Chapter 5

"It Keeps Going Full Circle Until I'm Nauseous"

The night was young, too young to have been wasted, but Ashley Graham shouldn't have cared. Ever since that kidnapping she'd been in 6 years back, her dad had gotten quite a bit paranoid, trying to keep her at home so it wouldn't happen again. The only reason she'd acquiesced was because there were Secret Service agents everywhere. They could've detained her with a moment's notice if she ever even tried to escape.

Still, there was one of them that she missed…Leon. At this sudden thought, Ashley turned back around and went to her bedside table, where she kept pictures of all the good times she'd had with friends and family. She opened the drawer with a start, looking for that one picture that she'd always considered her favorite. Ashley knew that it was useless to feel this was for Leon, since he was now married to that S.R.T. woman, but she couldn't help it.

As she approached the bottom of the drawer, she heard a voice behind her. " Why have pictures when the real guy's right here?"

She turned around…and saw him. Dark blond hair, bomber jacket, slightly rugged face…his whole being, right there in front of her. "Leon…", she sighed, and she walked over to him, wrapping her arms around his midsection, not caring what his reaction was. But as he followed suit with her, Ashley felt completely whole at that point.

"You know, you should be a little more careful", Leon said, his tone growing sinister with every word. At this Ashley looked up at Leon…but it wasn't him anymore.

The face was of an older man, by about 10 years, but it was horribly burnt, shaded by a dark brown hat. Instead of the bomber jacket and the charcoal shirt that she so desperately wanted to see, it was a tattered red and green striped sweater. When the man spoke, it was in a deep, gravelly tone.

"Sometimes love don't feel like it should", the man whispered, and Ashley could feel something sharp pierce through her skin, through her stomach. Her mouth fell open, and as she looked down to see a razor-fingered glove in her midsection, blood began to pour from her mouth like a small waterfall.

The man tore the glove out of her midsection, then smacked her head down to the ground. Ashley could feel her strength ebbing away from the blood seeping out.

"You know", he said, clinking the blades together, "any sane person would think this old. They think it just keeps going full circle until I get nauseous." Then he kneeled down, next to Ashley's rapidly pale-growing face as he continued.

"But that's not true…not at all", as he stroked the bloody knives down her face. "It turns out there's still a patch of kids I haven't gotten to yet." The shock went straight into Ashley's heart, as she felt and heard no more.

bi"That ought to keep them busy for a while", Freddy chuckled, as he walked back to his nightmare city, clinking all the way./b/i

President Graham walked up the stairs to say a slightly apologetic good night to his daughter. Already he felt not right about keeping her in the house, as he knew even young adults needed time out.
"Ashley?" The call went seemingly unheard as he rapped on her door, repeating himself twice more. "Ashley!"

That's when he noticed the small dark puddle under the door, and he rammed himself into it with all the effort he could muster. It went down on the second try. But what he saw chilled him to the bone, and beyond.

His daughter lay on the floor, 4 bloody holes stitched across her stomach, her turtleneck sweater stained with it. The blood had dripped up into her mouth, rapt on a face with an infinitely shocked look, and glazed unseeing eyes. He fell to his knees, covering his face with her mouth. How could this happen? What did I do to deserve this?

That's when he fully noticed the 4 holes sewn into her stomach. They looked like razor punctures…or knife stabs. They looked like…like…

No. It wasn't possible. But it was there. "Krueger! Where are you?"

Leon and Angela made it there in record time, but it was too little, too late for Ashley. Already they knew the basic details of what had happened, but they weren't prepared for the gory spectacle that beheld their eyes.

Ashley lay in a puddle of her blood, seeping from the 4 cuts in her stomach, and some from her mouth. Her face looked like she'd been scared out of her wits; it almost seemed like she'd died of fright.

Angela knelt down beside Ashley's body, inspecting the cuts with her sterilized hands, while Leon kneeled beside her, his hand on her shoulder.

"She got stabbed through the stomach wall and a small part of her lungs. The blood from the cuts ended up going into the stomach", she reported finally. Then her hand fell away from the cuts, by her bent knee, her tone more concerned "Do these look familiar to you?"

Leon looked at the stab wounds, noticing that they did indeed look similar. Then he tore off the left sleeve of his leather jacket and looked at the scratches that adorned it. No doubt about it, they were by the same person.

Angela saw the cuts on Leon's arms, and immediately began to prod and rub at them. "How'd you get these?", she asked in amazement. "Leon, if these were closer to the wrist…what happened?"

"Angela…"Leon began. He briefly considered trying to cover it up, but there was no way he could do that to Angela. She was one of those people who could always tell when someone was lying, and he could never lie to Angela.

"You probably won't believe me on this but…somebody's trying…to kill us…in our dreams", Leon whispered shakily, which didn't happen often. But this was really starting to scare him, to the point of Raccoon City vulnerability.

Back in 1998, the only thing he'd done wrong was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Not to mention, it was his first day as a Raccoon City cop. He'd gotten through the biohazard okay, but he'd have to carry that frightful memory for the rest of his life.

Angela saw that, and he knew he was telling the truth, even if it sounded completely insane. Even so, she couldn't believe what she was hearing. This couldn't be happening again.

"Let me guess: burnt skin, striped sweater, razor fingers?", she said, her stomach lodging in her throat. At that, Leon looked up in horrific astonishment. "How did you know that?"

"The truth is, Leon… I was one of those Springwood teens at one point in my life. Once those murders started back in '81, my parents ended up divorcing, and my mom moved to Harvardville before she had Curtis. I only moved there after my dad died, because I had nowhere else to go."

Leon moved closer to her, sitting down on the floor where there was no blood, as Angela sat down between his legs, resting her head on his chest. "I'd heard of the stories, but I didn't think Freddy was real."

"Don't worry", Leon whispered reassuringly. "We're going to take him down…that's a promise." And Angela allowed herself to smile, as she laid her head on his chest, feeling his pulse. She let his hand rub her back in a comforting way, but she couldn't escape those nagging thoughts.

"Believe me, Leon." Freddy whispered from the inside of the city, feeling the heat of the boiler room encasing the city penetrate him, giving him power. "The day I go down is the day my memory fails to haunt you. If I go down, one of you is coming with me."