A few days passed, accompanied by sleepless nights. Neither Danielle nor Lydia wanted to sleep, yet they didn't inform each other of their dreams, and Lydia didn't complain about her back. Though they were silent, they knew something odd was going on, especially due to the cuts that had appeared on Danielle's leg.

On the third night since the dreams, Danielle descended the staircase to find Lydia laying on the couch, staring at the floor. "What are you looking at?" Danielle asked, sitting by Lydia and looking to the floor in search of what Lydia's eyes were locked on.

"Spiders." Lydia answered.

Danielle frowned and stated, "There are no spiders, Lydia.."

Lydia shrugged and sat up, her eyes red.

"You really need to go to sleep. You look sick."

"I am." Lydia acknowledged and rubbed her eyes. It was terribly difficult to keep them open. "You haven't been sleeping either." she stated.

"I've been busy." Danielle lied.

"With what?" Lydia asked, forcing herself to sit up.

"..Stuff." Danielle answered.

"Need..caffeine.." Lydia mumbled, rising from the couch and heading to the kitchen. She withdrew from the refrigerator a bottle of coke zero. She almost dropped it as she opened it; when she turned around she saw a large raven above the door frame, watching her intensely.

"D-Danielle! Come here!" She exclaimed, stepping back into the counter behind her. She stared back at the bird, which was beautiful, but hauntingly threatening.

"What?" Danielle ran in. Lydia slowly lifted her hand to point at the raven.

Danielle looked up and repeated, "What?"

"You..You don't see it?" Lydia asked.

"No! Stop being crazy." Danielle sighed and got some coke zero for herself.

Lydia diverted her gaze from the raven and drank her soda, but when she looked up again, nothing was on the door.

The two girls were able to stay awake for another night, thanks to loud music ad caffeinated drinks. Danielle was less affected than Lydia. They both looked pretty bad, but Lydia looked very sick. Despite this, Lydia left the house the next morning to attend some classes.

While walking through the campus, she saw that raven sitting on a lamppost, its gleaming black eyes following her movements.

In her organic chemistry class, time ticked slowly by, and Lydia now had a very short attention span. She crossed her arms over her desk, resting her chin on them while trying to watch the teacher scribble out combustion equations on the smartboard.

Lydia's vision became out of focus, the black writing looking less digital by the second. The color shifted to red, and Lydia realized the teacher was writing in blood.

Lydia sat up and raised her hand, but the teacher wouldn't look at her. "Hey.." Lydia poked the student to her right. "Hello?" Lydia frowned, poking the girl's shoulder again. When she leaned forward to look at her face, she quickly moved back in her seat when realizing the eyes were completely white; no irises and no pupils. Lydia turned around and looked at the row of students behind her. They too had eyes of only white and made no movement.

"Alright.. this is a dream..so I can do this!" Lydia picked up her pencil and jammed it into the eye of the student to her right. A layer of skin peeled off on its own, revealing under it a coat of squirming maggots.

"Ew!" Lydia quickly pulled her hand away, trying to shake off the nasty things that had crawled onto her skin. She jumped over the desk as the student's skin continued to peel away, and a swarm of flies and maggots built up on the desks. When they began overflowing from the desks, they descended to the floor where they began to take the shape of a man.

Lydia looked over to the door and began running towards it, trying to ignore that raven perched above the door again.

When she was a few feet from the door, it slammed closed. Lydia frantically pulled on the door, but it wouldn't budge. She looked over her shoulder to see the teacher and students were gone, leaving only that burnt man with the bladed glove. Lydia pulled harder on the door, though she couldn't tear her eyes away from the man slowly advancing towards her. She stepped over to the teacher's desk, picking up a stapler and throwing it at the window. Luckily, it shattered on impact and the window was big enough for Lydia to climb through. Of course, it never crossed her mind to try opening the window..but if the door was locked, the window probably would be too.

After scrambling out the window, Lydia picked up the stapler and threw it back into the room at Freddy. "HAI-YA!" Yes. She had to exclaim an obligatory ninja sound.

Lydia turned away from the building and froze when she saw the campus was no longer as she remembered it. In fact..as she began slowly walking farther from the building, she realized the only surroundings were that of a playground. An old, abandoned playground.

Lydia made her way to a rusty metal swing set, sitting on a swing and gripping the nasty chains. The frame squeaked under its age and her weight as she lifted herself off the ground and started swinging.

After a few minutes, the chain broke, cutting open her hand as she fell. "Agh!" She got off the collapsed swing and walked along a heavily eroded path, holding her bleeding hand.

"One, two, Freddy's coming for you.."

Lydia turned around and watched some little girls jump rope.

"What?" Lydia asked, but they continued on.

"Three, four, better lock the door.."

Lydia kept interjecting, but they made no notice, and it was really bothering her.

"Peasants! Stop ignoring me! Where am I?" Lydia asked. She growled and threw a rock, but it just passed through one of the girls' heads.

"Nine, ten, never sleep again.." They finally finished. Lydia opened her mouth to say something, but further frowned when the rhyme was simply restarted.

"One, two, Freddy's coming for you.."

"Who the crap is Freddy?" Lydia demanded, but she had a sick feeling she already knew.

"That would be me." A deep voice replied. The children vanished, and Lydia spun around to face the man and the raven- which now was in a branch of a dismal, dead tree a yards away.

"So you're this Freddy fellow..kind of a loser-ish name, eh?" she asked while backing away from him. She then asked, "Do you have a last name?"

Shink!

She looked at the blades as he answered, "Krueger."

"Oh, is that with a u e or a u with the two little dots above it?" She threw out another question while Freddy slid the blades past one another, emitting a slicing sound.

"That's the least of your worries, bitch.." He replied.

"What did you just call me? Pssh. Must you use such limited vocabulary? Are you so dumb you must use words that so many others use without reason-" Lydia's criticism was cut short when Freddy swiftly moved forward and grabbed her neck, tossing her into the tree with a thud. He held her there, and she fell silent.

Freddy tapped the tips of the blades to her neck and shoulder. "You judge people on such pointless things.." He mused, "Just searching for something to which you can deem another as being inferior..Simply to make your worthless self seem superior." He smirked.

"No, I-" She started, but Freddy ended her response by pressing the side of a blade tighter to her neck, turning her skin red.

"I can read you like a book. Don't fucking deny it."

Lydia's face darkened into a blush as she felt his breath against her skin.

Freddy looked down at Lydia's injured hand as blood dripped to the ground. She watched him grab her wrist and pull her hand to his mouth, licking the blood and sending a new wave of pain through her hand and up her arm. Her body gave a twitch, and she lightly moaned, her bloody hand shaking. She was powerless to speak, to resist, or to run. Something about this man was disturbingly provocative and she knew she could do nothing about it. Why did she feel like this? She should run, scream, anything, but no. She was captivated.

She chewed some skin off her bottom lip as Freddy slid his bladed hand under her shirt, cutting upwards along her torso. A stream of blood flowed out from under the torn skin, and Freddy could see in her eyes a strange mixture of pain, fear, and lust. When he leaned closer to her and smeared blood from the blades onto her face, she kept her eyes locked on Freddy's lips.

He gave her a rough kiss, but she was distracted by something on her head. She reached up to touch it. She could feel something slick, yet bumpy. "What.." Ribbit!

A look of absolute terror appeared on her face. She shrieked a painfully high frequency as she started to cry. "No, get it off!" she begged Freddy. The frog leaped to her shoulder, and she was horrified at the thought of touching it again. How was she supposed to get it off?

Freddy laughed at Lydia; what a freak. This was her biggest fear? Interesting. He stood behind her and pulled her hair back behind her shoulders, out of the frog's way. While screaming and trying to shake the amphibian off, Lydia rammed her body against Freddy, causing a blade to cut her shoulder deeply. She collapsed to the ground, but quickly stood up again, and her next scream was not one of horror, but one of rage, as she finally got the courage to grab the frog and throw it to the ground where she stepped on it, crushing it several times and watching blood seep out, bringing with it some organs. "Die, die, die!" Lydia jumped up and down on it, then kicked away what was left of the organism.

She then turned to Freddy, glaring daggers. "I HATE FROGS!" she screamed in his face. Freddy slapped her, thus she changed her mind about screaming at him. She calmed down, and after a few seconds of silence, she suddenly took off running.

"You can't hide from me.." Freddy stated. Lydia looked over her throbbing shoulder, but Freddy wasn't in sight. She touched her wounded shoulder while she reverted to walking. Her torso would be fine; the bleeding had stopped. Her shoulder, however, kept cycling rounds of pain through her body, and she just wanted to lay down and cry. She closed her eyes for just a moment, and when she opened them she was in the dimly lit boiler room. Lydia gave up on walking and sat down, leaning against a metallic wall.

"What do you want?" she mumbled, knowing Freddy could hear her. Why can't I will myself to wake up? She wondered desperately. She sat there in solitude for what felt like half an hour. She hated being so alone, without even music to accompany her. "I want out of here!" she broke the silence and stood up, walking along a narrow passage then down some steps. She walked into a door, hitting her already painful shoulder. She broke down crying, sitting on the ground again as she trembled, gasping for breath as an anxiety attack took over her body.