The calendar on the wall kept collecting dots as the days and the months passed. Eventually, the dots indicated the date was Thanksgiving, even though the temperature and weather in the realm remained a slightly warm 79 degrees, with the sun always shining.

No turkey was shared that day, though the survivors, between trials, headed to the new games building, where the rounds of Clue, Monopoly, Life, and 13 Dead End Drive kept going, even as the survivors came and went into the fog for respective trials. Ace protested during the poker game when the Fog came to claim him, and when he returned, was near tears when he announced that he'd been holding a straight flush before he'd left.

Zarina visited the cabin of Jake and Amanda on occasion. At one point, she'd asked Amanda how long they'd been there, and how long they would stay.

"25 years," Amanda had said with a shrug. "Going on 26." Zarina had stared at her with shock. "So you won't go back for another 25 years?"

Amanda just looked at her. "We probably won't be going back at all, at least not by our choice."

"Why in the world would you want to stay in this place? Being hunted by killers?"

Amanda said quietly, "I was dying."

Zarina opened her mouth, then closed it again, understanding. Amanda had told her the circumstances of their return. She had been dying when Jake had made his plea to the Entity, and..."If you go back...You'll be at death's door. If you leave the realm, the thing that was killing you will return..."

Amanda nodded. "At least here, death isn't permanent. The chance to remain 36, for centuries, maybe even eternity, isn't a bad thing in my book. I just have to be hunted, I don't have to drink blood or sacrifice virgins." Amanda giggled at that.

A few days after Thanksgiving, Amanda had been called, with Jake, Jane, and Feng, into a trial at Midwich. It was a learning curve. She was getting more and more used to it, but the multiple levels definitely made things difficult. If the killer was on the floor under you, but right below you, your heartbeat quickened just like it was in the room, and more than once she'd dived for cover, only to realize the killer wasn't on her floor, and quickly go back to what she was doing.

She felt tired after she looked around. That was a likely clue that the killer was Freddy. She hoped the alarm clock that the survivors could use to exit the sleep state when another survivor wasn't around would spawn on the floor she was on. She wandered until she found a generator and got to work before she fell asleep walking.

Because of her state, she didn't sense Freddy Krueger watching her from the shadows. She also didn't know that Krueger was a little bit fascinated by her. Amanda and Ash's "get lost," vibe when the killers approached them made them both stand out among the killers they faced. They were used to the survivors running from them in a panic. Both Ash and Amanda ran if they felt like it, no matter who they faced.

Ash in particular acted like they were merely an annoying fly, and Freddy and the other killers had noted the looks Amanda sometimes flashed them before she decided whether to run or not. It was a look that told them if the tools were at her disposal, she could be just as dangerous to them as they were to her.

After his visit from the Entity, Krueger had been getting more and more hostile about being confined to using his abilities only in trials. He was annoyed that the survivors, while scared of him, were still less terrified of him than the children he stalked in their dreams. But most of all, he was pissed off at this uppity bitch who behaved like she wasn't scared of anything.

Everyone was scared of something, and he decided he didn't care about the trial, or the generators...He was going to figure out what scared this bitch. He'd rather it been Ash, but she would do. Krueger crept up on her, as she remained oblivious, her head nodding as she sleepwalked. It was easy to plug her off the generator. He used an ability that had long been collecting dust to put her to sleep completely, and carried her down one floor, and then down the flight of stairs to the basement.

****************************************************************************

Amanda woke up on a dirty floor. It wasn't Midwich. She remembered being there. She remembered Freddy Krueger was the killer in the trial, she remembered her hands being on a generator, and then she remembered nothing.

She drew herself to her knees, looking around a brightly lit room, and her eyes widened in horror as she clapped her hands to hair that felt raggedly cut, and shorter. She recognized the turquoise t-shirt, the striped pajama pants that looked green, and as she usually liked to be in trials, she was barefoot. The big metal safe was next to her, and the steel door on the only visible entrance to the room was standing open.

The nerve gas house.

She was back in the nerve gas house. WHY was she back in the nerve gas house?

There was no way the Entity would have done this. Created this as a trial area, especially if she was not to be the killer in it. Amanda felt her terror quickening and her shirt was soon soaked in sweat. She hadn't felt terror like this in ages. She didn't want to be here. She NEVER wanted to be here. Not after all the work she'd done to close this chapter of her life.

Eyes wide, Amanda crept from the room and started down the dirty, debris-filled hallway. Halfway down, a door was open. She walked by it, intending to pass it completely, until what she saw when she glanced inside it made her stumble through the door in fear.

Burned body parts. Burned from an explosion. A man's head facing the door, eyes closed. Troy.

In a hanging trap, decomposing, chest ripped open...Allison Kerry.

To her right, chained to the floor with a bag over his decomposing face...Adam Stanheight.

Amanda looked between the three corpses, wide-eyed, shoving her hands over her mouth to keep herself from screaming in complete terror. It was awful, it couldn't be more awful, this couldn't be happening let me out of here...

In tandem, the three corpses opened the lids of their eyes, exposing milky-white orbs. Amanda's hands automatically clamped over her mouth as she screamed into her palms.

**************************************************************************

Krueger smiled as she shuddered and let out quiet screams as he used her memories to create a nightmare sure to terrify her completely. Based on how she was reacting so far, it was mission accomplished.

**************************************************************************

"MURDERER!" Kerry screamed through her cracked, dead lips. "FUCKING...MURDERER!"

Kerry grabbed the jar of acid hanging from her trap in a rotted hand and threw it at Amanda, where it shattered at her feet. Amanda staggered backwards, keeping the skin of her feet from the puddle as it spread towards her. The door slammed shut in her face as Kerry's corpse screamed at her.

Amanda sank to the floor. She'd squeezed her mouth so tightly her nails had cut into the skin on the sides of her jaw. WHAT...THE FUCK...IS THIS.

She pressed her face into her hands, terrified to the point she was weeping.

let me out of here please let me out of here please...

She heard a rustling noise. Amanda forced her face from her trembling hands and forced her head to turn towards the noise, and wished she hadn't.

Crawling on their bellies towards her were Obi and Laura. Both were decomposed. The lower half of Obi's corpse was black and burned. Laura's face was covered with a mixture of dried spittle and blood. Both their eyes were the same milky-white as the three corpses in the room, and both were...smiling at her.

Amanda had no idea what they would do to her if they got their hands on her, and her panicked brain forced her to her feet and into a run so she wouldn't just sit there, staring in terror at them until she found out. She bolted down the hallway, turned, and found herself in the main entryway of the hall. The door marked EXIT, which Xavier had battered with the spiked bat was in front of her, but she knew the metal slatted doors outside remained locked. John had given her a key for the chained door leading to the kitchen, and outside, but a quick pat of her pockets indicated they were empty.

"Neeeeeed a KEY?"

Amanda, terrified, turned to the voice that had spoken to her on her left. Jonas stood in the doorway, as decomposed as the rest. The bat she'd pulled from him to block the door when Xavier had been attempting to get to her and Daniel was once again hanging from the back of his head. In his rotting hand he was holding a key, but it wasn't hers, it was the one that had been with the tape in the first room, which opened the trap door to the underground passage beneath the house.

Even if she had been stupid enough to approach him and take it, she'd have had to walk down the hallway she'd just come from, and the slow rustling sounds she could hear told her, even in her terror, that Obi and Laura were still coming for her.

From above, Amanda heard a scream, "HELP ME!" She looked at the top of the stairs. Addison.

She bolted up the stairs. Jonas simply stared at her as she ran, making no attempt to grab her. Amanda followed the screams to the room where she knew Addison had found the chinese finger trap style game that had actually been intended for Gus.

She opened the door as Addison screamed again and immediately ran to her. "Help me out of this, Amanda..."

Amanda ran to the front of the box where Addison's face was visible and froze. Addison's rotting face smiled at her, lighting up her white dead eyes.

"Since it's YOUR FUCKING FAULT I ENDED UP IN IT IN THE FIRST PLACE."

Addison pulled the dead stumps of her arms from the holes of the box. Her withered, rotted hands, cut off at the wrists, were laying at the bottom of the box next to the separated needle which had once held the nerve gas antidote. She chased Amanda around the room, even touched her a few times, but with no hands, couldn't grab her.

Amanda slammed her left shoulder in the door frame as she stumble-ran from the room. She could hear the sounds of dragging footsteps coming up the stairs. She was stuck up here. Nowhere to run. Trapped, stuck. She ran down the hallway in a panic, shoving against the locked doors until she crashed through one that was open, landing painfully on her face, scraping her knees bloody.

She knew where she was. The needle pit room. Her body was filled with the sensations of the needles poking her arms, poking her legs, poking her fingers, stabbing into her back. She hugged herself, weeping in complete terror. She didn't immediately notice the tall figure of Xavier, looking like the rest, with his slit throat coated in dried blood. To her right, Gus stood, staring at her with malice from his remaining white eye. Amanda slid herself backwards, her back hitting the metal bed frame over the needle pit.

She was even more terrified of the pit now. The needles had infected her with the Tetanus, had almost killed her. The terror was compounded by the two undead figures before her. People whom her actions had murdered, and who, like everyone else, clearly wanted revenge. They hadn't guessed before she died that she'd been behind the test all along, but they knew now. They very clearly knew.

Xavier got closer and Amanda cried in terror and fear of what he was going to do to her. Then he stopped, and pushed play on the tape recorder in his hand.

******************************************************************************

"She's here. I know she's here. The fog collected us together. But I haven't seen her all trial, and Amanda is not a hider. I don't know what's going on, but it's making me nervous. Something's wrong."

Jake was pacing in front of the exit gate while Steve Harrington and Nancy Wheeler looked on. Jake had held up the switch through the third light as Steve and Nancy had run into the darkness to join him, but when Amanda hadn't run to the gate, and considering he hadn't seen her yet this trial, he stopped before opening it completely.

He was having flashbacks to the trial when Hoffman had first entered the realm. Hoffman had taken Amanda to the basement then, and had viciously let the trap kill her while Jake watched. But the killer this time wasn't Hoffman. They'd seen no boxes, and they'd all been fighting sleep. It was Krueger, not Hoffman.

He'd felt a flash of fear at the start when he knew that was who they were facing, fear that had dissipated the more generators they'd done without being caught, but now the fear was back. Something was not right with this at all.

"I'm going to go look for her." Jake decided.

"We'll come with you," Steve said.

"No...Stay here. If it's a trap, I don't want him to get all of us. If he shows up, or I'm not back in 20 minutes or so, leave without us."

They both nodded. Jake disappeared into the darkness. something told him he should start his search in the basement, and he started creeping as fast as he could in that direction.

*********************************************************************************

The timer for the metal door was beeping in her ear as the tape droned on. It wasn't John's manipulated voice. This was a voice she didn't recognize. If she'd heard Krueger speak, she'd have recognized it, but he'd never spoken to her, so she was unaware.

"If you do not find the key to the door before the timer runs out, your escape from this house will be locked forever..." it droned.

Still, somewhere in the back of her mind, the small section of her brain that wasn't nearly-hysterical in her terror, she knew it was wrong. The door only opened to a small opening where a box contained antidote, yet here, it was now an exit. Her only exit from this place.

She shuddered thinking of the needles she'd have to dig through, but she'd dig through a billion of them if it meant getting out of here and away from this place, away from these ghosts that no matter how much she worked to do penance for, still haunted her, still reminded her that even though she had changed, she'd once been a murderer, and she had a lot left to pay for.

The tape was done. Pressing his hand over the ragged cut in his throat, Xavier said, "Time for you to get the key. It should be easy to find for a snake in the grass like yourself."

The doorway had filled with dead eyes, watching her with hate. Even the corpses of Kerry and Adam, who had been locked up when she'd first seen them, were standing there. In the crook of her arm, Kerry's corpse held Troy's scorched head.

Gus yanked the metal bed frame from the hole behind her, and Amanda whimpered as she steeled herself for what was to come. But then she heard the noise, and she knew something had changed. The noise raised goosebumps over her sweaty flesh, and if she had possessed the ability to wet herself, she would have.

Her eyes widened to a size she wouldn't have imagined possible as she slowly turned to look over her shoulder into the pit. She started shaking uncontrollably as she sobbed in mortal terror. It wasn't the needles. She wanted the needles, she WELCOMED the needles now.

It was snakes.

A pit of hissing, slithering, undulating snakes.

"NOOOOOOOO!" Amanda screamed and jumped to her feet. She ran for the door, only to be held back by the standing corpses making a line in front of her. She struggled, she cried, she screamed, she begged, it all went unheard.

Her scream was choked off as Xavier grabbed her by the throat and lifted her off her feet. She struggled to breath, gripping his wrist as she kicked her feet wildly around her. He held her over the pit and Amanda grabbed his arm with both hands and held it like a vise as he let go of her throat.

"PLEASE NO PLEASE NO PLEASE NO PLEASEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Xavier let her hold on, smiling as the rotten skin cracked and the bone broke and she landed on her back in the pile of slithering snakes.

All rational thought, if there had been any remaining, left Amanda. She screamed, and screamed. This was her Hell. Her phobia. Even the terror at being chased by the corpses of the people she'd directly and indirectly murdered wasn't as terrifying as this.

She screamed as they slithered over her face and body. She screamed as they sank their teeth and pumped their venom into her arms, her legs, her feet, even her face. One darted its head into her open mouth and sank its teeth into her tongue before retreating. Her screams weakened from the fast-acting venom as she slowly sank beneath them.

***********************************************************************************

Freddy smiled in the darkness of the basement as Amanda bolted upright, screaming continuously in her terror. She writhed on the floor, pulling at the snakes that only had existed in her nightmare, her bare feet, ordinarily protected from the damaging cuts from debris and gravel, cutting open and bleeding as she dug them into the rough stone of the floor.

Fucking bitch. I knew I could scare you eventually.

Amanda continued tugging at her clothes and skin to free herself of the deadly snakes that her mind remained convinced were killing her.

***************************************************************************************

The Entity, who had been focused on punishing the Huntress for her failed match of no kills released the moaning killer as it became aware of something unnatural going on with the trials. He'd been busy punishing the Wraith for his single kill match just before, and hadn't had time to focus on how the recent trial was playing out.

The Huntress felt it leave, and curled into a ball, telling herself she must do better next time. She needed to do better next time.

***********************************************************************************
Jake had turned down the final hallway leading to the basement stairs when Amanda's screaming had begun. He'd never heard her more terrified. He didn't stop to think, He bolted down the stairs not caring for a single moment what might be waiting down there for him.

He found her under the hooks, twisting, turning, screaming. What had happened here?

He collected in her arms and carried her as she screamed up the stairs. Freddy didn't bother chasing him. He'd got her. He'd finally scared that bitch. Based on her reaction he couldn't wait until Ash...

He wasn't alone. He felt it there. The smile slipped a bit on his face.

"Hey...You told me I could only use my powers in a trial. I did that. I just...Used one that I haven't used in awhile. But I did it in a trial!"

And then the Entity was on him. And as Amanda's screams faded into the distance, Freddy's own screams began. The entity was swift and brutal. He was aware that whatever Freddy had done, he had done it to what he considered one of his favorites of the meat, but the Entity would have done what it was doing no matter which survivor he'd done it to. Freddy was an extremely powerful killer. Too powerful to be able to use all of the powers he had at his disposal. It would have made the trials unwinnable.

He'd been given parameters by the Entity when he'd been brought to the realm, and he'd broken them, after being warned once before.

Now the Entity was going to break him.

*********************************************************************************

Amanda stopped screaming as they approached the door. Steve had heard the screams and had thrown the switch. He and Nancy both followed after the sprinting figure of Jake, holding Amanda in his arms, as he'd run down the exit ramp and out into the field.

He stopped at the halfway point in the long grassy field and set Amanda down so she could walk...

She didn't move.

"Amanda?" No response. "Amanda?" He gently shook her. No response. Nancy and Steve stood beside him, looking down at her. Amanda just laid there. Her eyes open and staring at nothing. Occasionally, she blinked, but other than that, and the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed, there was nothing.

He looked at Nancy, then at Steve, who were wearing matching expressions of shock and concern. Beginning to weep in fear, Jake asked them, "What am I going to do? What can we do to help her? What the fuck happened down there?!"

He picked up her limp body. If he hadn't seen her eyes blink, if he couldn't feel her breathing, he'd believe she was dead. His mind flashed back to the trek through the woods and he cried more deeply. He knew how to help her then. He had no idea how to help her now.

Tears streamed down his face as he carried her back to the camp. The survivors looked at him in horror as they saw him carrying what looked like Amanda's corpse into the compound. If you didn't survive the trial, you woke up in bed. If you survived the trial, you walked back. No one had ever carried anyone back to the camp.

Ash stepped out of his cabin, saw Jake, and sprinted to him faster than Jake had ever seen him run.

'What happened? Is she ok?"

I don't know," Jake said, shaking his head. I didn't see her all trial, and when I went to look for her, she was screaming in the basement. I mean SCREAMING. I've never heard her so scared. She stopped screaming as we got out the door, but...I can't get any response from her Ash. It's like she's catatonic. Fuck, man, what am I gonna do?"

Ash gripped his shoulders and stared in his eyes. "What are WE gonna do. That's what we need to figure out, and we're gonna figure this out."

Jake nodded, but his head was spinning. He carried her into the cabin and sat her on the couch, and she showed no comprehension of who he was, or where she was. She stared at the spot her eyes landed as her head lolled to the arm of the couch, every so often, blinking.

He stood there staring at her as Ash, Jane, and eventually Zarina, stood beside him, staring at her in fear and confusion.