A Nightmare on Elm Street: Circle of Death
Chapter 13: The Thirst for Blood
Kelly came to a halt so suddenly her white leather boots squeaked across the linoleum floor. "What the hell are you doing?"
Rowena, whom she had been so concerned about mere seconds ago, was curled up on top of a nearby table that looked like it had once been used for displaying dioramas made by students. What was left of the display was crushed as Rowena sat up. She clumsily straightened her cloche hat, which had drooped down in front of her left eye.
"I was just taking a little nap," said Rowena, her voice oddly light and youthful. She giggled to herself as she smoothed the ends of her blond wig.
Kelly scoffed in disgust. "Are you drunk?"
"Of course not. I'm just a little..."
Rowena trailed off and pinched her thumb and forefinger together, as if to say she was only a smidgen drunk. Kelly scoffed again and began stomping away. "I can see you still haven't found Craig, so I'm going to go check the basketball court," she called over her shoulder.
Yawning, Rowena nodded wordlessly. She knew she should get up and help Kelly, but in her current state she probably wouldn't be much help. Besides, she kind of hoped she would start dreaming again if she went back to sleep.
"Can you believe they actually have Bobbing for Apples?"
Tanya looked up from the doll she just won and glanced over at the small tank of water. Instead of playing the game properly, two boys were trying to dunk each other. "Our teachers are not of this earth," she said dryly.
"Tell me about it," muttered Aaron. "And speaking of not of this earth, did the girls ever come back?"
"No, I don't believe they have. And it must be hard," Tanya went on, in the same dry tone, "to pick on someone one likes as much as you obviously like Rowena."
Instead of denying it, Aaron sighed and shrugged a little. "I know. Pathetic, huh?"
"Not necessarily. I bet the two of you would compliment each other quite nicely, if you gave it a chance."
Aaron rolled his eyes. "Please. You know as well as I do that I'm too fresh and active for her taste."
Tanya didn't reply. Instead, she headed over to a table covered in clear plastic bowls. She picked up a ping-pong ball from a tray on the floor, tossed it into the air and caught it. "I don't know about you, but I could always use a few more goldfish," she said with a smile.
"Stupid turd," Felicity muttered to herself as she stomped down the corridor. "Stupid, inconsiderate, selfish..."
The small blonde suddenly stopped spouting negative adjectives and forgot about being angry at Freddy as she caught sight of something that made her feel much, much worse.
Lying curled up on a table covered in an assortment of junk was Rowena Madison.
Felicity had neither liked nor disliked the older girl during her time in high school. Like most seniors, Rowena had all but ignored her that year. Students craving attention wouldn't have liked this one bit, but Felicity preferred going unnoticed when the alternative was being tormented or ridiculed.
Rowena had never done anything to make Felicity dislike her—until now. And ironically, it was doing exactly this which made Felicity positively loathe her; nothing.
She hadn't done a thing to stop Craig. She just stood there and watched, just like the others. And it was obvious from his reaction that Principal Adwell had no idea what had happened to her, so that meant none of them ever told. No one knew, not even Felicity's poor mother, who had probably spent the last four months beside herself with worry. Rowena Madison knew she was dead, and she hadn't said or done a thing about it.
Felicity went closer and stared down at the prone figure still sleeping in blissful ignorance. The young girl had felt anger before, but even her biggest fits of temper were nothing compared to the intense heat of rage and hatred that slowly rose up inside her, so powerfully she began to tremble uncontrollably. She clenched both fists as she continued to stare at the napping witch, her vision narrowing until it was as if nothing else existed in the world but her.
It wasn't fair. Because of her lack of action, Rowena was just as guilty of murder as Craig, yet she was allowed to go on living. And Felicity, who had never done anything to hurt anyone her entire life was now without one. It wasn't fair at all.
"Well," Felicity murmured under her breath, "I'm just going to have to fix this little injustice somehow."
The dark direction her thoughts were taking surprised her a little. Before the idea forming in her mind could fully develop, she felt something sharp tap her on the shoulder.
Felicity let out a huff of air, annoyed. "I'm fine now, thanks for asking," she said sarcastically.
"Oh, I knew you'd make it out okay without me," Freddy said casually.
Felicity turned away from the still sleeping Rowena, barely managing to contain her urge to elbow Freddy in the gut as she brushed past him. "Just where do you go when you disappear like that?" she asked instead.
Freddy was busy picking his teeth with his index blade. "In there," he said, vaguely indicating to Rowena with his other hand.
Felicity looked down at the sleeping witch again, not understanding. "What do you mean, 'in there'? In what—people?"
"Exactly. I enjoying playing in the little worlds they create for me."
Felicity continued to stare, confused, until the silly smile on Rowena's face gave her a clue to the meaning behind his cryptic words. "So," she began slowly, "you're saying you can enter dreams?"
"Only at certain times."
"When's that?" Felicity asked curiously.
"When they're asleep, genius."
Felicity rolled her eyes. "Funny."
"I thought so."
Rowena suddenly curled her knees to her chest and rolled onto her back. Felicity thought she was about to wake up, but she murmured something and went on sleeping. "So you enter the dreams of young girls so you can nail them? That's so perverted."
"That's not why I do it," Freddy said hotly. "This isn't just for show, you know."
He whipped his glove in front of her eyes and waved the blades at her, making them glint in the moonlight. "I am a killer," he declared calmly, with a hint of pride in his eyes. "I killed for most of my life and all of my death. I tried a lot of hobbies over the years, but this has them all beat."
If she had still been alive, Felicity imagined that this proud announcement would have been more than a little frightening to her. Now that she was dead and had no mortal concerns anymore, this news was only mildly interesting. She had figured as much after he had treated her like a pincushion earlier.
"Out of curiosity," she said, nodding towards the girl still sleeping beside them, "why did you decide to bone Rowena instead kill her?"
"What makes you so sure I did?"
Felicity smiled wryly. "It's kind of obvious, really. You've got the same stupid look on your face that she does. And I'm pretty sure she was the one who yelled a little while ago...and she didn't really sound like she was in pain."
"Okay, so I made an exception. What's it to you?"
Felicity continued to smile. "Oh, nothing. I imagine it was something to you, though. I bet it was a shock when she spread her legs for you, huh?"
Freddy gave her a strange look. "Were you there?"
"Not hardly. But I'll let you in on a little secret; Rowena Madison is a raging necrophiliac. A walking corpse like you would make her soak her panties big time."
Now Freddy looked suspicious. "Are you serious?"
"As a terminal illness."
"If that's such a secret, how come you know about it?"
Felicity shrugged and slipped her hands into her jacket pockets as she began to explain. "I'm pretty sure over half the school knows. And Rowena knows that confirming the rumor wouldn't be very smart, but outright denying it would just make people believe it more, so she just lets people say whatever they want. Most think stuff like that is too wild to really be true, like the idea that she dissects house cats in her basement. Rumors like that grow and die all the time, and since she's a witch everyone just assumes it's par for the course."
"That's great," said Freddy, sounding as uninterested as he looked. "Would you stop with the metaphors already? They're really getting annoying."
Felicity wasn't about to say that she had learned all the phrases that were second nature to her from her mother, whom the neighbors claimed had a 'quaint, old-fashioned' way of speaking. She wasn't going to risk putting her mother on the receiving end of Freddy's sharp tongue, especially when she wasn't around to defend herself.
"I'll say whatever the hell I want," she muttered instead.
"You could," allowed Freddy. "And I could always cut off your tongue."
Remembering how easily she healed now, Felicity was tempted to tell him to go ahead and try, but she wasn't really sure if she would be able to put it back on. Thinking about it made her wonder about something else.
"Will I need to eat?" she wondered aloud. "Or go to the bathroom?"
She hadn't felt hungry since she woke up, or any of the other basic needs of the body. Having never been dead before, she had a lot of questions and very few answers. Freddy, the death expert, seemed the person to ask—if he was willing to take the time to answer.
If he planned to, he never got the chance. Their conversation was interrupted by a sudden shriek from Rowena.
Felicity turned and watched as the statuesque teen scrambled to the back of the table and flattened herself against the wall.
"I knew you'd come back for revenge," she cried, eyes wild. "I just knew it!"
Leave it to the witch to worry about something like that. "And here I'd thought you'd forgotten all about me," scoffed Felicity, unmoved by the older girl's terror.
Rowena continued to scoot along the table until she was dangerously close to tumbling off, looking like she was torn between begging for mercy or trying to make a run for it. As her green eyes, dark with fear, darted around for a way to escape, she suddenly noticed Freddy.
Felicity had never seen such a quick recovery from sheer terror before.
"Oh, it's you," said Rowena, breathing a sigh of relief.
"My, she's happy to see you," said Felicity dryly. "You must have done something right."
"I never leave a job unfinished, if that's what you mean," said Freddy smoothly.
Felicity rolled her eyes and looked at Rowena again, but she seemed to have forgotten the younger girl was even there. Felicity, on the other hand, hadn't forgotten what she had been thinking a few minutes ago.
She nudged Freddy in the ribs. "You're a killer, so get killing already."
"I'll kill her when I'm ready," snapped Freddy.
"You're waiting for her to fall asleep so you can play with her again, aren't you," Felicity accused.
"I didn't say that."
"But you were thinking it."
Freddy responded to her accusations with a fierce scowl. It was thanks to exaggerated expressions like this one that made it easy for Felicity to read what he was thinking, even without being able to sense his emotions. She decided to keep this to herself, in case it made him go deadpan on her.
"Some killer you are," she muttered, frustrated.
"I kill when I want to, not when I'm commanded to like a damn dog. And I'd have killed you ages ago if you weren't already dead."
"If that's a subtle way of saying you can't stand me; the feeling's mutual, sweetie."
Freddy opened his mouth to say something else, but he was cut off by a piercing scream that echoed through the hall like a gunshot. Felicity glanced at Rowena, who looked like she had been dozing off again despite believing she was already asleep, before looking past Freddy and down the hallway behind him.
Kelly was racing towards them, half-tripping over her own feet as she screamed and sobbed hysterically. Rowena jerked awake and looked at her in shocked confusion.
"What's wro—"
Kelly didn't answer, nor did she bother to slow down as she grabbed Rowena's hand and hauled her off the table. Rowena's hat and wig flew off as the sobbing Kelly dragged the taller girl behind her. Felicity watched as they both ran down the hall and disappeared around a corner, noting that Kelly had again failed to notice her. "I wonder what her problem is?"
"She probably found her boyfriend," Freddy said casually. "What's left of him."
Felicity turned to him in shock. "You killed Craig Tyler?"
"Yeah, you got a problem with that?"
"A problem?" echoed Felicity dumbly. "Are you kidding me? That bastard is the one who killed me. I'm so happy right now I could kiss you--if you weren't uglier than a mule's butt, of course."
Freddy clutched his own chin with his gloved hand and tilted his head like he were posing the cover of a fashion magazine. "Don't let that stop you. I never do."
"Uh, right. But we should definitely let the fact that Kelly is running full speed away from us stop unnecessary behavior of any kind for the moment."
"I don't get the connection."
Felicity wearily rolled her eyes as she started hurrying in the direction Kelly and Rowena had gone. "Weren't you listening the first time? I don't know how, but somehow that necklace Kelly is wearing is creating the sphere. Where she goes, it goes, so let's move before I get turned into a pancake again."
Catching on, Freddy hurried to catch up with her, and to escape the energy that was buzzing at his heels. "Do you think this little problem will go away if we kill her?"
Felicity was thinking the exact same thing. She didn't know what being on the same wavelength as someone as nutty as Freddy obviously was meant for her own sanity, so she just shrugged and quickened her pace.
"I'm not sure. Let's go find out."