Well, it's a couple days late this year, and I apologize about that, but I really think this one is the best yet. Also definitely the heaviest, so if you think I haven't earned the M rating yet, well...try this one out for size.

I hope you're all still with it, I'm slower than a tortoise but I'll get there, lol. Hope ya'll had a spoopy Halloween and what not, and that things are looking up. It blows me away that after all this time this fic is still getting attention, and as such it remains just about the only one I ever work on. Reviews are always appreciated, tell me how great I am, I insist, ha ha. Or you know...tell me how I can improve. I need that too.

Hope you enjoy, as always I have no inherited ownership of either property involved in this fic. (or the third one I cheekily plugged in because I thought it would be cool)

Something awful happened to Velma Dinkley. Of that there was no doubt, but her recollection was shaky, and despite the pounding in her skull, she thought that whatever ill fate had befallen her, it was something more than a simple head injury. Physically she was somewhere dark and cold, but details beyond that were dubious. Her brain felt like it was ascending from the deepest ocean trench, the bubbling masses of red water were slowly departing from her as she swam towards the surface. She breathed, but inside she could feel the choking anxiety of rushing up, flailing your arms and legs, doing everything humanly possible to breach the sea, but still being so far away.

A whisper, origins unknown, sounded off inside her very being, and it stirred her into a higher form of consciousness.

Everything you know is a lie. Flee. Crying. It is all you have left.

Velma rose to the sound of tapping. Slow, methodical, it was her entire world. She was alone, as far as she could tell, and picked herself off the cold ground. A theater, run down and ravaged by madness, surrounded her. The seats had all been pulled out or broken into pieces, the wooden floor scuffed by the act and the mark of time. The stage, where she had lain, was muddied by small pools of blood. Long tears in the red curtains behind her revealed more corpses backstage.

A projector lit up the screen behind her. The whirr of film reels flowed into the air. Audio of an interview played, but the image sloppily thrown onto the curtains was mostly static, occasionally displaying footage of flashing, inky images, similar to a Rorschach test.

The interviewer asked, "The preliminary tests run by Nazi scientists proved null, at least as far as Allied powers could tell. You actually worked on that research team, did you not?"

A German man replied, "I did."

"And do you believe anything...supernatural was achieved? What of the...umm, Morphogenic Engine, I believe it was called? What happened to the prototypes?"

"I cannot believe anything supernatural was created. We made nothing, but I will not rule out the possibility that we...discovered something. The research was destroyed for reasons I cannot tell you. All our prototypes, all our notes, everything we had discovered and documented was burned by our head of project. He went irrevocably insane...um, he ended up shooting two other researchers on the team before ending himself."

"And your experimentation caused this madness to manifest?"

"I have to believe so. Dr. Schruder was a remarkable mind, quick witted, thoughtful, creative...I see no other explanation."

"He was the only one who went insane?"

The German man hesitated, and was quiet for a moment; the images were becoming more predominant than the static, and she was staring intently at them.

"I heard whispers from other members of the team, behind their backs, mostly. In the end, what does it matter? They are all dead now. All but me."

Velma heard someone try to open the nearest door, and find that it was locked. It didn't take long for the interloper to start beating it down, and out of instinct, she ran towards no place in particular in the opposite direction.

The interloper cried, "WALRIDER!"

Daphne was nodding off, head bobbing down and rising up like a hand that unintentionally wanders onto the top of a hot stove. Then, she realizes that she is alone, all is quiet, and for the time being, the only thing she can focus on is trying vainly to stay awake.

"For Freddie...I have to...get up!"

With a firm double smack to the cheeks, she got onto her feet and shook off the fatigue, walking around in a little circle to get the blood flowing in her legs. She checked the door for the thousandth time, and as expected, found it was still locked. This time, she took an extra step and leaned down to peek through the keyhole. It was tiny and the only thing she could see was the wall, but the world outside the locked office was cooler, and the tickling cold on her eyeball instilled a brief hope in her, a taste of escape that fueled an idea.

Nurse Jackie had locked the door on her, and the only vent in the room was too small for her to fit through, but there was something her captor had not thought of: the keyhole. It didn't take long to find a tool that suited her plan, a coat hanger that probably used to hold some doctor's lab coat, stretched out into a lockpick. It took some patience and persistence to buy her freedom, but once she heard the first telling click, she found her first smile in a million years, and opened the door slowly.

Mount Massive came back to her all at once, like the rush of heat when you step out of your air conditioned car in Palm Springs. It was the grim melody that hit her first. Moaning patients unaware of what was happening but still able to sense the cosmic horrors permeating in the hallways, lonely wind creaking through broken doors and ramshackled offices, and the stillness beneath it all that barely covered the true monster. Walrider. She forgot where she had first heard that term, but it came back to her like an unpleasant first-grade memory. Peeing yourself in class or doing the math problem on the whiteboard in front of everyone incorrectly was one thing; feeling the looming presence of the supernatural incarnate flood over you was quite another, but it had a similar effect. For a minute, as she breathed it all back in and wandered with caution away from her prison, she felt like a first grader with a dripping skirt again.

Fred Jones lost count again. The farthest he'd gotten on numbering and identifying every crack in the wall where the crazy bitch of a nurse kept him was seven hundred thirty eight. It was hard to believe that many cracks could be in one little corner of a large facility like this, but on the other hand, as he thought about all the insanity that he'd witnessed since arriving, it became more believable, more run of the mill. This place was a dying mess, barely holding together in some places. Not really high up on the concern meter when a lusty psychopath was trying to get her hands in your pants and her blade in your chest.

He had no way of proving she'd played with him while he was out, but he didn't doubt it either. His balls itched something fierce, and he could taste her fleshy breath on his lips. He'd wretched all he could tonight, the only option left to him was to sit here where she left him and let it simmer. Integrate the taste of her violation, accept his lot. It was as painful and demeaning as running his face across a cheese grater, but there simply was no other choice, not until he was certain he could escape her, and then ride off down the mountain in the Mystery Machine and never look back.

A sinking feeling in his gut told him the only way to do that was to play along with her flirtations. When she was after his body, he could force himself into it, talk sweet nothings to her. If he could keep his disgust in check, he might be able to swipe the key off of her, maybe even conk her on the head and put her down for a nap of her own. The problem with this plan was that Nurse Jackie seemed to be of two minds. Half the time she wanted to suck his dick, the other half of the time she wanted to rip it off.

One small concession of all this was that while she was amidst her rages she did a good job of keeping herself away from him. Aside from the slap earlier and a few nasty looks and cuss words sent his way, she left him alone...until she got handsy again. Thus was the duality of his existence, suffering her affections, and coping with his situation in the fragile moments she forced herself away from him.

The thought of tricking her had been entertained before, and now he remembered why he had cast that idea aside the first several times he'd considered it: This woman was psychic. That, or a damn good stalker who'd been following him around for months, maybe years. She knew things nobody else, nobody at all, knew. Rape notwithstanding, it was perhaps the hardest part of the whole mess to grip.

Once, when she was keeping her hands folded in a prayer-like grip and muttering quietly to herself, he thought the first thing he'd do when she leaned in to kiss him was roll over. If he could be on top, putting her out was twice as easy. All he needed was to play along for a few seconds, make her think he was into it, that she was the most beautiful and voracious woman he'd ever seen, and then he could strike.

Across the room she stopped. She reminded him of an ugly puppet whose strings have gone taut. Her head turned first, then the rest of her body. She looked him dead in the eyes frowned.

No, she mouthed, I'll kill you if you try.

That shut his little rebellion down quick enough. He returned to counting the cracks again, and absently thinking about how one little email from Velma's friend had totally fucked his life up.

When he heard a ringing phone, he thought he'd been slapped again, by reality this time. Cell phones. The reception was so bad out here he'd forgotten he had his, not that it would do him any good. But as a matter of fact, she did not answer a cell phone. It was mounted to the wall in the hallway, and watching her pick it up and hold down a conversation was another punch to the gut.

"Yes doctor, I've found one. I promise I'll treat him just like you taught me."

Doctor? What doctor? What in the hell was happening now!?

"Oh, that's wonderful. I'll come by and assist you as soon as I finish with him ...yes? Oh, not long now."

Well that's not good Freddie boy, not good at all, he told himself, sounds like she just put an expiration date on you.

"Thank you Dr. Trager. I will. Yes, see you soon."

She hung up, and in a creature fashion that reminded him of a spider, a long, black one in a misty white web, she turned her head slightly to look at him. Her fangs were not visible, but he knew she was suckling on the anticipation, and whether that meant sex or death, or probably both (and in which order didn't matter) he knew she really was about to quit stalling.

It was now or never. Fail, and he'd end up another body, his blood another ounce in the sea of red this hellhole had conjured. Nurse Jackie began humming a tune, it might have been the whistling from Kill Bill, the one the girl with the eyepatch did, but there was no geriatric flow to this. Her rendition was angry, loud, and lopsided, but he didn't think she noticed. Being in tune the kind of thing a crazy person never thought about.

She disappeared into a supply closet, and all that was left for the moment was the humming.

Velma was backstage now, and some kind of natural disaster had torn through this place. Entire sections of the wall had been torn down, and gaping holes gave a dark glimpse into a fathomless world below.

Whoever had tried to barge into the theater had succeeded or given up, she was too far away to tell, and as of now there had been no sounds of anyone chasing her. Things had settled down since she was last on her feet, she thought - although she had no idea when she fell into that terrible dream. Likewise, there was no telling how she got into that theater in the first place, but physically she was unharmed. Only alone and wandering the dark bowels of a hellish foreign territory. A regular stranger in Moscow.

A whiff of sewer air came up from the next gaping hole in the wall, and she turned her head to pass by. Something had torn a very big wound into the facility, and it reached as far down as down went.

The sudden urge for celery struck her. Out of nowhere, she thought that a plate of lightly salted celery stalks would really hit the spot right now. Humans were funny that way, she supposed. If there was a demon knocking on your door, you could count on some far down recess of the human brain to consider the beauty of a rose, or a the illogical tenets of anarchism.

Something snapped.

As an intense pain ran down her leg in a jagged bolt, and she discovered she was falling. The facility was so run down and wounded here it could not support her weight. She half expected to land in another ocean, but her fall was brief. Stuck to her waist in the wooden floor her mind was now contemplating the dangers of starvation and dehydration.

Her legs were bleeding, the right more so than the left, but she could feel the warm flow draining down into her socks just as well on each side. There was a lovely thought too: bacterial infection. Struggling to lift herself back up was both painful and fruitless, she abandoned the thought after a brief attempt. Going down seemed foolhardy, there was no telling what was below her. If she was lucky, a sturdier floor without a hazard in sight, but what were the odds of that?

Furthermore, staying where she was, halfway between worlds, was a sure recipe for trouble. One thought came to her with a bittersweet solution: Beat the planks in front of you. If they're weak enough to give out under you, you can probably break the hole open a bit wider and free yourself. But the other end of the blade showed itself too: break the wood too much and you fall right down into the mystery below.

She gave the panels a quick test, forming a fist and bringing down the wrath of Velma on the floor. It held, but quivered under even this amount of stress. If she used both she could do at least what she intended, but was doing more than she intended a worthy risk? Falling. It all came down to the risk of falling.

Up was good, staying still was bad, falling was the enigma. At least she could do something if she found herself farther below, could move about and continue looking for the others…

Unless you break your legs, her inner voice chimed in.

"Oh boy...here goes nothing!"

Imitating Hulk Hogan to the best of her ability, Velma locked her hands together and whacked the floor in front of her hard enough to give her room to climb up - she hoped.

The crackling wood sent splinters into the air. Velma closed her eyes and reached for solid floor around her as fast as she could. She found sturdy holdings on both sides as she felt gravity press her down. She was going to be okay, she had done just enough!

Until the hold on the left began to quake, and the sound of cracking wood filled the air again. Her hold on the right was solid, but she was falling again. Flinging her eyes open she moved to hold on tighter on the right, but a pair of beady eyes shining in the dark made her scream - and forget all about the need to hold on.

"Most disappointing…" One of the twins muttered as she fell.

"I was hoping to pick her up. Chasing meals is becoming frustrating," The other twin concurred.

Velma went through another layer of wooden flooring, and landed on a mattress. Someone had piled a couple beds on top of each other in the halls to block a door. To keep something locked inside, she guessed, but as she lay and picked up her wits, she heard no commotion on the other side of the door.

As she thought, she had multiple scratches running along the sides of her lower legs, probably some wooden splinters stuck in the flesh too. Walking would be fun, running...possibly out of the question. Slow and gentle, she swung her legs off the side of the bed pile and lowered her right foot on the floor. It was solid, so she let the left fall. Again, solid.

Breathing hard, perhaps more in anticipation than effort just yet, she took a small, childish step forward with the right leg. A flare of scathing fire went from her thigh to her foot, and made her shudder. Biting her lip, she forced the follow up step with her left. Almost as bad.

"Ouch….."

The whispers were coming back in the middle of her huffs, the temptations of despair weaving between her gathering willpower to take another step.

The Master's chosen suffer no pain

"No, I don't want to hear anymore out of you!"

Death provides a painless gateway

"I said stop it…."

She willed herself into another step, and another jolt of pain. The intent was to drive away the voices, to focus on the hurt instead, but the pain was only drawing the whispers closer to her ear it seemed.

Embrace the path of the drowned! The sea of blood is the only channel to the truth!

"Leave me alone!"

She was halfway down the hall, and about to round the corner she realized she had no idea what could be on the other side. Trying to run in this state would probably land her flat on her face.

Fear is the Master's greatest weapon. Join our worship and fear's blade will disappear from your heart!

Velma was nearing another bend almost before she knew it, but she did know that stopping was out of the question. She could not outrun the voices, but it seemed that trying was the only course of action. Everything behind her was being coated in an inner darkness, a foreboding spirit that she dared not go back to.

The limitless stars in your sky are a trinket in our troves of glory. All shall know the embrace of the Master...given time

"STOP! I'm tired of hearing you!"

"Relma!?"

Velma stopped. The darkness inner darkness paused behind her, watching from the layered shadows, studying, judging, waiting.

"Scooby Doo...is that you!?"

"Rea!"

Knocking came from one of the dormitory doors on her right. The lock was right on the doorknob, a simple turning motion freed him. Scooby jumped into her arms and licked her face; despite the shaky sensation in her legs, Velma held him, and the joy of finding a lost friend brought a smile to her face.

"Scooby...what happened to me? How long was I out?"

Scooby dropped out of her arms and saw her legs, "Rhat rappened?"

"You first. Then I'll tell you my side."

Fred Jones had thought out three different ways of escape while the nurse rummaged through horrific sounding things out of his field of view, but decided against all of them. Every time he conjured some way of stunning, stopping, or otherwise outwitting the nurse and making a break for it with key in hand, he got the impression that she was over his shoulder the whole time. She wasn't, of course, but it was as though her mind and his had been linked, and every thought that swam through the red sea that was filling his head was known to her at once.

How did you outplay the opponent who could see your cards and knew what you were going to do as soon as you started doing it? It was a damn hard question, and at that moment he would've given just about anything to know the answer, but was left with little other recourse, he figured, than to act on instinct. Play it fast and completely by ear, and let God sort the rest.

"Alright Mr. Jones," She announced, still hidden behind moldy walls, "I'm almost ready for your check-up. Just one more thing before we begin."

Fred swallowed the lump in his throat and inhaled deeply; he would face her when she showed herself again, stand up to her like a man.

Good for you she intoned into his mind, and he shuddered.

"No allergies, right? Freddie?"

He refused to answer. Staring into the ground, he thought only of baseball. For the first time in almost six years, he thought of his father. The scumbag cheated on his mother when Fred was nine, and over the next four years held a shaky, crumbling relationship with his family before divorcing Fred' mom and leaving for Dallas, and the slut called Elle May Jenson. Jonathan Jones broke his wedding vows, and Fred had been able to forgive him for that. Still hadn't, still wouldn't.

But one thing dear old dad had given him that remained unblemished and close to his heart was the love of baseball. Fred joined the school team in junior high, and continued for most of high school. Before that, he had been a part of two different youth teams. By now, his name was a local legend of sorts, one of the best pitchers to ever come out of Coolsville.

This was pitching. Throw the ball without thinking. Let the game take over, just throw it. Throw it where they don't expect it, and before they know it. Just throw. The sounds of a baseball slugging into the catcher's glove filled his ears. Strike one.

"Freddie?" The nurse peeked out from behind the wall, and walked towards him. Straps and constraints bundled together in her arms, a needle full of thick red liquid clutched between two fingers, she smiled: "Time to die."

Strike two. Fred remained quiet. He had the ball, it was firmly in his grasp. Inhale the field, take the energy of the crowd, light the fire inside.

"Now you be a good boy and behave," Jackie said, "or I'll get my bonesaw out. I can make it quick, just keep thinking about your game, let me tie you down. I'll inject the needle, and make sweet love as you choke to death on your own throat."

Wind up. It's almost over. Step back.

Jackie was a single step away, wearing the smile of a first date. In a horrific way, it was just like the smile all the prettiest girls have. In fact, it reminded him quite a bit of the first time he laid eyes on Daphne. Her smile was just like this one, except...it was more naive.

"Don't start day dreaming about that bitch in front of me!" Jackie squealed. The constraints fell from her hands, the needle became a stake all of a sudden, and his sins had turned him into the vampire.

Now! Pitch! Strike three.

Fred dove aside and snatched a leather restraint from the floor. The needle stuck into the bed and left a wet puncture mark behind, but there was enough in it for a lethal dosage yet. Fred swung the strap like a flail, it smacked against the Nurse's arm, but she lunged for him again.

Two machete swings both came inches from tearing into Fred's chest, but he kicked he away and she landed on he knees. He came down on top of her and reached for the needle, his hand locking on top of hers, the red death inside shaking like a sea storm.

"Let go!" Jackie cried.

In answer, Fred smacked the restraint over her head, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven times! She took in the pain like a drug.

"My turn!"

Her free hand swung between his legs and smashed his balls. Fred began to back away, and was thrown to his back when she flung her head into his. Their foreheads kissed and drew blood from one another, the spray leaking down onto both of them.

The needle was inches from his eye when he grabbed her hand again. They fought, but gravity was on her side, and he was tired and aching and the adrenaline was already starting to go. A drop of the red death fell from the tip into his eye and he cried out. It burned and his vision in it blurred into black and white mutations almost at once.

Jackie was breathing through her mouth, loud as a gorilla inciting a war dance. Her gaze was fixed on his face, the hatred spilling out of her eyes. It seemed that the entire raging ocean was beyond her, and that a colossal, red wave was coming to smite them both. She didn't notice, she wouldn't care anyways.

"Freddie!"

Daphne came out of nowhere and the storm broke. The clouds blew off, the wave collapsed into vapors, and Nurse Jackie was clotheslined off of him.

"Daph!"

Fred rolled onto his knees and clawed at his eye. The burning was getting worse.

"Bitch!" Jackie shouted, springboarding off the ground for Daphne. They clashed and locked hands into each others hair, maneuvering to throw the other down like sumo wrestlers.

"Daphne, watch out!" Fred called, barely able to get back on his feet.

"Stay away from him!" Daphne demanded, pulling an entire handful of Jackie's hair from her scalp.

The Nurse recoiled and Daphne charged. Jackie faltered for a second, but fell into place the instant she needed to. The needle came in just right, and the full dosage was released almost instantly. Air was plucked from her lungs by an invisible hand, and Daphne staggered back, throwing one hand to the needle sticking out from between her breasts, the other to her throat.

"Freddie?" She croaked, still looking at the Nurse, "I ...I can't breathe…"

"He's mine!" Jackie sneered, moving in less than an inch from Daphne's blanking face, "he's all mine now, slut!"

Daphne fell to her back, tears running down her red face, both hands now clawing in desperation and vain to clear her throat.

"I win, bitch!" Jackie proclaimed once and for all, leaning over Daphne and spitting on her face.

"Fuck you!" Fred cried, slipping the leather restraint around Jackie's neck and pulling. He screamed for the sake of screaming, just to let something out, just to push himself that much harder. On instinct, he kicked her on the back of the leg and she fell to her knees. He crossed the strap behind her, forming an "x" shape, and resting his foot on her back, leaning her forward. If he kept it up, he might just pop her entire head off. Good.

Indistinguishable choking sounds filled the air as Nurse Jackie flailed her arms in weak protest.

"Fuck you!" Fred cried again, "Fuck you!"

When the nurse went totally limp, Fred exerted a few more seconds and let the strap go. Jackie fell like a brick, and lay with wide, confused eyes, staring at Daphne. The red head, in contrast, lay facing upwards, like her last thoughts had been a wish to God. She'd gotten this far, endured so much, and her only reward was a slow, agonizing death.

Two women had been strangled, one via lethal injection, the other the old fashioned way. Three deaths had occurred in total, however, as Fred sat cradling Daphne's corpse, he realized that he was dead too. Even if he got out, nothing would ever be the same. He had thought as much not long after entering the Asylum, but now he was positive. The last inkling of Fred Jones as he knew himself had died with Daphne Blake, somewhere in the decrepit halls of Mount Massive. If a man wearing his skin was to emerge, there was no telling who or what this man would be.