Welcome back! And sorry it took so long… it's the same old same old; I don't own Freddy, or the ghost girls, or A Nightmare On Elm Street, or any of the mentioned religious figures… but I do own Ginny/Gabe. Oh yeah… I'm cool…
Oh, yes, and remember; DON'T READ THIS UNLESS YOU'VE READ "Dream A Little Dream Of Me" FIRST!
White. Pure… clean… unmarked… unchanged… colorless… eternal.
Light.
Faintly warm, but cold at the same time… bright… hollow… gentle… eternal.
White light.
All she saw when she opened her eyes.
xXx
She'd been lying there forever. Her small frame gently stretched out on her back over the clean white tile. It seemed she'd never wake up… until, finally, in the timeless space, her eyes did open… and they peered up, the grayest color one could ever see.
She lay there, still, for at least an hour… merely blinking. Her black eyelashes the only speck of anything that wasn't either white or incredibly pale.
Her mind was numbed from sleep, so her thoughts came in slow and dazed, senseless, really.
Quietly, she sat up, the gentle rustle of her clothes making the only noise, which was soft and barely noticeable. Those same gray eyes traced around the room… all white… all clean… it seemed an incredibly large bathroom, with a huge sink and mirror behind her, and a shower stall to her left, and a door on the wall in front of her but to her right. It seemed she had been lying in the smack-dab center of the room.
Carefully, she hoisted herself up to her feet… and it was only then that she noticed the scorching pain in her back. She cried out, weakly, tripped, but caught herself and did not fall.
What was that? Why did it hurt so? Such intense pain…
When the pain had subsided until it was bearable, she slowly turned around to face the mirror… to gaze at herself… perhaps, to understand.
Pale skin, with the most gentle touch of pink to differ it from the white of her surroundings, cloaked her thin and fragile body… relatively large marble gray eyes placed carefully against her face, with not fat but not thin – perhaps normal, in size – pouty pink lips and a small button nose… and long blonde hair, absent of it's previous blue stripes.
"Ginny?" she whispered, stepping forward, her long pale fingers reaching out limply for the mirror, as though to gingerly touch the face of the girl that stood in it… her own face. That was her! That was her… but how?
Suddenly, she stopped, and drew back, as she saw what caused her the fiery pain… she opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out.
Wings! Angel wings! On her back! Though, they weren't exactly the kind of angel wings one would normally think of… they weren't great and fluffy and towering to her feet in blazing white glory… they were small, the very tips barely hanging halfway to her elbows, and cute… very chibi, in the Japanese sense of the word… kawaii chibi… or whatever… and, atop her head, was a cute little halo, just the right size for her small self, though barely luminous.
I'm an angel?, she pondered; but how? Angels are good… and were good people in life… how can I be an angel, when I was so bad?
How can I be an angel when I wasn't even a person?
She cringed at the memory. Freddy's voice in her head, telling her what she was with such malice.
She shook her head, trying to shake those awful memories away, and looked to the mirror again for a distraction. She was still in the pajamas she had died in… there were blood stains all over the front, where she'd been stabbed, but the injury was no longer there… and, now, there were blood stains all over the back, as well, from where her little wings had grown in from. She looked around for a change of clothes, wanting the filth away from her, and spotted such a thing, on a metal rack, hung up on the wall, with a towel, next to the shower.
She sighed gratefully, jogged up to it, adjusted the water, and began to strip away the bloody garments.
xXx
Time passed by… Days? Weeks? Months? Years? Freddy couldn't tell the difference.
He'd stabbed her, Ginny, yes, just a simple thrust to the chest and, poof, it was over. Her blood was his, but not on his hands, no, inside him; that's where it went… her power… her life… his power. Even the blood that sulked out of her body after it fell to the ground was sucked into the floor and drained back to him.
And Freddy? What did he do?
The dead girls just wouldn't stop singing, just wouldn't stop laughing. He tried to get them to stop, at least he tried his best, and he would have done better if he could just move from where he stood but he couldn't, no, something kept him there, otherwise he would have ripped them to shreds; anything to get them to stop.
But Freddy; what about Freddy?
He just stood there… he just seemed to stop, like his mind caved in on itself… carefully, slowly, he knelt down beside the body on the floor of his boiler room… he knelt there, beside it, as if waiting for a light to appear and bring her back to life.
He brushed the blonde and blue hair away from the face, as though to confirm that she was really her… yes, she was… then he closed the eyes, the gray eyes that were wide and still staring, even if there was no sight in them… as though to pretend she was sleeping… and then he seemed to stall again.
And then… he just stopped.
The ghost girls stopped singing and laughing after a while. Some time had gone by, and they had been expecting him to tare them to bits, or to test out his newly acquired power, or to go kill because of his anger over her death, or something! Anything! But he didn't… he didn't do anything.
The three girls looked amongst each other, shrugging in turn, until finally the younger blonde – Tabitha – sighed and turned back to the corpse and the dream demon. She stuck up her chin, and trooped over to him.
"Freddy?" she whispered, as she neared. "Freddy, are you alright?"
He gave no response…
"Freddy? Fred? Say something and I'll let you scalp me… I know how much you like to do that…"
Still nothing. Tabitha bit her lip, and turned back to her sisters. They all were worried now… Freddy had just been offered a kill on a silver platter, and it hadn't differed him at all? Now they knew something was definitely wrong.
The ghost girls pressed on, still, for a little while, trying to bring their eternal tormenter back to life… but it seemed nothing they could do would change him, so, finally, they left him alone… this was a job for greater beings.
xXx
Damien stuck out his bottom lip, a little, as the boiler room scene built up around him. He wasn't very fond of this place, no… too dank, too gritty, too dirty, too poor… it just wasn't his style… he was high-class… being the son of Satan, and all.
His hair was black, short, and wispy, his eyes the deepest, darkest green, and his skin a white like snow. He retained the form of a young man, about twenty-one, and dressed in such fine and simple clothes as black boots, black pants, a black turtleneck, and a black blazer.
He may not have been well versed in the dream world, but he was very powerful – as his position would allow – and had a sharp memory, so it didn't take him too long to find the owner of this dreary abode, Freddy Krueger.
"Hello, Old Friend," Damien called to Freddy, once he had found him… and he found him just as the ghost girls had left him; crouched over the body of The One. "I see we've found our child…"
Damien walked around, until he was standing at the corpse's feet… Krueger was facing the front of the body. "… So you've taken the power? Well done," Damien pressed on.
"… By God, Krueger, will you say nothing?" Damien snapped, his patience lost. He waited… but still, the dream demon did not respond.
"… What in God's name is the matter with you?" Damien muttered, half to himself and half to Freddy. Suddenly, Damien's eyes widened. "It's not the girl, is it? It is, isn't it? But you can't feel anything like that! Not after Katherine."
Still, Freddy did not respond. He was just staring at her face, lost far off in his thoughts… the only thing that even made him seem animated was the occasional blink of his eyes and the steady rise and fall of his chest with his breathing.
"Oh my god," Damien moaned, turning around. "So, what? You're on strike because she's dead or something? Look, I'd help you, Fred, but she's not in Hell, so…"
Damien sighed and bit his lip. He thought carefully… what to say, oh, what to say. "… We need you to come back, Krueger… you have your power now… and Elm Street brats still sleep… it is your duty as nightmare king."
But Freddy wasn't listening… too far away… lost, maybe… Damien didn't know. He sighed, and turned to take his leave… but that would not be all. Something simply had to be done!
xXx
Freddy knew it all.
He knew they were there, he heard them talking to him… Damien, the ghost girls… but their voices sounded so far away, like ease-dropping on someone from a crossed the street… it was difficult to understand, and mostly all you'd seem to get would be little bits and pieces, syllables and sounds you'd have to guess out and play with to find any meaning in.
He couldn't see them, though. He knew they were there, he knew exactly where they were and when they moved where they moved and how; he could sense the vibrations they caused in the air of his playground… but he couldn't see them. He couldn't see anything… nothing but her face.
It was too hard to see them. It was too hard to hear them. Freddy didn't even try… he didn't care. They didn't matter to him… not now.
All he saw, all he heard, all he thought of… was the past few months, bits and pieces, occasions remembered or previously thought to be forgotten, cut out into singles and without any order, the time-line ignored or forgotten, those little sections of history were all he could manage… from the moment he was revived, by her presence in the house he lived in when was alive, to the moment she fell from his blades to the floor of his boiler room.
… Gabe…
Now, of course, this wasn't like the nightmare king Freddy Krueger, to be all in a ruckus over some teenage girl… but she was no mere teenage girl… and Freddy was beside himself. It was like, The Night Stalker was somewhere lost in Freddy's head, as his thoughts had all been shattered, his mind had simply crashed… the real Freddy, who was incapable of feeling for anyone or anything besides himself and the kill, was like something you see on TV, a live game or concert; you know it is happening now, because you can see and hear it and all signs tell you its true, but you don't really know it for a fact because you're not really there… it's distant, all surreal… as though viewed from a screen. Freddy, The Springwood Slasher, was still there… but he was in that distant and surreal place, his thoughts and feelings all behind a screen.
Crashed, broken; his already scarred mind had simply quit.
She was gone… Gabe was dead… she'd meant something… like his dear, sweet Katherine from the days of old… they'd taken Katherine away from him, turned her against him, and though he'd tried and tried his best to bring her – the only thing that had ever mattered, that had ever really meant anything to him – back but she was too far gone… they had destroyed her… but Gabe had been okay… Gabe had been his… she was the success story… they hadn't been able to keep her from him… it had been like Katherine done right.
… And – dare I say it, but it's true – he had loved her… he had loved Gabe, like he had loved Katherine, as his daughter… his daughters… that's what they were… but Katherine had abandoned him… Hell, she'd tried to kill him! But not Gabe…
But now Gabe was dead… and Freddy couldn't take that… not again… so his mind had shrank, and he'd fallen back inside himself, and lost his mind completely to the feelings he was unable to feel…
So even if he had his precious power back, he couldn't use it… he couldn't even feel it… even though it rushed through his veins, golden and burning and rising and shinning, like the magic of the gods… he was too far gone for that… and he couldn't find his way back… he couldn't even try…