A long, blood curdling scream sprang to life. It eviscerated any silence that was before it; Like a violin straining on a too lengthy note or how static produced a harsh, noise shredding sound. It lingered in the air before finally breaking off into its end.
Screams were often music to the damned, which was why the majority of the horror icons in the kitchen had smiled at the sound of it. A nice scream was difficult to find. Some were obnoxious, which hurried along the impulse to silence it. Others were more lackluster and mundane, rarely striking, blending in with most other screams. And some were like fine melodies, songs you would want to hear again and again, such as you'd want to savor first before begrudgingly muffling it forever. Much like the unique individuality that a snowflake or a fingerprint possessed, screams were very much the same. Depending on the scream, it could make or break the appeal of a victim.
Unfortunately for Jennifer, hers was one they happened to find appealing.
It had certainly been enough to garner the attention of the other killers. There was some tinge of envy in the air that they hadn't been the ones responsible for it. Nonetheless it was enough to send some of them down memory lane, momentarily revisiting past kills inside their heads.
"Ah, music to my ears." Smiled Djinn. The beep of the coffeemaker made itself apparent then, as if vying for the djinn's attention. He returned to the task of making his morning beverage to turn to the cabinets above for a mug. It was a shame that the girl's home suffered from a lack of mortal delicacies. All of what he could find in the fridge that hadn't already been picked through by himself and the others, had not appeased him. Thankfully a search through the cabinets near the sink had procured him something enjoyable. His affinity for sweets was something he had discovered from his fleeting stay in Alexandria Amberson's apartment. Even as he poured the brown liquid into the cup, his eyes were latching hungrily onto a stout container of sugar cubes by the coffee appliance.
"She's awake finally." Chucky mused through a mouthful of Cheerios. His small fist was finding another mouthful even as he chewed. He ate straight from the plastic cereal bag. The box had been long discarded on the floor. Unlike Djinn, Chucky was far too starved to be picky. They hadn't exactly been served five star meals in Hell and after last night's raid of the fridge, he'd been lucky enough to stumble upon the sight of the few cereal boxes stashed above the counters behind him. He'd been too embarrassed to ask Michael to get the cereal for him, but as usual he could always count on Jason to be his taller, more rotten half.
Sunlight streamed through the kitchen window, telling the slashers it was bound to be a beautiful day. In spite of this, the beauty of the sun was lost on them. While the night was long gone, the personified consequences of it still lingered.
And despite the uplifting glow of the sunshine, Ghostface sat at the island counter with the others, his gloved hand pressed to his face. His mask was awash with sunlight, however it did nothing for his sour mood; "This house is boring."
Michael was in total agreement of this, but he couldn't be bothered to pitch in with his mutual agreement. He was currently too preoccupied with sifting through the items in the kitchen drawers. Their contents had been entirely disappointing. He had already been through the silverware drawer at least three times in search of something adequate. The array of knives he had found within had all been pitifully small. There was no heft to their handles, nothing to fill out his large hand the way his old blade had. He had hoped stubbornly that maybe by rooting through the other drawers, he would magically discover a worthy weapon to wield among the lesser objects. And every time he had not found what he was looking for, he had punctuated his annoyance with a slam of the drawer to move onto the next.
Chucky snorted; "Have you ever thought maybe if you weren't such a borin' fuck, you wouldn't be so bored?"
Ghostface's hand fell from his face to slap the countertop. "I'm not a boring fuck! Exactly what it is that you find so exciting about sitting on your ass and shoveling cereal into your mouth? If you ask me, it seems you've gotten a bit too comfortable."
SLAM!
Djinn grimaced at the loud sound, but it failed to irritate anyone else. Chucky shrugged to himself, another handful of said cereal quickly vanishing into his maw. "Good thing I didn't ask then,"
Ghostface let out a growl of frustration. Before he could retort with anything, the other continued on, his speech a little warped by the food in his mouth; "For the first time in a long fuckin' while, I don't gotta worry bout' nothin'. I've earned the right to sit on my ass if I wanna, and listenin' to all your bitchin's worked me up an appetite." Djinn snickered into his coffee mug, watching the two of them argue.
While Michael had his back to their bickering, Jason was seated to watch the exchange. With Djinn standing with his back to the sink, Chucky and Ghostface sat on opposite sides of the island counter, and Jason sat alone at the end.
SLAM!
"In that case, maybe after you're done with that," The ghost's masked forehead motioned down to the food bag in the toy's embrace. "You can have a look up in Alysson's room. I'm sure you'll find some cute plastic meats and veggies to munch on." And that way, Ghostface figured, the dolly would feel so much more at home surrounded by all of the other toys in the little girl's bedroom.
Chucky busied himself with another handful of breakfast and an eye roll; "Y'know, for a guy that seems to know a lot bout' me, you really don't know shit bout' me."
SLAM!
The genie's shoulders hunched against the lobes of his stretched ears. His expression of aggravation loomed on the likeness of a cat just about to sneeze, eyes scrunched and teeth slightly bared. His head-tentacles writhed and with the mug poised just in front of his chin, his head jerked around to hiss at the Haddonfield Slasher; "Would you stop that?"
Michael quickly returned the heat of the stare back to the djinn himself. His calloused hand remained fixed on the silver handle of the drawer, his body much too still for the one that was arguably the most human of the group.
Chucky's head tilted back without looking at the Sister Killer to ask; "What're you lookin for, Mikey?" Michael contemplated finding some way to answer, but honestly he was too irked by the djinn to do so. The doll knew him well enough that he answered his own question; "You've been diggin' around in those drawers for five minutes. If you haven't found whatever it is you're lookin' for, it ain't gonna be in there. Give it a rest."
The djinn gave the masked murderer a simper. It bordered on the sensation of being smiled at by a petty sibling. But Michael could out-petty him, and he let the genie become aware of this fact as his hand slowly dragged the drawer back open. Some of that smug satisfaction Djinn boasted was dispersing. The two continued to watch one another while the drawer was ever so slowly pulled all the way out, inch by inch, almost completely exposed and threatening to fall on the floor-
Until in one forceful jab of his arm, Michael Myers slammed the kitchen drawer shut as loudly as he possibly could, resulting in the loudest of the previous noises. Everyone turned to look over at him, but their gazes went unacknowledged by the mute killer. He enjoyed the scowl on the genie's face before putting his back to him to go sit next to Jason.
Chucky exhaled some humored sounds and gave Michael's back a grin. However the appreciation of the scenario rapidly faded to pick up where him and Ghostface had left off. Another hand shoveled around inside the bag as he asked; "You get I'm human on the inside, right? I ain't made of stuffin'. You think I just pop double-a batteries and I'm good to go? That ain't how that works."
Ghostface threw his gloved hand in a wave, as if to say enough already. Obviously he knew the toy's predicament. The earlier quip had just been the need to get on the plaything's nerves. What else was he supposed to do in this insufferable place? Count his fingers? He turned to look at Djinn next to the coffeemaker; "And what about you? It's not like you need caffeine to survive. Why do you even bother?"
Despite Ghostface's ignorance, Chucky did gaze over at the djinn in question. Some portion of him was unnerved to find the green skinned being popping sugar cubes into his mouth as though they were candy. The potent sweetness appeared not to faze him in the slightest. If anything, the djinn appeared to revel in it.
Djinn smiled at the inquisitiveness in his allies' gazes while his hand somewhat reluctantly tore itself away from the glass container of sugar; "Mortal delights have never been a necessity for my kind. Curiously I have dabbled over the millennium, and have taken a liking to some of their pleasures. I fault mankind for much of their folly," Djinn's wicked eyes traveled down to the white cup in his clawed hands. "However coffee is not one of them." He chuckled into the brew, drinking at his leisure.
Chucky gave Ghostface a rather victorious smirk; "Y'see? You get to appreciate the finer things in life when you don't got a stick up your ass."
"If I've got a stick up my ass, it's because I have some unfinished business and it's not just with that blonde bitch upstairs," Ghostface gestured a floor above his head with a gloved pointer finger. "I've got a whole bunch of plans that I have to put on hold because Pindick wound up putting us in the wrong place. Jason thinks he's far from home? I'm supposed to be in fucking California!"
Jason tilted his head, his one good eye squinting; As if he were trying to figure out exactly how far Georgia was from California.
Chucky tossed back his head and laughed. His laughter caused a small rain of breakfast food debris to spew forth from his mouth. "No kiddin'? Man, it's no wonder you're so pissy."
"Yeah, because unlike you I've got shit to do."
Chucky threw a lone cheerio at him in protest. The tiny hoop hit him square in the chest and plopped somewhere unseen to the tiled floor below. Ghostface looked from the fallen piece of cereal, back up to Chucky, as if to wonder if the doll had really had the gall to just do that. Apparently he had;
"You think I ain't got shit to do? Only shit you've done so far since we got here is bitch and bitch, and bitch some more. Hell I mean, if you start bitchin' anymore than you already have, I'm gonna have to start callin' you Bitchface instead of Ghostface."
Chucky had barely gotten the words out before he was practically shouting his laughter, shaking his head, his small hand slapping the countertop in his humor. Evidently he thought that was the funniest thing he'd heard in a while. Djinn couldn't resist laughing right along with him. Even Michael Myers thought the insult was funny, which could be heard rather than seen from the low rasp of an amused exhale.
Ghostface shot up out of his stool, beyond aggravated and not humored at all; "That's not fucking funny!" This only encouraged the killer doll to guffaw even louder than before, almost as if out of spite. With no quip or comeback of quality, Ghostface instead chose the next best thing: Leaning over the island and slapping the bag of cereal out of Chucky's hands to the floor. The bag hit the tile with a thump of plastic, its contents spilling out from the top in a patternless mess.
While that did shut the doll up, Ghostface didn't linger long enough to be satisfied. Instead he immediately turned and shoved away the kitchen door to exit. The remaining slashers gazed at one another. Chucky's eyes went to the fallen breakfast food before he gave a careless shrug of his shoulders. He'd had his fill and thus went on to mutter; "Wasn't that good anyway."
The door to the kitchen chose that moment to open. Pretty confident it was going to be Ghostface to have the last word, Chucky opened his mouth, ready to counter whatever it was that the other had thought up. To everyone's surprise it was no other than Freddy Krueger that walked through the door instead, and with a giant grin on his face no less. He was clearly pleased about something.
"Wait a minute," Chucky raised a hand as if to stop the dream demon in his tracks. Freddy cocked a nonexistent brow in response. "How the fuck are you here? Aren't you supposed to be in the dream world? Because I know you're not charismatic enough to have talked her into pullin' you out. Especially not after hearin' her scream like that."
Freddy took a moment to openly look over his gloved hand, admiring the flex and shine of his blades; "I can be pretty persuasive." He chuckled to himself.
Chucky blew out an entertained breath through his lips; "You couldn't persuade a nun out'a brothel."
Unbeknownst to the doll, the analogy he had made had the face of a certain someone popping into Freddy's head which caused him to scowl. As a general rule of thumb he tried not to think of his whore of a mother. And outside of the personal rule, it was just too early for the shit anyway.
The nightmare slasher pointed at the Good Guy with his index blade; "Oh you'd be surprised. You'll find that fear is a great motivator. As it stands, I didn't need that bitch's help getting me out of the Dreamscape. I did that all by myself." He leaned there against the wall next to the door, allowing himself to get cozy in his lean.
Djinn cocked his head, curiosity burning through him. It only took him a moment to ponder the solution to their puzzlement. His eyelids lifted in realization; "The portal."
"Turns out the fuck up of the portal wasn't all that bad. As a matter of fact, it came with some interesting side effects. Not only can I come and go as I please," With a swiftness akin to a blink of an eye, Freddy vanished and reappeared next to Djinn in front of the sink. Different expressions of surprise came over their faces. It was a little detail that he hadn't shared with them yet. One that he personally had found out himself after excusing himself to make sure Jennifer had really been getting his drink, and not trying to escape. He spread out his arms, grinning impishly; "I can do that too."
Chucky shook his head in disbelief; "Y'know, I'm startin' to feel pretty cheated. Why don't we get any of that?"
Djinn considered it briefly; "Perhaps we have. There is no certainty what sort of side effects we'll have taken due to the portal. Perhaps in time we will find out." Chucky looked pleased at the possibility, settling back in his seat; "Fuckin' A."
Freddy walked past Djinn to return to his leaning place next to the door. Jason watched him do this, his fists balling and unclasping quietly. He tapped the breast pocket of Michael's jumpsuit. Michael gave him a look of understanding before unzipping some of his garb to give the other bigger killer the notepad and marker from last night. Jason's handwriting was as shaky as ever:
WHY DO WE HAVE TO HURT HER
Chucky furrowed his brows for a moment. It only took him that moment to realize who he meant; "Oh, the blonde? We don't really have to hurt her. Just toy around with her, that's all. Why do you care, big guy?"
Freddy watched Jason write his response with thinly concealed vexation.
SHE SEEMS NiCE AND MOTHER LiKES HER
"This coming from a dead hag with no head." Prodded the dream demon snidely. Jason quickly stood from his stool. Michael was quick to grab the sleeve of the dirtied jacket, successfully obtaining Jason's focus. The two stared at each other for a long moment, as if the both of them were conversing silently inside their heads. Jason looked away to continue glaring at his rival. While both Freddy and Jason looked upon one another, Michael had taken the notepad and written something. He waved it in front of the long dead goalie:
He is not worth it.
Jason stood for a long moment. At length, he finally nodded at Michael and elected to sit back down in his seat. Freddy chuckled with satisfaction, earning a glare from Jason in return. "Ya wanna know what was worth it though?" Djinn watched him over the ceramic brim of the mug; "Do tell." Having gained the attention of the others, Freddy Krueger wasted no time in getting started on Jennifer's first nightmare, eagerly describing every terrible detail in full.