Anger

A familiar set of footsteps suddenly came from the doorway. Sensing something, I struggled to turn my head and watched the last dark figure walk in. My eyes went wide. I never would have imagined it was Jason. He was even wearing his hockey mask, along with a completely incongruous suit.

He simply walked in and watched me coldly, as though I were something insignificant. That icy gaze stunned me, and then I was pinned firmly to the hospital bed.

But something even more devastating followed. My mother turned and leaned affectionately against him. Jason put his arm around her shoulders, their intimate body language seeming to convey a different kind of relationship.

The sight completely shattered my defenses. I struggled wildly, shouting Jason's name. If this was a nightmare, it was far too real. But all I could do was stare wide-eyed, breath rasping in my throat.

"Goodbye, my son," that woman said, her gaze both contemptuous and pitying.

"Perhaps I'll bring your little brother to visit you..."

She even stroked her flat stomach. As the liquid in the syringe flowed into the veins in my arm, my vision grew increasingly blurred. Finally, I was dragged along like a dead dog and lifted to the window. My last glimpse had already blurred into nothing but patches of color, and I vaguely saw two faces press together.

With a piercing scream, I jolted awake from the dream, ice-cold and drenched in sweat. Then came uncontrollable retching. I leaned over the side of the bed and vomited up every last bit of the evening's undigested food.

Only when I lay exhausted against the edge of the bed did I feel a hand gently patting my back. Only once my strength was spent did he gently pull me up from the edge. At the sight of that face, I trembled uncontrollably and slapped him hard with almost all my strength.

The blow knocked his head to one side. Even the sharp pain in my hand failed to fully bring me to my senses. That sickening, humiliating, helpless feeling left my whole body shaking, my stomach churning. I stared fixedly at the hockey-masked face before me, which seemed to overlap somewhat with the one in my dream. I had no idea what expression I wore, but it certainly wasn't a good one.

Jason seemed frightened by my gaze. He had never seen me look at him like that before. Flustered, he tried to take my hand, then seemed to want to touch my face, utterly at a loss.

I tried hard to pull myself together, but everything in that dream had been too real-the empty trouser legs, the doctor's hypocritical smile, my mother's contemptuous gaze, and Jason standing beside her. Like a poisoned thorn, it stabbed deep into my heart.

I'm taking it out on him, I tried to tell myself. I knew perfectly well it had been an illusion, or rather, a realistic, somewhat excessive dream.

When I came to my senses, I felt drained of all strength, as though even my brain were exhausted.

I pressed my hand to the side of Jason's face where I had struck him.

"Does it hurt? I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Jason. I had a nightmare..."

Jason still said nothing, only slowly raising his head. Through the eyeholes of his mask, his blue eyes held a bottomless darkness. His Adam's apple bobbed, but in the end, he merely reached out, extremely slowly and carefully, and gently covered me with a blanket. Then he gathered me into his arms and rocked me gently.

The warmth and softness had only just given me a trace of reassurance when something shattered it.

A cool breeze suddenly came from behind me, an ordinary breeze blowing through the curtains from an open window, raising goose bumps all over my sweat-soaked body.

I also noticed something was wrong with Jason. He suddenly stiffened, as though he had seen something that enraged him beyond measure. Black mist shrouded his body, yet because of the person in his arms, he had to hold it back.

I suddenly remembered that autumn had only begun today. I had felt a little cold and closed the window before going to bed, so this breeze...

I whipped my head around. Someone wearing a red-and-green striped sweater beneath an open black leather coat and a hat, his whole body looking as though it had been burned, was watching us mockingly with yellow-brown eyes that seemed full of smog. He extended a glove with sharp blades running from all five fingers and bared his teeth in greeting.

"Hello-"

Jason's breathing immediately sank into a rumble like something grinding over gravel. His hold on me abruptly tightened. The black mist churning around him almost became solid, only to be forcibly suppressed when it touched my back, leaving nothing but the uncontrollable trembling of his fingertips.

Freddy snickered. His bladed glove scraped across the window frame, immediately leaving several deep gouges in the wood with an ear-piercing screech. "Don't be so fierce, big guy."

His gaze swept clammily over our bodies pressed together, his yellow-brown eyes brimming with malice.

"I only came to see which tastes sweeter: the little darling you picked up, or the version in the dream."

I stiffened, instantly realizing that the vivid, agonizing nightmare had something to do with him. Before I could speak, Jason had already shielded me behind him. The blue eyes behind his mask were like Crystal Lake in winter, hardened with shards of ice. The next second, he hurled himself at Freddy like a cannonball.

Metal blades grazed Jason's shoulder, throwing up a shower of sparks. He didn't dodge at all. His fist, as big as a clay pot, smashed straight into Freddy's face, sending him staggering into the wall and shattering glass.

Freddy let out a strange cry and slashed with his claws, only for Jason to seize his wrist and wrench it until the bones cracked. He grimaced in pain and drove the blades on his other hand deep into Jason's side, only to receive an even more savage punch that left his mouth full of blood.

"Damn it-" Freddy roared. Several thick, heavy iron chains suddenly shot out from somewhere and bound Jason tightly, but they clearly couldn't stop him. With just a little effort, the chains snapped.

In the brief instant while Jason broke free of the chains, Freddy's figure actually faded like mist. Finally, he turned into a wisp of gunsmoke and shot out through the window, leaving only the words, "Come find me in Elm Grove Town if you've got the guts! The dead souls there are much more interesting than the little thing in your arms!"

Before his words had faded, his figure turned into a cloud of black smoke and vanished outside the window amid shrill laughter.

Jason held the wound in his side and stared at the empty window, black mist churning wildly around him. He glanced back at me, a flicker of hesitation passing through the eyes behind his mask before instantly turning to resolve. Then he abruptly turned, intending to stride after that lingering trace of sinister presence.

I hurried to stop Jason, but he caught the wrist of the hand clutching his clothes. He seemed determined to utterly destroy that red-and-green monster. That thing that had dared offend the person most important to him...

To Jason, this trampled his bottom line and humiliated his dignity.

In Jason's world, I was someone he would give everything to protect. Anything that dared bare its fangs at me could repay it only with death.

The blue eyes behind his mask burned with savage flames. Black mist surged around him like a tide, and the fingers gripping my wrist trembled slightly-not from hesitation, but from forcibly suppressing the urge to charge out and tear the other apart immediately.

"Don't go!" My fingers whitened around the hem of his clothes. His grip pressed painfully against my wrist, but I gritted my teeth and refused to let go. "He's deliberately luring you there! Don't fall for it!"

Jason's fingers abruptly tightened, and a suppressed growl rolled from his throat. The blue eyes behind his mask stared fixedly out the window. Black mist churned around him, almost tearing apart even the moonlight. He lowered his head to look at me, savagery and conflict tangled in his eyes, but his grip on my wrist gradually loosened.

"He'll... hurt you." The hoarse voice entered my mind, carrying an unprecedented heaviness. "Must... deal with him."

My eyes grew hot with anxiety. I turned my hand to grip his arm, my fingertips touching the unhealed wound in his side. Just as before, wisps of black smoke were rising from it.

I understood that if that thing could pass through the barrier Jason had placed outside, he certainly wasn't ordinary. I touched the wound on my face and the bruising on my wrist. During their fight, I had realized that he could actually injure people in dreams.

And there were those iron chains that had appeared out of thin air. Even in reality, that monster seemed capable of creating things from nothing...

I gritted my teeth. I understood that the most terrifying thing was neither his ability to hurt people in dreams nor his trick of creating things from nothing. It was that he could peer into people's hearts, create dreams, and dig out the deepest fears within them... no, create them. Just what kind of disgusting thing was he?

After finally managing to calm Jason down, I immediately set about investigating the place called Elm Grove Town.

A great battle was about to begin-

(Did any of you sweeties notice from the last chapter that I was planning to write about Freddy from A Nightmare on Elm Street for my next story? Honestly, I know my writing is pretty average. I'm doing this purely out of love, so I'm truly grateful to all you sweeties who've kept reading. Kiss~kiss)