Young Lucy Pevensie was taking a walk.

It was a dream, of course. And like all dreams, she did not recall anything that led up to the time of her stroll. There was nothing before it, and this was the nature of dreams and so Lucy did not question it.

Now she walked lightly through one of the larger villages that lay in the shadow of the radiant glory that was the grand royal castle of Cair Paravel. The capital loomed over all, brightly whitewashed and gleaming as though composed completely of some lustrous alabaster. Its pennants - bright as splashes of blood - flapped loudly in the breeze. It stood proud against invaders, against disease, against war or hardship. There was nothing to fear when one was in the presence of such a mighty fortress as Cair Paravel, and so young Lucy Pevensie would not be afraid.

As she walked lightly, she could hear the distant caw-caw of seagulls coming in from the Eastern Sea.

(Was there a slight difference in their cries today? A mocking quality? A pained sound of agony and a death by degrees? Even the far-away crashing of waves against the cliffs seemed to symbolize a ceaseless motion; a mechanical act of mindless entropy)

The village itself was fairly unremarkable. Like the castle itself, Lucy didn't question when it had come into being. While clearly intended for human habitation, the only humans within the borders of Narnia were her and her siblings - the two sons of Adam and the two daughters of Eve.

('And four makes a set')

From her subjects, she heard rumors and tales of a kingdom of sand to the south and the dusky-skinned savages that ruled there. They surely could have not come this far north and built this place? Surely not. But then who had built the castle? Had it been here since the beginning, or was it newly sung into existence by the Lion?

Such questions were for another time. Now was the time of the walk, the morning stroll.

She would often take such walks.

('"Clears the head," the lion said.')

She had royal duties after all.

(What duties? Sorries? Proclamations?... Executions?)

Now there was only the cobblestone path, and the lengthening shadows brought on the rising sun. The weather was lovely.

(Why wouldn't it be? What would un-lovely be in so perfect a place?)

The hundred years of ice and snow had been banished with the return of the Lion. Everything was in its place.

(Or was it? Were those shadows in the corners too dark? Did something vile and putrid hide in them? Was the sun too large in the sapphire of a sky? Too hot? The ocean would be boiling at this rate.)

In fact, what time of day was it? She thought it was morning, but it had the quality of noon, but it might have been mid-afternoon. The breeze was cool.

(A breeze to clear the cobwebs from the empty head. A wind through the keyhole of a wardrobe leading to… where? Not the dark place! Certainly not!)

She would have waved and greeted her subjects, but today their routine and movements appeared a little … jerky? Lifeless? Perfectly normal behavior, she thought. There was nothing wrong. Jadis was dead. The Lion was in His heaven across the sea. All was right in the world.

('Wrong is also right.')

And then she heard it.

A buzzing sound, the humming of tiny, tiny wings. Not the wings of the cherubs. Nor the wings of field sparrows or forest finches. But the appendages of hideous insects.

Flies.

Flies? How could there be flies? The winter had killed all the insects. They couldn't have survived. Except for the cute ones: the bee and butterfly.

('You heard about the Lion? He made the bee. And He made the sea. He even made you and he even made me'.)

It was then that she saw the source of the sound.

The body. Just laying in a rain gutter like the morning's discarded trash.

Dread built in her bones like spreading sickness.

Two dark crows were picking at it, occasionally squawking as they fought over the tender bits from the eviscerated stomach. A third crow was working on the head. Their glossy coat shining umber in the dusk that had once been dawn.

Approaching, her nostrils caught the smell - milk that spoiled, meat that had been left out overnight. It stung her nostrils and caused her eyes to water.

She first saw the feet without shoes, those feet were cloven hooves. And she saw red skin.

"Mr. Tumnus.. ?"

She then saw the face of her dear friend. It was turned away. Beneath the hairline, the maggots were in his eyes, giving them the illusion of life, but there was only the mindless frantic movement. Old Blood like tar leaked from the corners of his mouth, pooling like candle wax in the spaces of the cobblestones.

She wanted to call for help and would have. She turned and saw only empty avenues where once there had been her subjects. She was all alone now.

('Alone in all worlds').

Tears came to her then. Her body trembled. Her mouth quivered. He couldn't be dead. Not him. He had been turned to stone. He had endured torture rather than betray her to Jadis, and now he was somehow just laying there - food for carrion birds.

"How? Who did…?"

And then as if in answer.

"One"

A voice, horrific in its innocence. A child's voice. A girl's voice. A girl as she was.

"One-Two!" The recitation was interrupted so the voice of the girl began again.

Lucy turned and saw them, blinking against the impossible sight.

Two little girls, about her own age, in little pink and white dresses. A game of hopscotch had been drawn, and now they were jumping rope. How could there be children here? There was supposed to be only herself and her siblings.

('Two Sons of Adam, Two Daughters of Eve. Four made a set but soon there will be…')

"Three. That's three!"

Lucy blinked, and there were three girls now. All identical. They could have been triplets.

"Four!"

A fourth girl - still identical - joined the three, and the chorus was multiplied. The sound of their counting was amplified with each number.

"Five! That's five!"

And so on. The girls counted and more and more of them came into being. Lucy never saw them appear. They didn't blink into existence. Reality was simply rewritten. And the sound was getting loud now.

Finally they were ten. Ten identical sisters in little white dresses - all dressed pretty and nowhere to go. They had come from nowhere and nowhere would they return.

(And Lucy thought it would never end).

She grasped her ears from the sound of the final number, it was as crushing thunder now.

"TTTTTTTTTTTTTEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!"

The girls' innocent little mouths stretched, distorted. Bones in their jaws cracked and broke as their jaws widened into tiny dark voids to amplify the sound. It was a sound that then changed, lengthening out, becoming another thing entirely: a wail that strengthened and ebbed only to strengthen again.

She realized what it was. She knew it deep within the depths of her soul.

An emergency siren. Air raid specifically.

And with it she heard the roar of aircraft engines flying low overhead.

Still grasping her ears from a thin trickle of blood issued, she now turned frightened eyes to the bright blue skies containing that overly-large sun. Seeing now something like a flock of geese passing over, though these were no birds.

These birds were made of metal, built by men. Men of a very particular nationality.

As they came closer, she could see more details. Could now see the Iron Cross; black on white emblazoned on their sides and wings.

Bombers.

Heinkels.

Germany.

The Blitz!

It was coming. They had not escaped it. Even fleeing into the countryside. Even escaping to this new world. They could not escape this fate. It had followed her here, and would fulfill would have only been delayed.

The bombing raid commenced.

The 'birds' dropped their eggs.

Instinctively Lucy ducked and covered, closing her eyes.

First there was a whistling sound, then, a split second later, the devastating concussion and a gigantic blaze of white-hot light. She could only imagine the 'eggs' striking the castle, the village, the cobblestone where they would give birth to bright flowers of smoke and fire.

The world and everything in it exploded all around her. She heard screams of the dying, the frenzied squeals of the talking animals as they found themselves struck by something beyond their comprehension. There was also the clashing of drawn swords, the buzzing of chainsaws, the sound of goose-stepping soldiers in precise formation, the rattle of machine gun fire.

And over it was all she heard the White Witch Jadis - newly resurrected - screaming "Kill them all!" Hoarse words in a dead throat.

Lucy opened her eyes, amazed that she was still alive.

Lucy found herself where she had been before - all was white and silent. But this wasn't the white of a winter storm, this wasn't Heaven, it was because everything was covered in the fallout of a series of enormous explosions.

And she was surrounded by the bodies of those killed by those explosions.

Covered in the dust of desolation they could have mistaken for realistic marble statues if not for the brightness of spilled blood contrasting with the white of their skin.

They were all people that she knew.

The Professor - his body and head completely crushed by falling masonry, skull cracked, brains with precious wisdom leaking out. Mrs. Macready, dressed in the same way as when they first met, lay next to him facedown, body and every limb shattered.

Here was her mother, and there was her father. Her dead lips locked onto his, joined in death in an embrace that owed more to the erotic than the platonic.

Here was Edmund, laying on his back, his stomach bloated to almost bursting, whole pieces of half-melted Turkish Delight flowed from his own mouth. Two pieces of the delicacy had been placed over his eyes as though due to the Ferryman.

Here was Susan, her dead face garishly painted like a harlot. At first Lucy thought that she was covered in handpaints. Every inch of her pale form was covered in dark handprints, until she realized that they were not paint, but bruises in the form of countless hands - her body abused by the hands of the many that had been laid upon her.

That was Edmund and Susan. But where was…?

She turned and saw him. The High King. The first-born. Beloved brother.

Peter was on his belly as though he had been crawling when it happened, his hand reaching out to his shattered sword or his crown which both lay about a inch from the tip of his fingers. Several arrows with cruel fletching were in his back, and a puddle of dried blood spread out from the epicenter that was his corpse.

All were dead. Everyone she knew, even briefly. They were all here. All dead in their unique ways.

Then she remembered.

Aslan!

Of course!

Aslan would save them. He had turned back the clock, and breath had been restored where it had been extinguished. He'd sing a special song, and life would return.

But no.

For here was Aslan.

She saw Him now. Why had she not noticed Him before?

Once again thick ropes cut into His flesh, and the few tufts of furs that still remained of His coat were scorched as though burning torches had been applied. A gleaming golden apple had been inserted in His mouths though He was nothing more than a Christmas ham.

The Stone Table lay beneath Him split in half like a dropped dinner plate.

The Stone Table was broken, and Aslan was still dead.

Now there was no hope at all.

"You look lost, girlie," a voice behind her, rough like the one who issued it had swallowed razors and washed them down with carbolic acid.

"You got a train to catch?" The accent was American, though from what region she knew not.

She turned and looked at the orchestrator of the events. A gasp escaped her.

A man (Or was he a man? Surely not. Nothing that was human was capable of such atrocity), leaning casually against a half-collapsed door frame, arms crossed. He was wearing a tattered striped sweater - green on red. Warning coloration. The top half of his face was concealed by the brim of the fedora hat he wore, and the bottom half was burned. Pustulated. Where the flesh had been thoroughly scorched, there was the ivory gleam of naked bone peeking from holes along the jawline.

The newcomer pushed himself to a full standing position and approached with a confident swagger. Each deliberate, metronomic footfall like the heavy thud of a headsman's clock mounted on a guillotine railing, counting off the seconds until the appointed hour of the blade's descent.

There was the gleam of tarnished iron coming from one of his hands; it was wrapped in the material, four razors at their tips, rusted as though the metal itself was sick. Tetanus would be the least of one's worries were they to make contact.

He walked past the Stone Table and the flayed corpse of Aslan, running the tips of his iron claws over what tufts of fur remained as though He were nothing other than a fur rug.

She noticed now there had been other mutilations and dismemberments, but her eyes were on this one who approached. The hat still covered the man's face. She couldn't see his eyes, nor did she desire to.

"The Lion," he began a rhyme.

"He made the stars and the tree."

The burned man continued his walk, unhurried.

"He made the bushel and the bee..."

He suddenly pointed a clawed finger directly at her.

"...He even made you…"

Beneath the hat, she could finally see his mouth. Scorched lips pulling away from rotting teeth as he spoke each line of poetry.

"... But he sure as shit didn't make me."

It was supposed to be a smile, but looked like a leering grimace. Was he delighted or in pain?

"Here," he offered. "Let me help you with that,"

He reached down and picked up Peter's crown, and then with the other hand seemed to work the metal object with a metalsmith's skill.

(A metalsmith… or a butcher.)

The burned man roughly took the prongs and bent them so that they turned inward.. She would never forget the agonized sound of stressed metal as he worked, not even if she lived to be a hundred. Where he touched the golden surfaces, splotches of corrosion bloomed like oil on water

When he finished the crown now menaced with spikes. It was more torture device out of the darkest times of human history than anything that was made to adorn the head of a monarch that was not the King of Hell.

Lucy was too terrified to move as he approached with the new hideous thing in hand. She wanted to run, but found herself hypnotized like a bird before a cobra. Lucy had seen the monsters of Jadis' army. This one was worse. Far worse.

In an eye-blink he was upon her, grabbing her into his tight embrace. One hand gripped the back of her head and she felt the blades press against her exposed neck, and the other hand forced the misshapen crown on her head.

It hurt. The spikes cut into her scalp and forehead. The newly drawn blood dripped into her eyes, and still he pressed it down inflicting new pain, streaks of red painting in a mockery of the makeup that her sister would wear.

Finally the man forced her to look at him. She wanted to look away but he still forced her.

"You know what they say." he rasped, his breath the stink of rotting corpses and burning sugar.

The brim of the hat rose like the rim of an eclipsing planet and allowed her to see his face entirely for the first time.

Lucy's eyes widened and she trembled terribly before letting out a high-pitched scream.

The man's eyes were gone, the sockets were empty black holes where all light was extinguished - worlds, stars, galaxies, even hope itself - all went to die, and would never return.

"In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed bitch is queen!"

The burned man then drove a clawed finger directly into Lucy's right eye.

Instantly, the young queen woke in her grand bedroom.

She sat bolt upright and let loose a scream, but one that became relief when she realized:

It had only been a dream!

But then she noticed there was something now in her right eye. A speck, a mote, no more than that. Something made of rust and metal. But it was evidence enough.

Lucy screamed again. She screamed long and and she screamed hard.

And it was quite likely that she would continue to scream into the future and never ever stop.

And beyond the walls of sleep, a burned man with a hand of iron surveyed the ruins of all that Lucy knew; the dreamscape that had he crafted with such care and that he could dissolve at his merest whim. He had taken much care in its creation. Much like Lion, he could make worlds of a sort. Little dream worlds where he could entrap his prey. This one was special. He wanted to savor it for a few moments longer before its dissolution, changing it to resemble the old boiler room of the power plant.

Something distracted him. The familiar sound of a little girl's distress. A scream of fear.

Fredric Krueger - Hell's Bastard, Chosen of Demons, Son of a Thousand Maniacs - heard the scream from across gulf of the worlds and he laughed.

He laughed long and he laughed with joy.

And he found the act so enjoyable that he didn't ever want to ever stop.

Special thanks to T-Rex-1000 for the original prompt and inspiration.