**I don't own nobodies 'cept somebodies and ya'll know who they are so I don't even know why I keep typin' in this here disclaimer… Noah is based on a real person, too, just FYI.

  Seventeen-year-old Noah Calmer ran his fingers through his thick green hair. Usually; it was spiked up tall above his head… but now, as two A.M was drawing near, it had softened to a workable state once again.

  He sat on his bed, still dressed in black jeans and a black Marilyn Manson T-shirt, with his black and red stripped base guitar sitting in his lap… he didn't know how to play the thing; he just kept it to look cool. He tried, sometimes, though, but, to be honest, he didn't even really know how to tune it.

  He was, by all definitions of the word, a poser. He wasn't hot enough to be one of the poplars so he pretends to be a Punk/Goth so that, at least, the hot weird girls will like him… at least until they get to know him, anyway. And, maybe, he'd strike it lucky and one of the popular girls would have a fetish for weird guys and go for him.

  He looked at the lock – well past two A.M – his baby blue eyes feeling heavy. He yawned, his black painted lips spreading wide apart, and threw his base down on the ground beside him most anti-gently.

  He threw off his combat boots and whipped at his black lips until he was confident he had gotten almost all of it off and then crawled under the covers for a nice sleep.

  He rested calmly for a long time… thinking dirty thoughts of a girl in his school named Hillary… he knew she was dead; but man, she was still fine! And, hey, he was supposed to be Goth, right? And Goths are all hot about death and stuff, right?

  Just as he felt himself nodding off; he heard an odd sound.

  He opened his eyes again and listened carefully, straining to hear through the thundering hum of the silence that was thick, heavy, and cold in the room.

  There it was again!

  It was coming from outside his bedroom door… it sounded like… it sounded like the theme song to The Price Is Right? (A/N: the game show, people, try and keep up here, okay.)

  He slipped out from under his sleeping bag, feeling the warm fabric slip away from his hot skin leaving it venerable to the cold air. It was such a horrible feelings… like the very life being sucked away from you… and it almost felt as if the blanket was calling him back, begging him to come back to the warmth for the sake of his very soul.

  He lumbered, walking rather like Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's monster in the movies from the 30's, over to the door. His hand rapped about the doorknob… it felt like fire! He could feel it sizzling and burning his skin but he couldn't let go. The knob slipped around slowly – almost teasing him as if it knew of the burning pain it was sending up and down his arm in steady, horrific throbs – and then the door jerked open.

  He stumbled into the room, almost falling forward, caught himself, and then, realizing how bright it was, he looked up… and stood frozen with shock and confusion.

  When he heard the theme song; he had expected that his lazy, fat, drunken step-father had simply left the TV on and the old game show was on one of the random channels he watched when he was too shit faced to tell which way was up and which way was down… but now, as he looked around, he saw that he was on the very game shows set! Well, something like that…

  This wasn't quite The Price Is Right's normal set… first off; instead of "THE PRICE IS RIGHT" the big neon letters read "THE CORPSE IS RIGHT"… and instead of the norm the audience was filled with a bunch of cardboard people… cardboard cutouts of just any old body… Brittany Spears, Michel Jackson, the Jolly Green Giant, randomness! Next he noticed that, rather then the usual beautiful female assistant, a scrawny, short, not-so-well developed teenager stood in purple pajamas… and, last, but definitely not least, instead of Bob Barker, there stood a short, scrawny man… he had a dirty dark brown fedora on his head and dressed in a red and green stripped suit. He smiled wide, flashing a set of yellow rotten teeth. It wasn't until a long moment had passed that Noah noticed the burn scars covering the man's entire body…

  "Welcome to The Corpse Is Right!" the man shouted into his microphone. His voice was low and guttural and made Noah's skin crawl. "I'm your host, FREDDY KRUEGER!" the cardboard audience applauded loudly, shouting and clapping and whistling like mad. "And, this is my lovely assistant, GABE JENKS!"  The audience stopped clapping, paused, and then clapped, lightly. "AND NOW, our first contestant, everybody give a welcome so warm it could cremate for, NOAH CALMER!" There was a pause, twice as long this time, before one soul cardboard cutout began clapping.

  "WOO! Yeah!" the cardboard figure of Michel Jackson called out. "He's a little too old for my personal tastes, but he got the face of a child! My, what I'd like to do to him… all night–"

  Michel was stopped when the Pills Berry Dough Boy – who just so happened to be seated right next to him – slapped his hand, muttering: "Michel! There are children present!" and gesturing to cardboard cutouts of the Olson twins seated in the row right in front of them.

  Noah couldn't tare his eyes from the Nightmare Man… Fred Krueger! Live – well, maybe not alive, but – in person – okay, maybe not person, either… perhaps demon… okay, forget it.

  The girl – Gabe – was just standing there, her head tipped to the side, watching quietly. Her face was blank and her limbs hung motionless. She was so pale… it prompted Noah to wonder if she was really even alive… but not for too long… he couldn't concentrate on anything besides a women that gives him a hard-on and himself for very long at all.

  "Now, what do you say we start the first round?" Freddy kept looking over at that girl, though… as if to make sure she was watching… as if half expecting her to cry out with the audience… or at least act as a good assistant would. But no… she just stood there… watching… watching everything… almost numbly.

  "Alright, now, ladies, bring out the first item!" four other versions of Gabe appeared out of nowhere. They would have been identical… were it not for the fact that all the other Gabe's were dead, covered in burn scars, and dressed in red and dark green striped silk toob dresses.

  They went to one of those big doors, flipped it over, and where an item for pricing usually would be laying… was a brutally murder corpse.

  Noah gagged, but forced himself not to puke.

  "All right, Noah," Freddy went on. "Now, tell me, how do you think this lovely little girl died?"
  "Suffocation!" "Strangulation!" "Asphyxiation!" the audience shouted multiple answers at Noah.

  Noah continued gagging, and the audience never stopped shouting various forms of death at him. Suddenly, after he had not spoke in a long time, Freddy's face was right in front of his.

  "ANSWER THE QUESTION!!" the Nightmare King thundered, his horrible voice so loud Noah's ears rang for a long time afterwards, his putrid breath made Noah gag and almost vomit once again.

  "I, uh, I don't know! Strangulation! Strangulation!" he pleaded, terrified, unsure of what else to say.

  "That right!" Freddy drew up, and now he was on the stage again. The Gabe clones closed the door, shutting away the corpse again. Noah silently thanked God… until…

  "NOW! FOR ROUND TWO! LADIES!"

  The Gabe clones scurried into action once again, pulling open another door… but behind this one was a huge picture of Freddy, taller then two of the clones stacked one on top of the other. He was smiling and had his thumb – fingernail knife and all – held up in an "A OKAY" sort of way, one eye winking; shut.

  "WHO is going to be this most HANSOM bachelor's next victim?"

  Noah swallowed hard. Freddy Krueger's next victim, Freddy Krueger's next victim. It's only a dream! "I… I don't know?"

  "Wrong, kid," Freddy growled, suddenly right up in Noah's face. Freddy was no longer dressed in a suit but in his signature outfit. He raised a long, spinney claw-knife and pressed it right up against Noah's nose. "It's you."

  Noah screamed, dived away, and then began crawling madly on all fours. The game show set had disappeared and he was now scurrying through the halls of a boiler room.

  Freddy's laughter echoed off the metal walls all around him, making the panic in him rise to an even higher level. His thoughts were racing and blaring in his head to the point where he couldn't think a single logical thought… the only thing he could manage to keep in his head was over and over again: Got to get away, got to get away, got to get away…

  Suddenly, Freddy jumped down from rafters right above Noah's head. Noah scurried backwards on all fours, but felt his rear end stop against a wall. His heart rose up in his chest. He was cornered!

  Freddy took slow, leisurely steps… until he was right up in front of Noah. A large, cuddly smile twisted its way all over Freddy's scarred face. He raised his hand full of knives and wiggled his fingers, mouthing the words "Bye, bye."

  "NO! NO! NOOOOOO!" Noah found himself screaming… but it was of no matter. Freddy swept back his arm and through his nails right a crossed Noah's throat, slitting it from ear to ear.

  The blood began to gush instantly. Noah grabbed at his throat, feeling his forehead hit the metal mesh floors. Cold as ice. Freddy laughed.

  "Now that's what I call a Cut-Throat Situation!"

  A moment later, Freddy's laughter stopped abruptly. Noah looked up to see why… and saw the girl he'd seen before – Gabe – standing next to the Nightmare King. Her wet hair sent a few drops on his head and she jerked her head to look at Krueger.

  "Help… me!" Noah said, gargling on his own blood, and reaching a shaking hand up at Gabe… she drew back with a little gasp, paused for a long moment, and then looked up at Freddy as if looking to him for answers or something.

   "Now do you understand?" Krueger asked Gabe.

  She looked back at Noah, who was rapidly dying, and paused for a long moment… until Noah ceased to fight the oncoming darkness and fade away into dusty death. Then, and only then, did her pale lips move… her face emotionless… her eyes unblinking. "Yes." She said. "I do…

  "I finally do."

  Several nights passed; Ginny slumbered… but she had no intention of returning to her undead friend.

  She still needed one last question answered…

  So, as she felt herself being pulled into his dream world, she forced herself back… it was such a feat, such a difficult task, that it took all of her will power to accomplish… and afterwards; she felt drained… and allowed herself to just float through nothing for a few minutes to recuperate.

  When she opened her dream eyes again, she was standing in a hallway. Somehow, without knowing anything about the place she wanted to be in, she knew she was in the right place.

  The hallway wasn't that long… there were four doors… each on the opposite side of the room from the last… the first one was off to Ginny's right. The hallway, itself, was totally plain… everything was perfectly white and perfectly clean and perfectly smooth.

  She looked behind her and saw nothing… only darkness… the darkness she had come out of that is the basic highway dream creatures move through every time they want to go someplace new… she realized, then, that no mere human being had ever seen it before…

  Swallow hard, her mouth felt as dry as cotton balls, she turned back to the hallway… it was brightly lit by florescent lights that were no where to be seen. She looked at all the doors… they was plain, with nothing on them, only a handle and the little hole thing most front doors have for you to peak through so that you can see who's there before you open it…

  She looked at the first door… it was striped red and green… it had to be Freddy's playground.

  She walked up to it, slowly, carefully, as if careful not to trip something or something stupid like that. She set her hands on the door frame, once she was up to it, and looked in the little peak hole… just as she expected; inside, she saw the boiler room of the Nightmare King's… Freddy was pacing the halls, as if looking for something… could it possibly be he was looking for her?

  She stepped back and turned to the next door, which was on her left. It looked like it had been gift rapped! It was bright blue – and shiny – with a bright yellow lacy ribbon tied around it like a present.

  She walked up to it and looked in its peak hole… and saw her own things. The things she had dreamt of before she'd ever come to Springwood and met Freddy and all the other Elm Street problems… normal things… like getting out of the asylum, having her parents and brother back, being a movie star, silly things like that…

  No matter how tempting it was to her – tempting enough to make her want to scream and pull at her hair – after all she'd been through with dreams; she'd forced herself to step back… to back away until she hit the opposite wall, then jerk around to look for the next door. Of course; it was right next to her.

  She walked up to it… this door was complete black… with the peak hole and door knob, of course… but it's color was pitch black… as black as night… she stepped up and looked in it's peak whole… and saw only blackness… only nothingness… that was the dreamless world she'd often found herself in if Freddy had cast her out of his.

  She stepped back. No! She really, really didn't want to go there… this mission… this one last question… it was far too important! She couldn't screw it up… she needed the answer.

  Ginny turned, a crossed the hall, on the left, was her last door… her last chance. She would have prayed, had she been religious, then… and even though she wasn't, she found herself thinking "Please God, please let it be the right door" over and over again.

  She walked up to it, slowly… so slowly she feared she'd never reach it… feared she couldn't. This door was completely white… just as the last was completely black… she slipped right up to it, feeling her heart rise in her throat, excitement gripping her entire body. She reared up on her toes… and looked inside the little peak hole.

  She saw the morgue.

  She saw Jeanie's morgue… where she'd last encountered her dearest friend's archenemy… Jeanie Stalh.

  She grabbed the knob eagerly. SUCCESS! Success, success, she'd found the right door!

  She jerked the knob, throwing the door open, then dived inside.

  The door slammed behind her… echoing off the walls of the morgue… she shivered. She'd forgotten how cold it was in there… cold as death… and she'd only worn an oversized gray sweatshirt and red plaid pajama pants to bed. She rapped her arms around herself, the sleeves of the huge sweatshirt covered all the way over her fingertips.

  "J-Jeanie?" she called out. "Jeanie, where are you? It's me, Gabrielle… I need to talk to you, Jeanie!"

  She waited… silence… then: "Yes, Gabrielle?"

  Jeanie's soft voice hummed through the air before Ginny saw her. She was standing in a dark corner in the back of the room… right next to a metal desk with a sink and everything… where they cleaned organs of people autopsied and stuff… Jeanie had her arms crossed over her chest and her head hung… the side of her hair that wasn't in a pig tail anymore hung down, covering her face, where as the pig-tailed side just hung there… like a dead body… it was the side facing Ginny… along with the eye ball sown shut. She was in the same black silk nightgown… she was much taller, now that Ginny was her standing up… about 5'7"… and she was very skinny and small-built, like Ginny… but more endowed – infact, she was rather well endowed – then Ginny.

  Ginny tried to swallow again but her mouth was far too dry… her throat was burning from how dry it was. She felt like someone had stuffed cotton balls all the way down into her lungs. "I need to ask you a question – just one last question."

  Jeanie looked at her, then… the one brown eye that wasn't sown shut looked questioning and sad… a line of blood trickled down from one of the stitches on the button of the eyes, then, and streamed down her face… making it look as if she was crying blood tears.

  "What is it you have to ask me, Gabrielle?"

  Ginny fidgeted. She didn't know how to fraise her "one last" question… so she just said it. "When is it the chosen time? You know, for me to either almighty-a-nize Freddy or… destroy… him…"

  Jeanie stood still for a long time… her eyes were both wide – irrelevant to the fact of the one sown shut – and she couldn't stop starring at Ginny… it was horrible moment… awkward, suspenseful, and just all around unpleasant… she waited… and waited for what seemed like eternity… before Jeanie spoke again: –

  "… Tomorrow night."