by A. Eggleston
Jill gasped, ducked down to the ground, but kept her hands on the edge of the counter. Her whole body tensed up, she felt as if she couldn't move even if she tried. Her mouth gaped open, waiting to scream but nothing would come out. She was frozen. Her breathing became heavier, and her heart started beating out of her chest. This isn't right. she thought. I woke up, I know I did. "No." she begged while shaking her head in disbelief. "Please, please. This can't be real. It isn't." she tried to convince herself. "It isn't real. It isn't real." she breathed.
Ever so slowly, Jill stood back up. She didn't open her eyes fully, if that hideous creature was still there, she didn't want to see it again. She looked in the mirror, and saw nothing but her scared reflection. She breathed normally again. But, she was more confused than ever. Jill turned away and buried her face in her hands, she felt like crying. "God, what's happening to me?"
As Jill's reflection left the frame of the mirror, another person came into view. On the other side of the mirror, appeared a dark, shady figure. A figure with his head tilted, grinning, soaking in the torment of an innocent girl. It was none other than Freddy. Smooth and quietly, like a thief in the night, he reached out his right arm, the very one that sported his metal-plated glove. It was slow the way he extended his arm out of the mirror frame, and through the other side. Freddy reached out over the sink and towards the beautiful Jill, whose back was to him. He flicked the knife on his index finger up, and tapped her on the shoulder.
Jill felt something sharp poking her on her right shoulder. She sucked in her breath and spun around as fast as she could, causing her damp, stringy, hair to fly in her face. The first thing she saw was Freddy, with the corners of his mouth twisted into a scowl, and the blades of his glove a hair away from her face. "Freddy!" she realized. She felt like her heart had shot up to her throat. Her legs rattled and her knees knocked against each other.
Freddy swept his knife across Jill's throat, slitting it from ear to ear. Her dark blood poured out of her like a waterfall, spilling on her, and staining her body with red.
She tried clutching her throat to make the bleeding stop, but he had cut her too deep. Jill started gagging, choking on her own fluid. There was nothing she could do, except to watch him as he took pleasure in her pain.
Freddy grabbed the top of her head, and opened his mouth slightly, revealing his sharp, fanged, set of teeth. Before he killed her, Freddy's eyes transformed from its typical blue color, to a vapid, soulless white, and then back again.
"Vanity's a sin, bitch"
As soon as the words left his mouth, Freddy pulled her head forward, making her head collide with the glass. Jill's head crashed into the mirror, causing it to break into a hundred shards.
Jill's lifeless body dropped to the floor. The white tile was now stained with the pool of blood that was spreading out from around her. Large, jagged, shards of glass had become lodged into her forehead, her temple, the outer corner of her left eye, and her collar bone. Several smaller shards had been pierced all over various areas of her face.
Her blue eyes remained open, staring up into space. Absolutely no life lingered inside of her.
At least, it wouldn't for much longer.
Chapter Twenty One
Laying back on the headboard of his unmade bed, Steven tried, sloppily at best, to play along with the album that had been blasting through his speakers for well over an hour. He was determined to get all of the riffs and notes down exactly, even if it meant shredding his fingertips until they bled.
The walls in his room were white, but it was hard to tell from all of the posters that had been taped over nearly every square inch. A faded White Zombie poster covered the bedroom door. By his window, were posters of Dokken and Alice Cooper. The one with Alice Cooper was his favorite. He placed it right across from his bed, so he could look at it for as long as he wanted. It was an image from 1973, with Alice wearing a top hat, covering his ratty black hair, and holding a cane. Even under the dark, spider-like eyeliner, his eyes seemed to follow whoever was looking at it around the room.
The shelves above his disheveled bed, and even his computer desk were laden with all sorts of figurines and memorabilia. Ranging from something simple as a snow globe, the items on the shelf above Steven became more obscure as they went on. He had action figures from comic books, and game cartridges that were well over twenty years old. Doom and Mortal Kombat were stacked on his computer desk, collecting dust. They still worked, so in his mind, there was no reason to give up a perfectly good game.
Steven wore a black t-shirt that wrinkled as he held his guitar close to his chest. He hunched over it, getting a close look to make sure his fingers were in the right place. His guitar was dark blue with a few nicks and scratches on it, with a "V" shaped body. Steven had a small amplifier plugged into it. He had it placed next to him, to the side of his bed.
He had the song set on "Repeat". After the fifth listen, he was past the frustration of still not getting it right, and simply mumbled the lyrics to "Steven" by Alice Cooper as he fumbled over the chords. It was his favorite song. He knew his parents didn't intend to name him after a song, but he liked to think of it that way.
"You've on-ly lived a min-ute of your life..." Steven mumbled along with the song as he tried to mimic the piano arrangement on his guitar. "I must be dreeeam-ing, please stop screeeam-ing..." he felt relieved once the music slowed down and faded. Then, Steven felt a rush of adrenaline race through his body when the music swelled up louder into the chorus. It was his favorite part. "STEEE-VEN!" As he tried to play the chords that followed, he messed up. "Damn." he said quietly to himself, then resumed. "STEEE-VEN!" He sang a little louder. "I hear my name/STEEE-VEN!/ Is some-one cal-ling me?/ I hear my name!"
He was about to sing, "STEEE-VEN!" again, when he heard his name actually being called from outside. "Oh," Steven broke out of the little bubble in his mind. "someone really is calling my name." It was his sister, Jill. He felt a little embarrassed. He wondered how long she had been yelling at him before he finally realized it was her. What does she want now? he thought. "I'm not turning it down again, she's just gonna have to deal with it." he muttered. "STEVEN!!!" he heard her shout from behind the door. She didn't sound irritated at all. From the sound of her voice, she was screaming like someone was trying to kill her.
Without a second thought, Steven pushed the guitar away from his lap, shoving it to the edge of the bed. He practically jumped off of his bed and ran to the door, Alice's lyrics fading as he left the room, "That ic-y breath that whis-pers screams of pain..."
Steven slammed the door behind him. He didn't want any more noise distracting him. Oh, God... Steven worried. She could've been screaming at me this whole time, and I never would have heard her. "What if she's hurt?" he wondered. "Or worse? No, not worse. Please don't be worse. Please don't be worse."
The bathroom door was closed. Steven stood in the middle of the hallway, staring at the crack under the door, searching for Jill's shadow. "Jill?" he asked, hoping that she was alright. "You okay?" As soon as he spoke, the screaming returned. He heard his sister scream bloody murder on the other side of that door. He couldn't see her, but he could tell that she was in agonizing pain. There was no one else in there, at least, he couldn't tell if there was. But he heard loud thuds, like someone was taking Jill's head and slamming it against the wall.
"AAAAAH!!!" Jill screamed again right before a crash, it appeared to be the sound of objects falling to the floor.
It made Steven jump and wince his eyes. He was frozen in place.
"NO!" he heard Jill plead. "NOOOOO!!!" she screamed.
And then he knew that someone else was there. He heard another voice. It was low, almost like Jill's, but distorted and just...evil. "YOU WILL!!!" the voice insisted. "YOUR SOUL IS HIS NOW!!!"
Steven forced himself to move. He ran to the door and tried turning the knob, but it was locked. He rammed against it with his shoulder until he finally budged it open. The door broke open. Steven w
as ready to fend off whatever hideous creature that was terrorizing his sister. When he entered the room, he saw no one there other than Jill, who was lying on the floor.
Jill was absolutely still and silent. Her skin was pale and gray. She was soaking in a pool of her own blood on the bathroom floor, which was covered in broken glass. Jill's face and neck were covered in glass shards. And her eyes remained open, staring at nothing.
Steven stood above his sister's dead body. Every part of him had gone numb. His mouth gaped in shock. His heart dropped, along with his knees, to the floor. His eyes began to sting from tears. Steven tried to speak, but the sheer trauma rendered him incapable from uttering a single word. The best that he could do at that moment was to allow short, unintelligible noises to escape his mouth.
Her gray shirt was now covered in wet, red, splatters. Steven felt the warm, thick blood on his palms as he propped Jill up and wrapped his arms around her. Her head, spiked with glass, tilted all the way back as he held her. Her glassy eyes avoided his, staring in the direction of the sink beside them.
He cradled her in his arms. He propped her head up so he could look at her face once more. He patted her damp hair as he spoke to the corpse. "I'm sorry." He whimpered. "I'm so sorry."
Steven looked away from her face. He decided that he didn't want the freshest memory of his sister to be of her mutilated body. He only wanted to remember her as she was before. "You were calling for help, and I couldn't hear you." There were no words to describe the level of shame he felt for himself. "I could have saved you..." He couldn't help but remind himself that Freddy killed Jill. His sister. His best friend. "Fucking bastard." he cursed.
Even from across the hall, the music was still faintly audible. The noise flowed through his room and entered Steven's ears. Alice's words over the music resonated with him. "I don't want to feel you die..."
The soft, short, chords coming from the piano only elevated his grief.
"But if that's the way that God has planned you/I'll put pennies on your eyes."
He held Jill's lifeless body closer, pleading, "Please don't go."
"Aaaand it will goooo away."
Steven had had enough with the noise. Even though he knew it would do nothing, he felt the compulsion to shout. "Shut up!" He tried to shut it out. He could have just turned it off, but didn't want to leave her.
"You've on-ly lived a min-ute of your life."
Evelyn had lost track of time. She didn't know whether she had been driving for five minutes, or ten, or possibly an hour. She felt as if she was on the verge of losing her mind. Her panic level had risen for every second that Jill didn't call her back.
After circling around the block to make sure the police had not been there already, Evelyn felt it was safe enough to park by the street in front of their house.
She left the car running. The door opened wide, and as soon as her feet touched the ground, Evelyn sprinted across the lawn. She jumped over the porch steps and started pounding on the front door. "JILL!!!" she called, oblivious to her friend's fatal encounter with Freddy. "STEVEN!!!" she continued to rapidly knock on the door.
From out of the wall of silence Steven had mentally build around him, he heard someone knocking on the door downstairs. "OPEN THE DOOR!!!" he recognized Evelyn's voice.
Gently and carefully, he set Jill back down on the floor, where he had found her. Steven turned in the opposite direction as he stood back up. He hurried through the hallway, and down the stairs.
By then, the song was already starting to fade. It had become much quieter, but Steven was able to hear one last line before he entered the living room.
"I must be dreaming..."
Steven was gone. All that was left was Jill's stiffening corpse. She laid there, still. Rigid. Unmoving. Her empty blue eyes, while looking in the direction of the wall, stared at nothing.
Her eyes, her beautiful, sky blue eyes, had by then faded away. All color in her eyes had been replaced by a thick cloud of white. Only when her expression was truly empty, did her body begin to move.
Jill's soul was gone from the earth. It was currently being ripped and torn apart, in the malevolent clutches of Freddy Krueger. Her body was now inhabited by the spirits once trapped in the Book of the Dead, but now free to roam through the world of the living.
Slowly, Jill raised her left hand, bringing it closer to her face. She opened her hand and grabbed the large glass shard that had been stuck in the outer corner of her left eye. With each second that passed, her hand became bonier, her skin flakier, and her fingernails grew longer. Even her skin changed seamlessly every second. Her entire body and face turned pale, almost blue in spots, as if she had already been dead for several hours. She pulled the shard from her flesh, causing blood to expel from her wounds at an alarming rate. The color of her blood changed from dark red, to a slimy green, and back again.
The front door flew open. Evelyn was glad that she didn't have to call for him again. She knew that they couldn't waste time, and that they needed to move quickly.
She didn't know how else to break it to him that Freddy had killed Cooper, so she just
came right out with it.
Steven was still in a state of shock. He saw Evelyn at the front door, and noticed she was in a panic. He figured that maybe she was on her way here and heard the noise. He decided to just tell her.
In unison, they blurted roughly the same thing.
"Cooper's dead." said Evelyn.
"Jill's dead." said Steven.
Both of them looked down, and noticed that the other was stained with blood. Steven held his palms, still covered in Jill's blood, out in front of him. Evelyn had Cooper's blood splattered on the side of her face, and a few spots on her purple shirt.
The blood on Evelyn was now dried and darkened, but she noticed that the blood on Steven's hands were still fresh. She assumed that Jill hadn't become possessed yet, but she needed to find her before she turned into a Deadite.
Evelyn stepped inside the house.
Steven followed her as she searched through the room, looking for her body. "Freddy killed them." Steven still couldn't believe it.
She turned to face him. "Where is she?" asked Evelyn.
"Upstairs." he answered. "But--" he was going to ask her why she wanted to know, but Evelyn had already turned away from him.
Evelyn headed up the stairs. She intended to make sure Jill didn't come back.
"Wait!" he opposed. "What are you doing?"
"Steven," she said sternly. "show me where she is."
"Why?" he sounded confused. "I mean, I don't think you need to see her like that."
"Because she's not dead yet!" she shouted. "Now, get up here!"
Steven led her up the stairs to show her the body. He tried not to break down as he directed her to the room where Freddy killed her. First, his sister. Now, his friend. It was too much.
They both stepped in front of the entrance to the bathroom. Jill's body was gone. All that was left was the shape of her silhouette surrounded by her blood. Steven's eyes widened and he felt shocked and frustrated at the same time. He had no idea what was going on.
He turned to Evelyn, pointing at the ground where he last saw Jill. "She was right there!" he said, panicked. "I swear to God, she was right there!"
Evelyn looked at Steven, and grabbed his arms to get his full attention. "Steven, listen to me!" she said. She told him in the calmest manner that she could muster. "I know you're not going to like what I have to say, but we have to kill her."
Steven's expression changed from fear to outright anger. "What?!" he thought she had become insane. "Have you lost your damn mind?!" He had laid down the line for her, adamantly refusing. "No, Evelyn. I can't do that." He ran his hands across his dark brown hair.
All Evelyn could think about was slapping him across the face. He didn't even realize the danger they were both in. "Stop being so--" She looked at Steven's face. She could tell he was confused or discomforted by something. "What is i
t?" she asked him, disregarding her previous remark.
Steven felt something in his hair and he touched it. He lowered his hand in front of his face to see what it was.
They both examined what was on Steven's hand. When Steven rubbed it with his fingers, he noticed how incredibly slimy it was. It was thick, red, and dripping down to the floor.
It landed on the top of his head, so it must have come from the ceiling. Is this...blood? How could this have come from up there? That was when he felt more of it drip down on the top of his head.
Steven and Evelyn both looked up at the same time, directing their gaze to the ceiling. What they saw was worse than what they could have imagined.
Crawling on the ceiling, on her hands and feet, her limbs bent and contorted resembling a spider, Jill hissed at them. She seemed to defy gravity as she suspended from the ceiling. Her back was facing them, but her head had been turned all the way around to look at them. Her mouth gaped open, expelling the same blood and saliva that dripped on Steven's head.
At first, they barely recognized that it was Jill. Her face had turned white as paper. Her hair was gray. She had removed the glass from her face, and was now covered in black and dark red lacerations all over. Jill's blank eyes were bloodshot, and the skin on her hands and legs had black veins all over, resembling spider webs across her body. The corners of her mouth were locked in a permanent, upward smile, and the inside of her mouth was soaking wet from the bright, red, blood.
"What's up, little brother?" She cackled. Then, in a movement so quick, the sound of her neck snapping made Steven and Evelyn cringe, Jill flipped her body over so that it was realigned with her head. She hissed and dropped down. She landed on top of Steven, causing him to fall on the floor.
