starry eyes ✮ slashers.

chapter 018.

eighteen. Are you scared of the dark?

          Her skin burns like a wildfire, perspiration across her temples, blush crowding her cheeks. Her eyes flutter open and she is not where she should be. Her head aches, she brings it into her hands and carefully sits up. There's a poodle of water by her feet and she moves to the side, standing and wincing as her head goes fuzzy.

Her surroundings are barely illuminated, but what is has a red glow that beats down on her. It feels awfully reminiscent of a sauna. But a creepy one.

The ceiling is high, she can barely see it, but pipes stretch and line the walls, telling her it goes further than meets the eye. She carefully moved past the corner of the clearing she was in, passing a big chunky metal cylinder emitting heat. A boiler, why is she in a boiler room?

Before she has chance to form anymore questions, there's the sound of metal screeching that rings through her skull and she clutches her head painfully. Pressing her back into the wall to escape it, her heart drops when she feels 'the wall' press into her back.

Lyra let's out a small yell and runs away, only turning back to catch a glimpse of a silhouetted man wearing a fedora hat, his hand adoring long metal blades.

"Harry?" She yells, turning a corner in fright, praying this is a hallucination and her boyfriend will be on the other side waiting for her. There's a cackle, a malevolent laugh that stretches around every bend, clinging to every pope as it reaches her and she cries out in fear.

She ticks herself into a corner, the metal walls burning her skin ever-so-slightly as she waits. For something, anything to happen.

"My, my, you're a pretty little thing." A sinister voice calls from the shadows, that very same fedora hat peaking out under the red light. Lyra swallows thickly, tears silently crawling down her cheeks.

She blinks and that's all it takes for him to be in front of her, staring down at her intently. His skin is textured and torn, burnt badly and his brown fedora is angled down slightly, to hide this deformity perhaps?

He wears a red and green Christmas sweater and a pair of loosely fitted chinos with combat boots. An unusual outfit for a terrifying man, but it manages to swirl Lyra's Stomach uncomfortably.

"You're mine, now, little girl." He promises her with malice, flashing a perverted smile, allowing the tips of his blades to curl under her jaw, the pressure forcing her head to tilt and meet his eyes.

He hums, inching closer to her until she's able to smell his burnt flesh, his tongue darts out to taste her misery. He turns and lets her go, eyes falling shut from pleasure of the taste of her tears.

"You're scared." He chuckles, turning back to face her, she blinks again and he's closer than ever before, all she can see is him. "Am i scary?" He asks in a voice, filled with too much spite to have any resemblance to that of a humans.

Lyra chokes on a small sob, her body shaking in fright.

"Don't be scared, little Angel. I'm Freddy Krueger, I wouldn't harm a fly." He speaks sarcastically, loving the sound of his own voice as he taunts her, his ears flooded with the sound of her rapid heart-beat. How pretty.

"What a shame your psychotic boyfriend isn't here to save you now. Or the other one, or the other two. But in fact, I think the other two won't be around at all, for much longer." He finds himself hilarious, cackling as he sees a flash of realisation in her eyes as she remembers all that's happening.

"Where am I?" She asks, brushing past him in an attempt to search for a way out, he follows closely behind her, admiring how quickly she'd swallowed her emotions. But he could taste the fear on his tongue and boy was it sweet.

"You're in the dreamworld, good luck getting out." Freddy tells her, sat on a boiler as she passes him, into a room of sorts, still filled with pipes and chains and steam. But at least now it didn't feel like the walls were going to suffocate her.

"But it feels real." Lyra mumbles to herself, knocking on the metal wall, cursing and rubbing her knuckles. It feels so thick, the metal must go on for miles.

Freddy can't help himself, letting out a long string of laughs at her.

"Dreams are real, little girl." Freddy tells her, moving to stand behind her. She spins around, trapped between him and the wall and looks down, her hope lost and her thoughts rapid.

"Are you going to kill me?" Lyra asks quietly, fearing she'd survived four killers in her lifetime and she'd be taken out by a fedora wearing dream demon. That didn't feel very fair.

Freddy tilts his head down, his claw lifting her chin once more. He looks into her eyes, searching for something, she doesn't know what. But he seems to finds it and shrugs.

"I'd love to but I can't." He pouts as though she was supposed to be hurt about the revelation she'd live. "There's a reason the pathetic killers you know haven't killed you, Lyra." He speaks arrogantly, hearing her name in his sinful tone bringing her discomfort. "And I don't understand it yet, but when I do, i'm going to be the one that ends you."

Lyra's eyes well with tears. She doesn't think she deserves this, what had she done to make this happen? She doesn't care the others are killers, she cares for them, they have good hearts, but this man doesn't have a heart, or a soul.

So why can't he kill her?

"It's time for you to wake up now, discover the mess you've caused in your world. I'll see you tonight, little one. Freddy's waiting." He tells her with a wide grin, the blade on his index nipping her skin ever so slightly and his laughs ring through her mind until she opens her eyes once more.

Brahms tilts his head at her rapid breaths as she sits up and he approaches her from the corner of her room slowly, finger wiping the blood that'd formed from the cut on her jaw.

"Why Lyra bleed?"