A/N: Hallelujah! I thought I'd never get this chapter finished and posted. *Wipes sweaty brow*

Now for our thank-you segment: Thank you to Darkness Takes Over for reviewing chapter 4, and to "Freddy K Fan" for reviewing chapters 3 AND 4. (Here you may imagine some clever remark that I had no time to write because I'm trying to update this story as fast as I can before life kicks me in the nuts with another load of distractions and obligations.)

(P.S. I don't have nuts. I'm a girl.)

DISCLAIMER: I don't own A Nightmare on Elm Street or any of its characters.

WARNING: CERTAIN CHAPTERS OF THE FOLLOWING STORY WILL CONTAIN GRAPHIC SEXUAL CONTENT, GRAPHIC VIOLENCE, AND ADULT LANGUAGE. TO AVOID SPOILERS, THERE WILL NOT BE INDIVIDUAL WARNINGS FOR EACH CHAPTER.

Chapter Five: Collapse

Sterile white walls appeared on the screen. Against the back wall stood two narrow hospital cots side by side. A young unconscious boy lay on the left bed with only a blue paper gown tied to his skinny body. Another young boy sat on the cot to the right with no shirt, staring straight ahead. From the distance between him and the camera, and the grainy quality of the footage, Nancy could make out little more than a black smudge where his eyes were. His shoulders were hunched, and the edges of his lower ribs stuck out from his sides. Red, blue and green wires had been hooked up to both their heads, trailing out over the white sheets like tendrils and connecting with the boxy monitors beside each bed. Three levels of spiking lines zigzagged across the screens.

Someone adjusted the camera, giving it a slight tilt that revealed streaks of white glare on the plate of glass between them and the boys. They were filming into a separate room through a wide observation window. A man in a white lab coat passed in front of the camera so close that Nancy could only see part of his chest before he disappeared on the other side.

"August third, nineteen seventy-nine," said a deep voice dulled with exhaustion. The audio was fuzzy as he continued speaking after a brief pause. "Eight forty-seven PM. Results of Trial number one seventy-two."

The shuffling of papers could be heard off screen. What sounded like a pencil or pen rolled off something and clattered to the floor. Lines shot through the film as it crackled for a few seconds, and Nancy reached forward to lower the volume on the television.

"Subject one, the control subject, has achieved REM sleep naturally. EEG monitoring shows typical brain activity," the man said. "Subject two has not only survived the initial testing and procedure, but appears to be responding well to the temporal lobe alterations."

"I don't believe it…one seventy-two is a success," said a second, younger male voice. The words were spoken with the last of his breath.

"Subject two has undergone extensive modifications to his brain's limbic system, particularly to the hippocampus and amygdala," continued the older man. "The neurotransmitter-producing nuclei in the Pons region of the brain stem have been permanently shut down to fix the subject in a perpetual REM state."

The boy sitting on the cot hadn't moved a muscle since the tape started. He might have been a mannequin posed there with his arms hanging limply at his sides. Nancy had seen this before in the cafeteria with Kevin Murdock and in the girl's shower room with Tina. It was as if all three of their minds had been tuned to an off-air radio station.

"He is physiologically asleep while appearing to retain most of his conscious faculties, with the exception of higher-level functions such as creative problem solving and critical thinking."

He stopped speaking, leaving only the sound of pen scratching paper on a hard surface. Then he could barely be heard mumbling, "is it out of ink?" After a few seconds of rummaging: "Here, take this one."

"Thank you, sir."

More scribbling, rushed and frantic to make up for lost time.

"Jesus, we're supposed to read that later. Write neatly."

"Sorry."

The older man cleared his throat and spoke articulately for the camera's microphone. "Testing of the subject's reaction to epinephrine injections will begin after-"

He stopped short. Nancy knew they were both staring at the boy's bare chest.

So was she.

Thick red lines started to appear on the skin. They moved fluidly as if they were being drawn by an invisible finger dipped in paint. But as the camera refocused, she saw that they weren't lines at all. They were cuts. Curved lacerations split through his flesh along with straight slices and one little stab hole. The boy didn't flinch the entire time. When it was over, the words "Good job, doc" were carved into him.

A palpable discomfort fell over the men, leaving only the hum of the VCR to fill the span of silence. Thin rivulets of blood trickled from the letters and soaked red spots into the waistband of the boy's pants. The speakers built into the television set spewed out fuzzy popping sounds. Both men were still speechless after the noises cleared away. When the older man finally spoke, it was with a practiced apathy. "Stay here and continue monitoring the subjects."

The torso in the white lab coat walked by the camera again, and somewhere in the room a door opened and shut. Everything was quiet for a few minutes. Then Nancy heard deep breathing. It grew louder and more irregular before turning into desperate gasps. His throat constricted, making the air difficult to swallow. When the young man tried to exhale, it came out in shudders that ended with the first crack of a sob. Hoarse whimpers split his voice. He sniffled through his swollen nose and let out a low, despondent moan.

From the other side of the window, the boy lifted his head to look past the camera at what Nancy assumed was the young assistant. The crying stopped. After dropping his feet to the floor, the boy walked slowly towards the camera. He stood inches from the window, staring just to the left of the lens. He watched the assistant as hitched breathing filled the speakers.

"I'm sorry," the young man choked out. "It had to be somebody."

The test subject didn't move, continuing to watch whoever was behind the camera. His lips twitched and then, as if a miniature car jack had been placed between his teeth, his mouth stretched open wide. If the observation room hadn't been sound proof, Nancy was sure she would have heard the fracture cracking at the hinges of his jaw. The thick muscle of his tongue shot straight out, pulled taunt. An invisible force stretched it farther and farther until it tore loose and fell out of sight below the window. A stream of black blood flowed out of his empty, cavernous mouth.

The assistant broke down, forcing out long hard sobs through his clenched teeth. They were the cries of someone who didn't want to see but couldn't look away. Nancy heard fear and guilt and disgust churning in the back of his throat.

The boy stooped down out of view, and when he stood back up he had the tongue in his hand. He dragged it across the glass, spelling out "hold your tongue or I will, bitch" backwards in translucent red streaks. Then he put his forehead against the window and flashed a black grin. Blood caked his teeth and continued to flow over his bottom lip and down his chin like a fountain gargoyle.

The assistant tried to hush himself, but a few small whimpers escaped him as the tongue was brought up to the window again. Below the first message, the boy wrote "watch this." He turned away and started walking with perversely cartoonish steps, raising the arch of each foot to tiptoe toward the cots. He paused mid-stride and glanced back over his shoulder with that same dripping grin that made Nancy want to puke. Ragged breaths tore from the assistant's throat as he remained out of frame. The boy came to a stop by the unconscious subject who lay unaware of the bloody teeth smiling down at him.

After aiming one last glance at the assistant to be sure he was watching, the boy climbed onto the cot. He propped himself up on all fours on top of subject one. The boy's body blocked the view of the camera, but it appeared that he was gathering the colorful wires and twisting them together into a thick cord. He wrapped each end around his fists and slipped the makeshift rope under the subject's head, crossing the ends at the front of his throat. Within seconds the sleeping boy woke up, eyes popping open like corks with too much foamy pressure built up behind them. His arms battered against the boy in an attempt to shove him away, but although he appeared to be in much better shape, he couldn't defend himself. The other boy seemed to posses a strength that shouldn't have belonged to such scrawny arms and sharp, poking shoulder blades.

Not a sound could be heard through the glass. The film skipped and crackled like a silent movie. A thick, gooey strand of blood dripped from the boy's mouth, splattering subject one in the face. The battering fists loosened. His arms struck with less force and speed. They sunk back down to the thin mattress like withering vines and fell out over the edges of the cot. The dead weight of his hands pulled down on his limp wrists. The tension in his neck smoothed away, leaving a flaccid arch of bruising skin as his head lulled back.

The boy climbed off the cot and faced the assistant. There was nothing comical in his steps as he came back towards the window. He curled his hand into a fist, knocking on the thick glass as gently as a fingertip taps a fish tank. It almost sounded polite. He slipped out of frame and a few seconds later, Nancy heard the rattling of a door handle.

"Leave me alone," the assistant stammered between erratic gulps of air. "Leave me alone."

The sobs returned. Rummaging could be heard again, but this time it was desperate and messy. Pencils and pens shot out past the camera, hitting the floor like a hail of bullets as the assistant continued to dig for whatever he was looking for. Then Nancy heard the hard click of a cocking gun.

"Please just go away."

The door shook violently against its hinge-pins. Relentless doorknob twists and terrified whimpers filled the speakers. The wooden doorframe cracked under the pressure, and the door slammed open against the wall.

The assistant didn't make another sound. As the boy crossed in front of the camera lens, the words carved in his skin came into focus. Sloppy shreds of muscle frayed the edges of a few letters. The flesh had split wide enough in some places for his ribs to peek through. Slow trickles of blood still flowed from the gaping wounds until they coagulated, clinging to the boy like black gelatin. A chair scraped over the floor, and stumbling footsteps backed into the other side of the room.

"Stay away from me," the assistant warned. If his hands were shaking as much as his voice was, the barrel of the gun must have been aiming all over the place. "I swear I'll shoot. Don't take another step."

But the boy's footsteps continued without a single pause. Nancy stared at the still frame of the empty observation room and tried to decipher each tiny noise. The gun fired, embedding a stray bullet in the wall. The second one hit the ceiling. Dust and chipped paint rained down in a light sprinkle.

There was no third shot.

"Get off me," the man shouted. Something hard and metal clattered onto the floor. The speakers popped from the blast of his screams. She heard the struggle and the skid of the table legs as their bodies fell against it. The screen shook as the camera rocked on whatever propped it up. The assistant came into frame for less than a second, trying to run to the door. Nancy didn't see his face long enough to register any features, only the contortion of fear and panic in his forehead and around his eyes. Then an emaciated arm snatched the front of his throat and pulled him back out of view.

"Help! Somebody hel-" he hollered, his voice cutting off halfway through. Nancy tried not to picture the spidery white fingers curling around his throat and digging into the flesh like dough. The dead silence that follow sounded worse than anything she'd heard since the tape started. It dragged on, as if the moment were frozen and the man was trapped within it.

The black barrel of a gun emerged onto the frame from the opposite side of the room, followed by the hand holding it and then the white lab coat. Nancy exhaled, hoping that the assistant hadn't suffocated yet. The shot fired and for a moment, the audio went out. When it came back on, she heard the slow shuffle of footsteps. But it wasn't the assistant that the doctor was helping across the room. The gaunt boy walked by the camera as docile as a lamb with the Doctor's arm around him for support.

"Control yourself, Krueger. It wasn't easy to find an intern like that, and it won't be easy to replace him."

The camera remained fixed on the observation window as they passed. The dead teenager was still lying on his cot on the other side. She imagined the assistant with the same limpness in his body, slumped against the wall with a dripping red halo of splattered blood behind his head. Part of her rejected the image; she couldn't be sure he was dead because she didn't see it happen. But the film continued for another twenty minutes before the doctor came back to shut it off, and the assistant never left that room.

Nancy hit the eject button, waiting for the tape to dislodge itself from the guts of the VCR. It slid out and she grabbed it. This was exactly what she needed. As she stared down at the two rolls of film behind the clear plastic, she had to admit that what was on this tape was hard to believe. The Doctor and at least some of the hospital staff were working with Freddy.

Hand-picking children for him and placing them right into his claws.

Yanking the patient files out of the bottom drawer of the desk and gripping the tape in hand, she rushed out of the office. The hallway was still empty, and she ran without thinking about how loudly the soles of her bare feet slapped the floor. She had to get out of here.

She ran around a corner and almost tripped over her own feet as a huge orderly stepped out from a dark doorway. He looked at her and then looked straight ahead with his chest puffed out like a guard at Buckingham Palace. She thought about running back the way she'd come, but that would lead her to a dead end. Without losing too much speed or thinking too hard, she bolted past him. He didn't even blink.

She glanced down at her knuckles to be sure she wasn't asleep. The numbers were still there. Before she had time to worry about why he was acting strange, a second man emerged from an office she was rushing past. He didn't seem to care about her at all. He straightened his back and stood flat against the door.

As Nancy looked over her shoulder while passing him, she caught sight of the sky outside the window. It wasn't starry and black like it had been a little while ago. The color had lightened to a dark purple with hazy lilac clouds swirling through it. A sprinkle of glowing shapes drifted along like mutating jellyfish between the interlocking currents of air, passing from one stream into the next.

Again, she checked her hands for the numbers that anchored her to reality. Again, they were still there.

When she looked back up, doors on both sides of the hallway were opening, and staff members were coming out from each of them. But not a single one gave Nancy more than a fleeting glance. They lined the long hallway like courtyard statues.

From around the bend stepped a narrow-shouldered teenage boy in white pajamas. She recognized the crown of his fluffy brunette hair and his slender arms, although his face was tipped down.

"Glen," she called. "Glen, run!"

He didn't respond. He didn't move. She ran up to him and threw her arms around his neck, burying her face in his slight chest. The urge to cry was overwhelming, but she pushed it back down her throat. Now wasn't the time. They needed to escape before the staff snapped out of whatever trance they were in.

"Come on, Glen; we don't have a lot of time," she said, lifting her face to look at him. He lifted his head, too. But what caught her eye were his hands as he raised them from his sides. Both palms were sliced open, letting out thin streams of blood that intersected like a spider web over his fingers and pooled to droplets under his nails. He cupped her cheeks and smeared them with the hot, slimy liquid.

"What happened to you?" she asked, staring into his blue eyes. It was at that moment that she realized his eyes were supposed to be brown.

The hands clamped harder onto her cheeks, but she ripped herself away from him. As she scanned all around her, she noticed something that hadn't registered with her before. Every single member of the staff was staring at her. And all their eyes were like blue fire. The sickening feeling came over her that she was being watched by the same person from a dozen different angles, and she shuffled backwards and forwards, unsure of where to run.

From out of nowhere, she felt the sensation of hundreds of little ants crawling all over her hands. She spread her fingers out in front of her, seeing the numbers moving over her skin. New letters split from the black lines like rapidly dividing cells and shifted up toward her wrists. The numbers stayed in pairs of two as the letters spelled out an eerily familiar rhyme.

1, 2, Freddy's coming for you

3, 4, better lock your door…

The rhyme scrawled itself into her hands like a demonic tattoo. This wasn't possible. She was awake.

The faces of every nurse and orderly, and even Glen's face, began to change. Cheek bones dislodges themselves and moved to different positions. Noses morphed and elongated into sloping curves. Every scalp shed its hair, sending down a shower of locks in all lengths and shades that disintegrated to grey ash on the floor. With their bodies remaining intact, each person's face morphed into the burnt, hook-nosed dream demon. Nearly twenty Freddy Kruegers cracked their rotten grins at her, and she whipped around to find the same head sitting on Glen's shoulders.

The foundations of the building rumbled like an earthquake were splitting it down the middle. Cracks ran up the white walls like bolts of lightning, tearing through the chipping paint. Drywall rained down from the ceiling as the walls crumbled and collapsed. Nancy looked all around for a safe place to run to, but the entire building came down before she had a chance to move. She crouched and wrapped her arms over the top of her head, choking on plaster dust.

It took less than a minute for the air to clear.

Heaps of debris were left where the walls had stood, and beyond them stretched an endless wasteland. There had been nothing outside that hallway. Nothing but the dry, barren earth and the arch of the swirling purple sky above. When she brought her eyes back down from the expanse, there was only one Freddy standing a few yards away.

"But I'm awake," she cried, taking a hesitant step back as he closed in on her. His shoulders dipped like a cougar as he walked, giving the impression that he might pounce at any moment. Unlike the replicas, he had his hat tipped over his brow, and he pushed it up at the rim so she could see the sick delight in his eyes.

"You're not awake, bitch. You're not asleep either," he purred. "You're dead."

"Fuck you," she screamed.

He stretched the burn scars on his face with a wide grin, eyeing her body from head to toe. "We'll get to that part, don't worry."

As he took in the curve of her waist and her bottom lip that trembled no matter how hard she tried to stop it, he wondered how many more times he was going to do this. It hadn't been as satisfying as he thought it'd be. Not as satisfying as the first time. Erasing her memories and hunting her down again was like watching a movie he'd already seen.

But some movies are worth a second watch.

.

.

.

To be continued…

A/N: TA-DAAAAA! I hope that answered some of your questions (and left you with some new ones). I'll have the next chapter posted within 2 weeks. In the mean time, please leave a review. Scientists have discovered that a single review can add up to three years onto the lifespan of a fanficiton writer. It's true. I swear.

Stop looking at me like that.

Stop it.