn't killing, arguing or making fun of me for once.
The large, suburban house was quite easy to locate even without the address on the mission documents that Mr Slenderman gave to us because of how enormous and grand it was for a upper-middle class, human house; also, the building was apparently centred around all of Freddy Kruger's attacks on the Elm Street children when he first started his dream-killing spree. Due to this, the fact that Ruby was the one child centred around all of his shenanigans now wasn't much of a surprise considering she lived in the house that started it all. It was bound to happen at some point if Freddy hadn't been taken care of properly by the former Elm Street children.
"What's taking you so long, Jeff?" Eyeless Jack asked while clearly smirking; he always seemed to actually enjoy irritating Jeff, even if it results in a fight between the two of them. "Lost your touch?"
All I saw from Jeff's response were his shoulders flinching as he turned to our organ-eating partner and gave him a tired look, almost as if to say that he didn't even want to give him a verbal argument back. After staring at Jack for a few seconds, Jeff rotated back to his work and continued picking the lock to the back door. Jack glanced at me, clearly puzzled as to why Jeff hadn't argued back, but before either of us could ask him anything, he spoke quietly and reserved and gave his answer.
"I would tell you to go fuck yourself and beat you to a bloody pulp, Jack, but if we're too loud, Ruby or her dad could wake up and we would fail our mission for tonight…and then Slendy would be pissed."
I was taken aback by Jeff's sudden display of thoughtfulness and rationality. I'd never been on a mission with him before and I had always heard from Mr Slenderman that he always didn't something wrong by the time he came back from them, but from what I had just seen, Jeff actually took his missions seriously and worked hard to make sure he succeeded in whatever he's doing; I had never seen him turn down a chance to argue or have a fight with someone before then, which must've meant that he was acting maturely about our task and wanted to actually get it done rather than drift and goof around while doing it. I have to admit that I was actually kind of moved.
Curiously, I turned to Jack to see his reaction to Jeff's statement. He seemed to be extremely surprised as well, but was trying to hide it by turning to his side and looking off into a rose bush that was near the back door. He didn't even have to say anything; his awkwardness alone demonstrated that he was just as shocked as I was, but that he also felt bad for straying from the mission for even a moment. Who would've known that Jeff the Killer would be the one to make Eyeless Jack feel as though he wasn't doing his job properly?
"I mean…" The killer continued. "I wanna be able to kill that mother fucker Freddy and nothing's gonna stop me from doing that…not even you, shit-bird."
And just like that, our surprise, joy for Jeff's change in attitude and feelings of guilt and inadequacy all disappeared. He was only serious because he wanted to kill Freddy Kruger, not because he wanted to get the mission done at all. His violent actions would never change. Just as Jack was about to yell at him for being a wrongly self-righteous 'prick', Jeff unlocked the back door as it gently opened, showing the three of us Ruby's living room.
Jeff turned to us and grinned. "We're in!"
Once again, I wanted to avoid a battle between the two of the murderers take place before me and to just get on with the mission – and I could see Jack beginning to feel the need to punch Jeff in the face through his gritting teeth and clenched fists – so I smiled under my mask, hoping that they could tell that I was by the tone of my voice, and laughed nervously.
"W-Well done, Jeff!" I began to wonder in. "Let's head inside then…"
Hesitantly, Jack followed me with Jeff smirking behind him, clearly happy that he could display his skills and show up our cannibalistic friend at the same time; I, on the other hand, was just pleased that they didn't end up fighting again. This was going to be a long mission if I was going to have to make sure that the two of them didn't argue every few minutes. This was the moment that I wished very badly that Hoody was there to help me.
Jeff closed the door carefully behind him and we were finally in.
Ruby's living room seemed pretty generic as we wondered through it to get to the stairs. She had two large, limey coloured sofas, a television in front of them – oh, God, it had been a long time since I'd seen a human television – a large, wooden draw, shelves of DVD's and books, and most noticeable of all, photos all over the walls and scatted all over the room in various frames, most of them of Ruby when she was younger.
Jack paused and stared at one of the framed pictures on the wall of a pre-teen Ruby at the beach with an older boy, who I assumed was her older brother, Shaun. She had a frilly, two piece swim suit on, and as I looked back to the two proxies behind me, I could see Jack practically drooling over the swim suit she was wearing in the photo with a large grin on his face, his razor-sharp teeth exposed.
"Wow…" he began as Jeff paused behind him. "She was a very cute kid…I bet her kidneys taste amazing…"
At that moment, Jeff hit the back of his head and stated "We can't kill her or eat her, Jack, you know that…we have a job to do…"
"Yeah." I added in. "Don't you dare try and hurt that girl, Jack. We need her alive."
"Alright. Alright." The blue-masked proxy said as he rubbed the back of his head, where Jeff had struck him. "I was just kidding guys."
I knew that he wasn't joking around then. He couldn't have been. Proxies love the act of killing – and in Jack's case, eating the remains of their victims – but that applies especially if we're attracted to the person we're killing. We don't feel attraction in the same way as humans do; all those romantic movies or books that humans write and produce don't relate to creatures of the Under-Realm. We don't understand the concept of them. Instead of feeling the type of positive attraction that humans feel of wanting to protect and keep the one we love safe no matter what, we want to tear them apart and watch them suffer; although, because of the fact that Jeff, Jack and I were half-proxies, we are able to feel human attraction, but it has to be for someone very special. It almost never happens and it's almost unheard of in the Under-Realm among the normal proxies.
This thought gave me a chill. One thing that Mr Slenderman hadn't taken into account about this mission was if we could all handle being around a human girl like Ruby and not kill her. All three of us hadn't been to the Under-Realm in a long time and we hadn't been around a human in years without the intention of killing them; Ruby was a cute, young girl, and the temptation to attack her would always be there while we were with her. I began to wonder how well we would be able to cope with this mission.
As we headed up the stairs towards Ruby's room, one more photograph caught my eye. It was one of a pre-school looking Ruby smiling in a rosy-coloured, flowery dress next to a kneeling woman with long, chestnut locks and in a smart blazer and pencil skirt who had her slim arms around Ruby's neck in an affectionate manner. Her large, brown eyes looked a lot like Ruby's multi-coloured ones, making me realise that the woman must've been Ruby's deceased mother. From what I remembered from our profile on Ruby was that her mother died when she was nine years old and shortly after her death, the family moved from England to America.
It seemed like such a shame. From the photo alone, I could see that Ruby was very close to her mother; plus, her mother was extremely beautiful and appeared very attentive and caring from what I had read about her and from the photo.
She seemed liked someone I wouldn't mind killing myself…
~:~
We all hovered around a sleeping Ruby.
She was sleeping on her back, her arms and legs sprawled all over the bed, her eyes delicately shut and her whole body relaxed; even though she was clearly a messy sleeper, she seemed so delicate and fragile that it seemed as though if we even touched her, she would wake up or maybe even break like a porcelain doll. It was almost like watching a child sleep, which was made more evident due to Ruby's freckles, causing her face to appear more child-like.
I did have to agree with Jack on one thing…she looked like she would be a delight to kill.
"So, Masky…" Jeff glanced at me. "Do your thing."
I nodded. "Okay. Jack?" The masked teen glanced over to me. "Can you be the lookout?"
"Sure." He wondered towards Ruby's bedroom door to fulfil his job immediately; God knows that if Jeff had asked him, he would've been making a large fuss about it.
"Make sure that if you hear Ruby's dad or if we seem as though something bad is happening in the dream, you wake us up, okay?"
"Gotcha!" He gave me a salute, as if he were an army cadet, and grinned.
Now, I turned to the unconscious Ruby and tenderly caressed her shoulder, attempting to be careful so as not to wake her up; Jeff instantly grabbed my shoulder in response and waited for me to make my move. When I knew that Jeff was ready and that Jack was in position, I gently closed my eyes behind my mask and relaxed my body.
"Here we go…" I whispered.
B-Dump!
The jolted travelled from my body to Jeff's and instantly, we were knocked out. The killer behind me was the first to collapse; his hand stayed on my shoulder as he fell, his eyes still open due to his lack of eye-lids, but he managed to fall to the ground even so. I shortly followed him down, my hand never leaving Ruby's shoulder. My knees dropped to the carpet and my body fell slowly.
As I fell I heard Eyeless Jack chuckled in the background.
"Sweet dreams, you two…"
Masky's Dream
We were not expecting to see what we had seen.
"COME ON KRUGER! GET ME!"
We awoke on a dark Elm Street – the same one that we had all awoken on when having a dream about Freddy back in the Under-Realm a few nights ago – and instantly began to witness a battle in pursuit. Two figures were bouncing from place to place, building to building, road to road, in the heat of a fight, both with weapons and a clear passion for what they were doing.
One was undoubtedly Freddy Kruger. His burnt skin, brown hat, red and green, damaged sweater and large, sharpened claws were unmistakable. He leaped up over the other fighter and was ready to slash them, however his opponent jumped out of the way just in time and skid to their right, clutching a chainsaw in their right hand.
I couldn't make out who the other person was. They were wearing a grey but creamy coloured, stitched mask, so I couldn't possibly see who they were, but their body shape seemed familiar. I studied them, hoping that I would be able to quickly work out who they were. From their clothes, there was absolutely no way I would be able to figure it out. They had a blood-soaked apron, filthy jeans, a slightly damp – probably from sweat – collared shirt underneath the apron and brown, work shoes on, which seemed to be helping their agility. When I analysed their short, but well kept, light brown hair and physic, I realised that they were a girl, but for the life of me, I couldn't figure out who she was and where Ruby was. She was supposed to be dreaming right now and Freddy was supposed to be after her, not this new person, so where was she?
I turned my head back and forth before asking Jeff. "Do you see Ruby anywhere?"
He didn't take his wide eyes away from the battle, but he sounded irritated when he said this. "Are you blind? She's right there, fighting that Kruger guy."
I stared back at the fight, only to realise that Jeff was right.
That girl holding her own against the dream-killer was Ruby. I should've been able to see that from her hair colour and the bright red eye that shone from behind her mask.
"I guess we now know how she's survived this long, huh?" Jeff was mesmerised by the demonstration in front of him, as was I.
Ruby's fighting techniques were extremely elegant and well thought out; she moved with the grace of a ballerina, but attacked with the strength and aggression as a Spartan, all the while, displaying the beauty of a swan and the tactics of a military officer. Freddy seemed like an idiotic, angry beast in comparison. His blows weren't only ineffective, but also clumsy and unplanned, allowing Ruby to see his margin for error and use that to her advantage to dodge his blows and attack herself. Considering that Freddy was supposed to be a master at the art of killing people in their dreams, his work here seemed sloppy for some reason.
The warrior girl disappeared for a moment, but re-appeared behind the burnt killer, her chainsaw running and her eyes wide with anticipation and a need to see blood spilt. Her bloodlust was clear, especially to Jeff and I who knew the feeling of wanting to see someone die and watch their blood spray everywhere all too well; this didn't look like the cute, innocent Ruby that I had seen in her photographs and read about in documents. This was a fighter. This was a girl who knew the joys of causing pain. This was the closest to a proxy that a human could ever get without actually becoming one.
As she swung her moving blade, Freddy turned around, but couldn't move away in time. Ruby began to laugh hysterically as she dug the chainsaw into Freddy's neck and watched wide-eyed as his blood flew onto her already blood-soaked apron and leathery mask.
I jolted back. Jeff froze.
She had killed him.
It only took a second for Freddy's head to fall to the ground and bounce off the concrete in a small puddle of his own slimy, thick, translucent, green blood. All Ruby could do was laugh and enjoy the feeling of knowing she had just decapitated someone. She pressed her foot onto Freddy's hacked-off head and lifted her chainsaw into the air as if to display achievement over her kill.
"Oh…my…God…" I managed to whisper emptily.
"Wait!" Jeff yelled out. "Look out!"
Suddenly, Ruby jumped out of the way of a large explosion that abruptly occurred, destroying a small part of the ground; once she landed with both feet firmly on the front lawn of a nearby house and her chainsaw securely in her hand, she peered over to us, only just noticing that we were there from Jeff yelling out to her; her head tilted from confusion, but almost immediately, she focused back on the area of the explosion, knowing that she needed to keep her head in the game.
It seemed as though someone appeared from the huge hole in the concrete ground that was just made. Once some of the excess dust and rock had cleared up and the hole was completely visible, we saw the undead figure of Freddy – the same Freddy that had just been decapitated – looking as though nothing had just happened to him at all. Both Jeff and I glanced back to the area where Freddy had been decapitated and killed by the manic Ruby with shock, however all that was there was a pile of his oozing blood splattered all over the floor.
He had survived decapitation.
"Looks like he can't die that easily…" Jeff mumbled. "This is a dream after all…you can't die in dreams usually…and he does control what happens in it to a certain extent…right? That must mean that if we wanna kill him, we can't in a dream…fuck."
"Yeah…" Was all I could say. It was normal for the both of us to see someone die – I mean, we saw that nearly every day, even if this death was gruesome – but seeing someone come back to life…that was a different story. Neither of us had seen that before, and we were completely surprised by it.
Ruby took her eyes away from Freddy and glared at us with what looked like hatred. Her bloodlust had disappeared, but so had her joy from fighting, and she looked ready to kill Jeff and me. I had no idea why at first, but when I thought about it, she seemed to really enjoy fighting Freddy; she also seemed more shocked about us being there in that dream than the fact that Freddy hadn't of died, meaning that she knew that he wasn't going to die, so that couldn't of been what pissed her off.
All of a sudden, out of nowhere, the girl switched her chainsaw off and threw it to the other side of the street. Freddy seemed to be amused by her actions, most likely thinking that now he had the upper hand in the battle, however before he could do anything, Ruby took her fist and clenched it before throwing it into her own face, causing her to fall backwards and seeming as though she was about to fall on her backside.
"What the fuck?!" Jeff exclaimed.
I instantly knew what she was doing.
Her body disappeared simultaneously with this action. She was gone.
"Jeff! She's woken herself up!"
"Oh shit!"
There was no doubt about it…
Ruby knew that we were in her room.
