Morphine isn't erasing the consequences of Jason's sins for him, strong as it is, and Emily gets sick, and then sicker, losing her appetite and becoming feverish. Jason uses the power of rage and fantastic genetics to survive any and all injury, no matter how severe, but that medicine can't be applied to other people. What to do, what to do. It's planting time for weed, not harvesting time, and this is not the sort of thing solved with a scattershot request for drugs, or the application of cream. The medical books suspect pneumonia, the great catch all, but it could also be a baby thing, puerperal fever, the spiteful killer of women, especially women belonging to powerful men of property, like Jason.

The situation becomes so painful that Emily tearfully begs him to let her go to town, promising that she won't run or tell, that she ran because she was scared of something she saw at the lake, she'll leave the children with him and pop into a doctor's office or something for a quick check up, and then come straight back, he must know she will. Her skin is so pale and clammy, with such dark rings around her hollow eyes, that a corpse could be speaking to him, a corpse could be clinging to him, begging for mercy. Nothing new there, but still, he knows the difference between dead and alive, whatever contrary notions fools might dream up. Why do people believe he's an idiot because he refuses to speak to them? He refuses to speak to them because he knows they're idiots. Less than idiots. Animals. Hmpf. Funny how pride works. Always projecting.

While he's brooding over the many trespasses committed against himself, Emily is climbing him, using the bed to boost her height, her lips pressing fire into his cheek, her weak arms forming a noose around his neck, the chain attached to her wrist dragging more synthetic fibre out of his well worn coat. It feels like being restricted, and being restricted feels like being under someone's control, and being under someone's control feels like-

Jason

Jason

My sweet boy

What did mother tell you?

Dead people don't come back to life, and dead people aren't warm, and dead people can't kiss and hug and make grandbabies for Mother.

Walking into town is not clandestine enough, and bringing strangers into his domain is unacceptable, so to the vehicle graveyard he goes. It's a trek halfway around the forest, into the mountains, where lazier, or more intelligent folk do not like to go. Woods are one thing, mountainous woods another.

This particular graveyard is a flooded quarry overlooked by a dense growth of trees, a convenient spot to send some of the bigger vehicles to their eternal rest, vehicles such as ambulances and buses, trucks and SUVs, all pushed off the edge, down into the deep placid green. Recently a fancy Land Rover with tinted glass found itself here, but has yet to take the final plunge, as Jason had been too busy plundering his woman to finish plundering it. Climbing into the expensive smelling driver's seat, he takes a moment to pour contempt on everything surrounding him, all the dials, plastic and leather, these odes to a normal life not his own. Not just a normal life, but a wealthy one, rich in praise, rich in love. They mock his poor efforts. Jason Voorhees has no mortgage or car loan. Jason Voorhees can never be normal. The snarl that makes his face far more deformed than it needs be, twists to be even more pronounced than usual. Brain parasites, definitely.

After loading Emily, children, machete, and hatchet into the car, Jason walks back around to his side, pausing for a moment to limber up in preparation for pretending to be just your average Joe legally utilising the taxpayer's road network. Just your average family man taking his wife to town. Nothing to see here. Pretending to be a licensed vehicle operator is going to be the least of the challenges coming his way today. Down goes the hood of his jacket, over his head, in case tinted glass is not enough to stop people inciting a massacre via their own inability to mind their own business.

"You look nice today." Emily says, very softly, her eyes fever bright. Jason does look nice, that is, he looks clean. She's done so much tenderising damage to him that he glances at her, an appropriately confused expression swirling within a fierce eye. The look makes her giggle, which makes Kevin laugh, which makes the newborn snuffle, which makes Jason groan, a twinge starting up in his side.

The trip is fairly uneventful, only once does Jason get pulled over for 'driving like a god-forsaken maniac!', but as soon as the born and bred Crystal Lake cop gets a clearish look through a centimetre of window as it rolls down, he sprints away, diving into his vehicle and executing a chaotic U-turn in the middle of the road, ending up ploughing down the kerb and through the underbrush.

The little town of Crystal Lake is a dream come true for the rural minded and the peace seekers. The beauty lovers and the bird watchers. It's never grown significantly, and it's never died back too far, maintaining a status quo set in the late Fifties. It possesses an alluring charisma, a sticky glue that prevents the youth leaving for New York and other bigger and brighter prospects. Few people ever get away who stay too long within its borders. Emily is not from here, like most of Jason's victims, but wandered in from outside. Even Jason himself is not from here, that's the most ironic part.

None of these ponderings percolate within Emily's mind. For her there is no sense of supernatural peril, as Jason is all too real, and no different to other men she's known, his desires and dislikes are all too familiar, he simply operates at a higherlower level, no restraints placed on him. A wild dog, but still a dog. She doesn't think about what it means to bear children within the nexus of this sinister yet superficially beautiful land, to breed them from the rotten seed of the blood soaked earth itself, Jason being its grim avatar. Last time she even slightly considered the true face of her situation, she had her worst freak out ever, and she feels too ill to think much anyway. Things will be as they will be, she can only do her best.

Choosing a spot directly across from the doctor's office on the main street despite his preference for stealth, Jason parks as aggressively as he can while using an automatic transmission. Forgoing a verbal warning, he instead breathes heavily and levels on Emily and offspring his most frightening bout of eye contact yet, his better eye open as wide as it goes, his jaw tensing as if he's longing to bite down on something soft and tender.

For once Emily is too exhausted for his threats to add much to her burden. Too exhausted to feel the fear rushing through her veins. An insulating blanket of morphine and fatigue does dreadful things, temporarily, to her captor's fright factor. While she's under its protection, he's pathetic. A big ugly man mad at the world that mostly doesn't believe or know he even exists. He murders and rapes and tortures people, but that's the most he can do. The 'joy" he takes in what he does is pure suffering, and no one feels even a tenth of the pain that he deals to himself with every blow. And after this life, hell, where pain never ends.

"I'll not tell them anything, and I'll come back as soon as I get checked out, I promise." says Emily, her smile ever so slightly twisted, ever so slightly mocking. Ugly man, uglier on the inside. His touch doesn't defile anyone but himself. Since she's leaving her children with him, there's no possible way she's going anywhere else, which Jason must admit. He grunts, angrily staring out of every window.

While she's unstrapping the carrier that contains her nameless daughter, he stops her, jerking his chin at the other side of the street, then he turns into a reddish lump of stone, ceasing to move except for his eyes, which flick from sun struck car, to happily ambling person, to flower, to building, incessantly. Every part of him still except for the fingers of his right hand, which rhythmically tap the flesh of a thick thigh.

Climbing out of the Land Rover is an ordeal for a small, sick woman carrying a baby, and inevitably attracts the attention of the sorts of people one always finds hanging about the centres of small towns. The car itself is fancy, but dirty, scratched and trailing foliage, running out of state plates, not the sort that is really supposed to go off road, and the girl that emerges from it has the demeanour and looks of a mouse that's been under siege by a savage cat for the last two years, her clothing faded, her body worn down to bare survival necessities. She's still pretty, but a sheet white, haunted look films her taut features, and her eyes appear too large for her head, making her ethereal, almost alien looking. The loafers lose interest, assuming she's a meth head.

Being out in the human world again is not like swimming or bicycling, you can forget how to do it, and Emily struggles, first with crossing the street, then in entering the doctor's office. Jason gave her money, but she's not sure when one is supposed to apply it, or how to receive help. She trips up the short cluster of steps to the old green door and barely manages to save herself by clutching at an old green window, the people waiting their turn inside, looking out at her the same way she's looking in at them. Itchy weight travels over her, setting her skin on fire wherever it goes. Can't be the one to cause Jason to get out of that car. No no no. That's his little slice of home, and if he gets out, the water of Crystal Lake will pour out with him.

Scurrying through the entrance finally, she shuffles over to reception, asking for help, she just had a baby, probably before she was supposed to, and now she feels bad. No, not sad, bad, bad like she's dying. The receptionist tells her to wait.

The waiting room is quaint, no different to most other waiting rooms, but given warmth by wood walls painted light green and white, artsy watercolour prints, and leafy pot plants. An old TV on a wall serves the needs of most patients, and a table full of old magazines serves the rest. Under the little table rests a child's crayon drawing of a bloody hockey mask, an all too familiar name scrawled underneath in huge red letters. Emily would never put down the artistic expression of a child under normal circumstances, but in this case she puts her foot down, literally, placing a foot on top of the drawing, blotting it from sight. The other patients peer at her now and then, a mix of older and younger people, mostly waiting for flu vaccines and repeat prescriptions. They sit together, know each other. A longing for a friend, for her family, for anyone kind at all, stabs her in the guts and twists, bringing tears to her eyes. All at once a sob begins travelling up her throat, and to prevent anyone seeing, she snatches a mag off the table, shielding her face.

Magazines, when was the last time she held a magazine? So shiny and smooth, happy people all over the glossy pages. What are they talking about? Personal branding and the right hair colour for your skin tone. The right hair colour for your skin tone is whatever Jason tells you it is. How to navigate office politics. She could give a seminar on this. What you do is you don't piss off the one with the machete. Top ten hiking destinations. Wherever there's no snow and no trees and no lakes. She puts that magazine down and picks up a mother and baby one, reading that till her name is called.

"So what seems to be the problem, Miss?" An older male doctor looks at her over the tops of his old fashioned glasses, his voice rising on the word 'miss' when he notices the baby shaped lump attached to her chest. His gaze snaps to her hands, but discovers no ring. Hmm. The problem is explained as best as Emily can, because, naturally, Jason did not gift her with the words designating his own suspicions as to what exactly is afflicting her. Luckily, this doctor is not a total fool, and does more than take blood tests, taking her temperature, listening to her heart and breathing, and even looking at the baby. When he wants to do a more complete examination however, Emily refuses. Nope, not on your life. A hand floats up to cover the scar below her lip.

"Miss, I suspect you have postpartum fever, in which case you're very ill, and you need to go to hospital."

"I can't do that, I need some medicine." It's not a good idea, but Emily can't stop herself from repeatedly glancing at the window, unhelpfully blinded. Jason gave her no time frame. She knows he's very patient, but hunting is an activity. Sitting in a car is not.

"Why can't you go to hospital? Where did you have the baby? At home?"

"I, uh, I don't have health insurance." She did, but that was two years ago…Two years? Has it really been two years? It feels like two minutes.

"Hmm." The doctor thinks he knows what's going on here. She doesn't look like an undocumented immigrant, whatever that looks like, but you never can tell. As is all too common, this one appears to have fallen into disfavour with the child's barbaric father, going by the fractured ribs and ghosts of old bruises, but it's not his place to make recommendations on that issue. That's for the psychiatrists. And the police. "I can give you a course of antibiotics, but it may not be enough if you have complications, or something more. I highly recommend you visit a hospital or antenatal clinic, especially as you say the baby is premature. What is her name by the way? She's unusually large for her age."

"I'll take the antibiotics please."

Sustained refusal to answer his questions sparks even greater suspicion in the man's mind, but of a darker sort than the former one. The woman definitely has a fever, but it may not be the result of childbirth, it might be the ribs. Trafficking is, unfortunately, a thing, but one can't go around accusing random women of it without more evidence. He checks his notes, placing a red pen underneath the first and last name given him. He writes and hands her the prescription, then stands up. "Do you have a means to get home?"

"Um, yeah."

"Outside?"

"Uhh-"

"I'll walk you, you're a bit wobbly."

"That's okay, I can manage, thanks."

"I insist."

All the while she's paying, shakily unrolling notes from an elastic banded bundle that emerges from the pocket of her hoody, an act that does not lessen the physician's suspicions in the least, Emily tries to think her way out of this. Jason is like a rabid dog when angry, but he can exert immense self control…still, one literally never knows with him. How to lose a person in the space of fifty feet? She's no Rambo. There'll be no leaping, dodging, or explosions.

While waiting for her change, a couple of stereotypical hillbillies in denim dungarees, no shirts, and baseball caps barge through the door, arguing loudly. Their rough faces, raggedy hair, bad teeth, and similarity to how Jason sometimes dresses, unavoidably endears them to Emily, and makes her hate them at the same time, which, when she notices this occurring, makes her even more nauseated than she already is. That man ruins things even when he's not present.

"I keep gettin' these weirdo requests and I'm tellin' you fella, it's turnin' my bones to water, I can't do it no more. It ain't worth it. I'm already riskin' my neck." says one, clattering over to a chair and falling into it, apparently in possession of a routine appointment.

"The money's good. You can't give that up. What would ya momma think?"

"Look, there's infinite money in the world. They prints the stuff. I can get it anytime. I can't get a new neck. An she wouldn't like what I reckon's goin' on." The men exchange a loaded stare, before noticing the doctor. "Ey, Doc. I'm here on time, see?"

"Be with you in a moment, Mr Wyatt." The doctor gently ushers Emily towards the door, taking her arm when she stumbles over a magazine one of the hillbillies knocked to the floor.

They grin at each other, missing teeth adding character. "See that? He called me 'Mister'."

In helping Emily across the street, the doctor has no idea of the hidden loading bar in the background, which steadily climbs, and which denotes the percentage likelihood of him losing his life, either right now, or at some time in the very near future. Jason is not your typical wuss ghost, he is not bound to his place of haunting. He will follow your ass wherever you go. The scarlet bar jumps whenever his gaze lands on the hand holding fast to his woman's arm. It leaps almost ninety-five percent of the way full when the passenger side door opens, and then lowers slightly when Kevin makes a funny noise and Emily climbs in, baby still attached to her chest, piece of paper in her hand. She also can't see the bar, but she senses its presence perfectly well, smiling sweetly at Jason before turning to get rid of the man assisting her. "So I just need go to a pharmacy for this?"

"Yes, but I repeat, you ought to go to a hospital. Postpartum fever is not something to mess around with. A failure to take it seriously would constitute abuse." His voice rises, pointedly. From his position in the sunlight, it's very difficult to make much of the hulking shape in the driver's seat, but what he does see confirms his presuppositions. A monstrous brute, a criminal, savage hands, hood down, weird mask….and is that...an axe? It is an axe, glinting from its spot in the stripped down centre console. As he watches, one of the previously suspected but now confirmed maniac's hands slithers over to it, thick fingers curling round the haft. Time to go. Time to go was five minutes ago.

Seeing what's happening from the reflection in the doctor's glasses, Emily reaches back and snuggles her chauffeur, rolling to place her hip on his hand, the top of the newborn's fuzzy head invading Jason's vision. "Okaythanksbye. Please close the door." she says. The door slams, and locks, the doctor dashing back across the street, lab coat flying behind him.

The same thing occurs at the pharmacy, with the difference that no one risks their and the collective town's life by walking Emily out to the car. The girl may be captive in an impossibly horrific situation, but she still finds a way to be a woman like other women, asking Jason if she can buy something for the children and herself, thereby being given a grunted carte blanche to spend his money unsupervised, possibly the most stupid thing he's ever done. Since money has never meant anything to him, and the only time it did was when he was using it way back when as a child to buy sweets and other pocket money worthy crap, it doesn't make him extra angry when she returns with shopping bags full. Sweets, baby stuff, feminine care products, hair products, first aid supplies, his and hers underwear, food, toys, and even something fun for him, that being new candles suitable for all one's home altar needs. Upon receiving this thoughtful present, Jason reacts no differently than usual, sleepily staring at Emily, contempt very much implied. He stuffs the candles into a pocket, the very lightest shade of pink darkening what facial skin is visible.