Chapter 7: Let's Start a Riot Part 1

Teddy ran back to his office as fast as his legs would carry him. Once he was inside, he slammed the door shut, tore open one of the drawers of his desk, and pulled out a pack of cigarettes as well as a lighter. With shaky hands, he removed a cigarette from the pack, lit it, and placed it in his mouth. Teddy was not usually one for smoking and had officially quit a few years back but every now and then, when he just needed to take the edge off, he would pull a cigarette from his emergency stash. After what he had seen tonight, he was sure he'd smoke the entire pack.

"This can't be real." He thought. "I'm just having a fucked up nightmare is all. Not even Vivian is that fucked up." Teddy felt the urge to cry out and fought it back down within himself. "Who am I fucking kidding!? It makes far too much sense for Vivian to be planning something like that. She's always been a fucking psychopath just like the ones she experiments on." Teddy removed the cigarette from his lips and sighed, a cloud of grey smoke leaving his mouth as he did so. "Deep down I knew she was planning on something like this. If it wasn't a superpowered mutant serial killer, it was gonna be an atomic bomb. And the worst part is, I helped her. I helped that crazy bitch create that damned monster." His body once again beginning to shake, Teddy placed his head between his hands. "So many people are going to die. So many are going to die and it's all my fault!" Softly, he began to weep.

His crying was interrupted by a strange sound coming from the drawer on his right, the one he had placed that damned box in. It sounded as if it were going crazy in there, knocking itself against the interior. Teddy reached for the handle to open it and then quickly retracted it as he got up from his desk. As the sound grew more and more violent, Teddy slowly inched away from the desk and toward the door. "I don't need this right now!" He thought. "Whatever the fuck this is, I do not need this right now. Once he was close enough to the doorway, he grabbed the handle and tried to open it. The door, however, would not budge.

"What the fuck?" Teddy tried again with two hands but got the same result. He began to panic for he knew that he knew that the door had locked from the inside. It was as if something was forcing the door closed. "What the fuck is this? What the fuck's going on?"

Suddenly, the drawer which contained the box flew open and Teddy watched in fear as the damned thing popped out over the drawer to the middle of the room. As it did so, it rearranged itself back into its solved state and as soon as it had hit the floor, the entire room began to shake.

"No!" Teddy cried. "I didn't even touch you this time! Stop it! Stop it!"

The lights started to flicker and with each split second that they returned to their usual duty of illuminating the room, Teddy was made aware that more of it had changed. His furniture vanished, only to be replaced with hooked chains dangling from the ceiling, a few of them with chunks of meat still skewered on them. His walls began to crack and from these cracks, a harsh light glowed. It hurt Teddy's eyes just to glance at it. But of all the changes that emerged with the flickering of the lights, the worst was the appearance of four humanoid figures at all sides of the box.

The one in front of the box, Teddy recognized almost immediately. It was the fiend that had tried to take him before, the nails hammered into his skull producing a shine amongst the light from the cracks. To the thing's right was another being with almost no face, save for its mouth which had been peeled back to expose its chattering teeth to the elements. To its left, a female entity stood, the gaping wound in her throat held open by wire. Behind the dammed thing that had tried to take Teddy before, a fat, wrinkled mess wearing glasses stood. Once all four of these beings had materialized fully, the room finally ceased shaking, its unholy transformation completed. "Theodore." The pinned being rasped.

"No! No! Not you!" Teddy felt a warm release in his pants yet again as he backed against the door that would not open and slid down.

"It is time Theodore." The pinned being repeated. "You opened the box and now we've come for you."

"It's not fair!" Teddy cried. "I didn't want to open that stupid thing in the first place! My fucking boss made me!"

"Excuses, excuses, excuses." The pinned being mocked. "We are not interested in your reasons for opening the box. What we desire are your sensations. Your pleasures and your pain." The creature to his right seemed to chatter in agreement.

"Please!" Teddy held his hand together and begged. "I'll do anything! Just please let me go!"

"We simply can't." The female entity spoke. Her voice was somewhat soothing but also unnerving for it was almost as deep as her male companion's. "Once we have been summoned, we must take a soul back to taste our pleasures. It is the way of things."

It was then that Teddy got an idea in his head. He wasn't sure if it was going to work but at this point, he really didn't have any other options. Wiping his face with his sleeve and mentally forcing away the sensation of piss in his boxers, Teddy got back to his feet and faced the monsters before him with as much courage as he could muster. "Okay, I get it. You need someone to take back to...wherever the Hell it is you come from and I can respect that. But, what if I said I knew someone more deserving than me?"

The pinned being studied Teddy for a while and for a few moments, the man wondered if he had just signed his own death warrant. To his immense relief, however, the creature before him simply replied with, "Are you looking to make a bargain? Another soul in exchange for yours?"

"Y-Yes! Exactly!" Teddy confirmed excitedly.

The pinned being stared at Teddy for a few moments more before giving him a look of cautious curiosity. "Go on."

"W-W-Well i-it's as I said!" Teddy continued. "My boss was the one who wanted to summon you guys, not me! Her name's Vivian Malachite and she's really evil! We're talking mad scientist wanting to kill all of humanity with a super mutant serial killer hybrid! That's what she's working on right now! She created this entire facility to make that monster and if something isn't done soon, oh boy there will be blood." Teddy took a moment to catch his breath before driving his point home. "The point is, she deserves...what it is that you wanna do to me far more than I do so here's what I'm proposing. I bring you to her. You get to take her and you let me go free! How about that?"

The pinned being looked to his comrades as if mentally asking for their opinion. After a few minutes of silence, he finally replied to Teddy. "Very well. Deliver this Vivian Malachite to us and we will consider letting you go." Without warning, the being suddenly grabbed Teddy by the throat and brought his face close to his own. The pins in his head started digging into Teddy's forehead. "But know this, if you try to trick us or cheat us in any way, we'll tear your soul apart!" He threw Teddy back to the ground far harder than a normal human could have and the long-suffering assistant was left with an aching back. After a few seconds of whining with his eyes closed as he rubbed his injured back, Teddy opened them again and found that the room had once again gone back to normal. The furniture was back in place, the wall showed no signs that it ever had any cracks and the lights had stopped flickering. Teddy quickly scrambled to his feet and tried the door again. This time, it opened without incident.

"It worked." Teddy felt himself laughing. "It actually fucking worked!" As he began to cackle, Teddy noticed the Lament Configuration still on the floor, once again in its unsolved state. He bent down and picked it up while still laughing. "I actually did it!" He giggled. "I got those things off my back and I know how to deal with Vivian!" Teddy's already great excitement doubled as he realized that he had indeed found a way to kill two birds with one stone. "Oh yes. It's all coming together."


Shortly after leaving Fae's room, the slashers discussed their plan of action. Actually, Freddy did all of the talking but as the plan was painfully simplistic, one voice was all they needed.

"Tomorrow evening, we kick off this fucking riot and get the hell out of this place. Since I'm the only one with working vocal cords, I'll take the job of roping in as many assholes as I can. Do all of you dead fucks understand?"

All three of the silent killers nodded with Bubbha adding an enthusiastic "Uh-huh! Uh-huh!"

"Good. Let's get some sleep and play Good Prisoner for one more day." With this, the four killers returned to their cells just before lights out. That night, for the first time in decades, Freddy had a dream. In it, he was back in the boiler room, clad in his usual outfit and planning on who he should kill that night. At some point, he knew he was in a dream and laughed at the irony of it. "Dreams will come true." He told himself.

The next day was mostly uneventful for the silent slashers. They went about their business, waiting for the evening when everything would be set into motion. Freddy, meanwhile, wasted no time in letting the other inmates in on their little secret concerning the collars. He conveniently left out Fae's involvement for fear that one of the less chivalrous inmates would try to do something to her before the riot could begin. Not out of fear for her life of course but in order to ensure that the plan would succeed. By the time the Sun began its descent, Freddy had made at least 50 different inmates privy to their little plan.

"Alright! Light's out!" The guard called as he and his comrades forced the inmates into a straight line in front of their cells. Freddy felt his excitement grow as the time was drawing near and soon enough he would be taking his first step back to the Dream Realm. But first, he would have to stir the pot.

"Prisoner #1984, Check!" The guard yelled as he stood in front of Freddy and checked his name off the paper he held on his clipboard. As soon as he turned to leave, Freddy burst into a bout of insane laughter. The guard turned back to Freddy and demanded to know what the Springwood Slasher was laughing about.

"Oh! It's nothing!" Freddy smirked. "You wouldn't get it."

"Get what?" The guard took out his baton and pressed it firmly against Freddy's nose. "I'll ask again and you'll do well to answer me."

"Well, I was just thinking back to what some of the other assholes locked up here have been calling you behind your back." Freddy's smirk evolved into a full-on shit-eating grin. and he had to stifle another laugh. The guard, a chubby fella whose balding scalp was hidden beneath his helmet, was not as amused.

"The fuck you mean behind my back?" He grunted. "What are they calling me? Answer me or I'm sticking this stick up your ass!"

"Easy, easy! It's nothing to get upset about," Freddy's eyes narrowed. "Peter Griffin."

"What!?" Quite a few inmates and even some of the other guards laughed out loud. The guard threatening Freddy, on the other hand, only felt insulted and so banged the baton against Freddy's head, knocking the Springwood Slasher to the floor. "You wanna call me any more names, you fucking pizza-faced piece of shit!?"

"Yeah," Freddy croaked as he got back to his feet. As he got up, he ran his left hand over the fresh wound on his forehead and saw that it was covered in blood. Looking the guard in the eye without a single trace of fear in his own, he licked the blood off of his fingers and said. "If you ask me, you look more like Homer Simpson."

More laughter roared through the hallways as the chubby man's face grew red with anger. "That does it! I'm pounding your ass to the ground!" The guard brought his baton down on Freddy again but this time, the Springwood Slasher caught it in his hands and kicked the bewildered guard in the gut, sending him reeling back.

INSURGENT BEHAVIOR DETECTED! CEASE IMMEDIATELY! FAILURE TO COMPLY WILL RESULT IN DEATH! Sounded Freddy's collar. The former dream demon smiled at this, it was the moment he was waiting for. "Now!" He called.

At once, the other inmates suddenly swarmed the guards, ripping the batons from their persons and beating them with the newly-acquired weapons. One by one, the collars around the inmates began to sound off, promising death to their wearers if they refused to stop their rebellion at once. But as more collars joined in on the cacophony of warnings, something strange began to happen. The voices calling out from the collars started becoming more high-pitched and unintelligible. Instead of activating their blades and decapitating their host, they began to buzz and tremble, the inmates too bust with the guards to notice. And then, at the height of the chaos, the hallway sounded with the sound of every single collar deactivating at once. The collars had broken apart from the inside.

"Finally!" Freddy shouted as he gripped his now dead collar and with a few jerks, ripped it off his throat. "I'm a free man!" No sooner her Freddy said this that he was suddenly hit in the ankle by a baton and knocked to the ground. The guard he had insulted earlier, now battered and bloodied from his struggle with the other inmates, had crawled up to Freddy's leg and struck him.

"Free man my fat hairy ass!" The guard snarled. "I'll beat you to a pulp before you even step foot on the outside, you deep-fried cocksucker!"

The guard, still crawling on the ground as a result of his twisted knee, began beating Freddy senselessly with the baton. The Springwood Slasher cried out in pain as the hard black stick smashed against his back again and again and the guard smiled with sadistic glee, relishing in the sound of Freddy's agony. At least, that was until the pained cries turned into mocking laughter all while Freddy was still being beaten. Shocked, the guard slowly ceased his beating on Freddy, allowing the former dream demon to turn to him with a smile even wider than his was before. "Thank you, sir. May I have another?"

"W-What is this?" The guard whimpered. "What the fuck are you!?" The guard tried to hit Freddy over the head with the baton, hoping to knock him out but once again, the burned man grabbed the weapon before it could land a blow and this time, ripped it out of the guard's hands. "Do you wanna know the best thing about pain?" Freddy asked as he picked himself back up and loomed over the scared guard. His ankle and back still throbbed from the blows they took but Freddy paid them no mind. "If you just stop feeling it," Freddy spoke as he picked up the baton. "You can start using it!"

Knowing what was about to become of him and knowing there was no way to escape or anyone coming to his rescue, the guard did the only thing he could think of and screamed in horror as Freddy gleefully and violently bludgeoned him with his own baton, all while cackling maniacally. By the time Freddy was done, the guard's head had been reduced to a steaming pile of gore.

"It's just a jailbreak asshole." Freddy choked out through his panting. "No need to lose your head." He let out another bout of laughter before surveying the damage. All around him, inmates with dead collars were attacking the guards that had kept them under control up until that point. For now, it was an even struggle, some guards managing to subdue the inmates that came after them and some inmates already leading small teams to the other corners of the sanitarium, no doubt intending to free even more lackeys from the collars. It wouldn't be long before this news spread and with it the riot.

"It won't be long before that bitch Vivian summons the backup." Freddy murmured to himself. "I better round up the three stooges. as heard them to Fae as fast as possible." Freddy looked down at the bloody baton he now held in his hands and smiled. "I think I'll keep this for a while." And with this, Freddy left the wing, never to return.


Vivian could not believe her eyes. Before her, captured by her security cameras in all its awful clarity was a riot. It had started in the D Hall where The Nightmare had been housed and was now slowly but surely spreading throughout Black Rose Sanitarium. She fought off the urge to scream out in anguish as her precious collars died off one by one and her would-be test subjects either rebelled or simply got themselves killed trying to do so.

"Why is this happening?" Vivian cried. "How did they find out about the collars? I knew I should have fixed that damned glitch! I should have!" Vivian swept all of the books and papers in front of her to the floor and let out another howl of anguish. "Someone have to have told them! Someone had to have told them about that damn glitch! But who?" It was then that Vivian suddenly recalled the events of last night, how she had revealed to her long-suffering assistant her real goal of founding Black Rose Sanitarium. To breed and release Cain onto the world and destroy humanity as all knew it. "It had to be him." Vivian thought bitterly. "It had to be that fat little fuck."

As if summoned by her thoughts, Teddy suddenly entered the room. "Vivian! We need to talk!" He declared in the bravest voice he could muster. That bravery melted away as soon as Vivian turned to face him, her eyes like that of a feral cat's.

"You!" Vivian suddenly lunged at Teddy and knocked the bewildered man down. Climbing on top of him, she started slashing at his cheeks with her nails which had long ago been fitted with iron tips. "You son of a bitch!" She screeched. "You did this! You fucking outed the collar's weakness to get back at me! To stop Project Cain! Didn't you! Admit it you little shitty pig!"

Teddy couldn't respond as his face was being torn up by her enhanced fingernails. Once Vivian finally managed to stop herself, Teddy took a few moments more to compose himself before speaking. "N-No I didn't." He replied calmly. "I don't know how the inmates found out about the glitch and frankly it's your own damn fault for never fixing it in the first place."

"You!" Vivian slashed Teddy across the left cheek once again, coming dangerously close to his eye. Teddy once again turned to face her and continued. "In any case, I came for a different reason. I need you to confess what you've done."

"What!?"

"You heard me!" Teddy shouted. "I wanna hear it from your lips once again. What all this is really about. What Project Cain really is!"

Vivian stared at Teddy for a few moments more before growing even angrier and slashing at his shirt. "Are you wearing a fucking wire or something? You are aren't you? You went to the fucking cops behind my back, you cowardly piece of shit!" Vivian continued to tear more and more at Teddy's shirt until it had been reduced to rags and she was cutting at his stomach. To her dismay, there were no wires to be seen.

"I'm not wearing any wires." He explained calmly. "And I didn't go to the police. Not yet. When you told me what Project Cain really was, I couldn't believe it. I didn't want to believe it. And I still don't." Teddy summoned all of his remaining strength and picked his upper half off the ground, staring directly into Vivian's eyes. "I want you to explain it again. Just on the off chance that maybe, just maybe, I heard you wrong. That's all I want."

Vivian stared dumbfoundedly at Teddy again for a few moments. But this time, she smiled and began to laugh in his face. "You stupid fuck!" She shoved Teddy's head back to the floor as hard as she could. "I meant every word of what I said last night. Project Cain isn't for humanity's benefit but for its punishment. Once Cain is good and ready, he'll wipe out the entire country in weeks and they'll be enough of him to take on the entire world by then. The end of humanity and the beginning of a new era for Earth. That's what Project Cain is and always has been! Go ahead! Keep telling yourself that you haven't been helping me plot humanity's downfall if that's what will help you sleep for what few nights you have left! But I will not deny what I have done!"

"That's...That's..." Teddy coughed up some blood as he removed a small box from his pocket. Vivian's eyes widened as she recognized the Lament Configuration. "That's all I needed to hear!"

The room began to shake and the walls began to crack. As Vivian watched in horror, the surveillance room was transformed into a dingy hall with chains hanging from an unseeable ceiling. And standing behind her, were four beings she knew at once were Cenobites.

"Vivian Malachite." The one with nails in his head cooed.


"Hey dipshits! Where are you?" Freddy called as he wandered the corridors of the sanitarium. Every so often, a guard or even a fellow inmate would try to attack him and every time, he would kill them with a few whacks to the head courtesy of his baton. He was nearing the corridor where they had first conversed with Fae and he briefly wondered if maybe he should just go meet her by himself. As he was pondering this, however, he noticed three familiar shapes approaching him from the other end of the hallways. Jason, Michael and Bubbha. All present, collarless and covered in blood.

"Well, well, well." Freddy smiled. "Looks like you assholes made it after all."

As usual, the trio said nothing but simply nodded in reply. Bubbha was shaking slightly, clearly more unnerved by the whole ordeal than the rest.

"Come on, you assholes! Let's go!" Freddy led the way toward the back room where Fae had told them of her plan. Once they entered they were greeted with her presence once again. This time, the black and green-haired beauty was wearing a rather lewd outfit of all black. Around her torso was a see-through blouse and around her waist was a long see-through skirt, revealing the black bra and panties she wore underneath. A black veil, gloves, and boots completed the strange outfit. At her feet were four boxes each crudely labeled for a different slasher with a black marker.

"There you are!" She greeted them warmly. "What took you guys so long?"