Slumber Party

by Cyberra

Summary:

An overworked killer ends up passing out during a trial. How do the survivors react?

Notes:

Yes, I know the summary sucks.

Inspired by a drawing I found of the Wraith curled up asleep on a patient gurney. The plot bunny bit and just would not let go, so I had to write this.

Chapter 1

"Has anyone even seen the killer this round?" Claudette asked, looking up from the generator to glance around. She and two of the others in the trial, Jeff and Quentin, had been working on the same gen and had not seen either hide nor hair of the killer the entire time. "I don't even know which one it is. Myers?"

"Wraith," Quentin answered. "I saw him briefly a bit ago... He uncloaked down the hall from me. How he didn't see me I have no idea; I froze as soon as I saw the sparking effect."

The dark-skinned woman sighed with relief. "I was worried it was Myers, it's been so quiet. Wraith is far easier to deal with. But still, it's not like him to be this quiet. Has anyone even been hooked?"

"Not that I know of," Jeff replied.

The generator came to life a moment later and the trio paused, listening. There was still no sound, no footsteps or bells, or even the sound of the killer's growling breath. Exchanging confused glances, the three moved deeper into the map.

Lery's Memorial Institute was not a good one for facing stealthy killers like the Wraith. There was not much room to run and lots of places where survivors could get pinned. The maze of hallways was also fairly easy for a fleeing survivor to get lost in if they weren't paying attention; taking wrong turns and running right back into the killer had happened to all of them before. Some, like Trapper (who was also an absolute nightmare in Lery's) had learned to take full advantage of that.

The fourth member of the group, Dwight, met up with them as they approached the few patient rooms the map contained, creeping slowly down the hall. The continuing silence from the killer was making them all nervous; it wasn't like the Wraith to toy with survivors like this. That was more Myers' thing, stalking them in order to tier up and then brutally punish them.

As they approached the first patient room, all of them froze. A soft gurgling growl was just barely audible; the sound of the Wraith's breathing. The four glanced at each other, creeping slowly toward the door and peeking in.

Like the rest of the map, the room was dark, but there was enough moonlight coming in through the windows for them to make out the room's contents. And the dark shape on one of the upright patient beds.

"...what the heck?" Jeff stared, baffled.

"Is that...?" Scraping up her courage, Claudette sneaked closer.

The Wraith was on the bed, head resting on crossed forearms, partially curled on his side to fit his lanky body onto the mattress, out like a light. Piercing white eyes were closed, sides rising and falling with slow, even, growling breaths. His weapon and the wailing bell rested on the floor beside him. There was no reaction to the gawking survivor as she stood there and stared at him.

"...well, now we know why he's been a no-show the whole trial," Quentin noted, stifling a yawn of his own.

"I guess it's not just us the Entity has been running ragged, if he was exhausted enough to pass out in the middle of a trial," Dwight commented, staying back and watching from a distance.

"Uh." The healer blinked at the sleeping killer. The complete and total lack of response, even though they weren't exactly whispering the most quietly, told her that the Wraith wasn't just out, he was well and truly out. The kind of out where even a marching band going through two feet away from him wouldn't have woken him. "I guess we can... just finish the gens? Find the chests?"

"And then what?" Jeff wondered. 

"Wait for him to wake up? It's not like we have much else to do, and while he's asleep we get the chance to rest, too," she pointed out. "Besides, if he's that burned out, it wouldn't be right to wake him."

The other three exchanged glances. "Okay, then..."

Casting one last glance back at the sleeping Wraith, the four trotted back out into the corridors.

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Awareness returned slowly, sleep reluctant to relinquish its grasp. Philip twitched, one eye cracking open, peering at the far wall. For a long moment confusion swirled though him; it didn't look like his normal sleeping place at Autohaven (a makeshift room in the station itself), so where was he? It took him a good two minutes of blinking and shaking off the fog of sleep to remember: he was in a trial.

Shit.

A stir of movement caught his attention, but before he could lift his head to investigate someone leaned into his field of view. It was one of the survivors, the woman with the dark skin. As he stared at her, she smiled at him.

"I see you're finally waking up," she noted. "The Entity must have been running you non-stop, judging from how deeply out you were. Are you feeling better now?"

It took Philip a startled moment to make a noise of assent, lifting his head and stretching carefully. Blinking to clear his vision, he peered past the woman.

All four of the survivors were in the room, two of them curled up asleep on another bed, the third sitting and watching calmly. From the stack of items next to them, the map had been quite thoroughly looted. Making a soft embarrassed whine, Philip turned his gaze back to the dark woman.

"All the generators are done, all the totems have been cleansed - sorry, but no springing NOED on us this time - and all the chests have been searched," she listed off. "We haven't opened the gates yet, though... Too much noise, and then the endgame collapse would have woken you. From the look of you, you badly needed that sleep."

Partway through sitting up, Philip stopped and just stared at her. The survivors had had the opportunity to leave and hadn't, just because they didn't want to wake him? He couldn't quite wrap his head around that; he was a killer, meant to hunt and sacrifice them. He would have expected them to either leave at the first opportunity or use his vulnerability to try and harm him.

After a long moment, Philip made a soft sound of gratitude.

He remained sitting there as the dark woman went to stir the others. The one with the glasses flinched upon seeing Philip watching, but then slowly settled when the killer made no move to attack. The other survivor, whom Philip recognized as the Nightmare's favorite victim and frequently found asleep in any trial he was part of, merely looked at him. The third survivor, the one who had been sitting by the wall, got to his feet, ambling over with what looked like a pad of paper in hand.

"First time I've had the opportunity to sketch one of the killers," he said conversationally, opening the pad and tilting it to show Philip a charcoal sketch of himself sleeping. The sketch had been labeled 'The Wraith'.

Looking from sketch to artist, Philip blinked, then made a writing gesture. The survivor blinked at him, then seemed to realize what he was looking for and passed over a piece of charcoal. Taking the sketchpad, Philip carefully wrote his name under the word 'Wraith', then handed it back.

"'Philip Ojomo'," the survivor read out. "That's your name? Philip?"

Philip nodded.

"I'm Jeff. Pleased to meet you." The survivor held out a hand.

Greatly amused, Philip took it.

He ambled behind the four as they made their way to the exit gate, merely watching as they opened it and vanished into the darkness beyond. The dark-skinned woman, Claudette as she had introduced herself, paused to wave back at him before following the others.

Humming softly to himself, Philip waited as the trial grounds dissolved around him. Maybe this trial hadn't been such a disaster after all.

Chapter 2: Chapter 2 - Uninvited Pest

Summary:

Freddy Krueger really needs to learn to keep his nose out of places he's not welcome

Herman Carter, the killer known to the survivors as the Doctor, leaned back in his chair, as much of a scowl on his face as he could produce with the headgear locking his eyes open and pulling his lips back from his teeth. He had been ignoring the racket outside his office for the most part, but a change in the rhythm had gotten his attention and now it was impossible to not hear.

Some time previously, apparently the Wraith, Philip, had been in a trial in Lery's and had fallen asleep in one of the patient rooms. Since then, he had been coming back to sleep there; in Autohaven he slept on tarps either in the back of a truck or on the floor, so the beds in the hospital were far more comfortable. And Philip hated his own realm; all the other killers knew that even if most of them weren't clear on why.

Herman knew. But then, there wasn't much he didn't know about anyone in the fog.

At first, he had been ecstatic about having another killer in his lair; he had never had the opportunity to experiment on one of his 'kind' before. He had quickly been corrected on that; getting kicked across the room by a snarling Wraith had been the first warning. Getting cracked across the head with the wailing bell hard enough that he saw stars had firmly cemented the point: paws off. He had instead taken to observing, sneaking looks at their dreams, comparing what they dreamed of to their behavior when awake.

Philip wasn't the only other killer coming to sleep in Lery's now. Somehow word had gotten around that it was a good place to rest, once the resident killer had gotten it through his head that other killers were off-limits. Herman had seen the Hillbilly, the Cannibal, even the Huntress coming to catch naps. The Blight lurked about frequently, but he had no realm of his own so it was natural he would gravitate toward any rumor of shelter.

Currently, there were four killers napping in various patient rooms. Philip was a lean sprawl on one bed, dead to the world and barely visible, all his limbs pulled under a blanket he had probably purloined during a trial in Haddonfield. Bubba Sawyer was in the same room, on another bed with his back to the room, trusty chainsaw resting on the floor under the bed. Ghostface was a sulking heap in the farthest corner; he had required even more convincing than Herman that Lery's was a truce area as far as the others were concerned. No messing with other killers who had come for a place to rest.

The fourth killer currently using Lery's as a resting place was the Hillbilly, Max. He was in a different room entirely; the deformed killer was a snorer, and a very loud one. It wasn't something he could help, caused by his deformed features. But it did make him impossible to ignore until anyone in the area learned to tune him out. Which Herman had done until a change in the rhythm had caught his attention.

Rising from his chair, Herman walked into the room Max occupied, spotting the other killer immediately. Max was lying on his side, almost in a fetal position, the loud snores frequently interrupted by frightened whines and whimpers. His limbs were twitching erratically. It appeared he was having a nightmare, dreaming of something intensely frightening.

Herman took a couple of steps closer, then paused. Something else had caught his attention. The faintest scent of ashes, and something just barely on the edge of hearing...

If the Doctor's face had been able to twist into a scowl, the resulting expression would have given a raging Oni pause. He knew what he was hearing. Snarling softly to himself, he returned to his office to retrieve his weapon. Then he went looking for the unwelcome intruder.

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"Uhm, I don't think we're going to have much luck here, guys," Jake muttered to the other survivors in the scavenging group, peering out of the bushes at the imposing bulk of Lery's. It was one of the places they tried to hit as often as possible, knowing that there were valuable medical supplies inside. As long as they avoided the resident killer and stepped lightly around any sleeping killers (or avoided them completely depending on who else was present), they could poke around and gather gauze, bandages, painkillers, salves, and whatever else the Entity saw fit to hide around for them.

"Nope," Meg agreed, eying the building as the other survivors crept forward to stare.

The normally dark windows were flickering and flashing, looking for all the world like a mad scientist's lair from an old B-rated horror. A bulb visibly exploded through one. Here and there electricity could be seen crawling along walls and doorframes.

"Is that the Doctor?" Felix wondered. He was still fairly new to the fog and had yet to meet the killer in question.

"He's the only one who can do the electricity thing," Feng Min confirmed. "Never seen him like this outside of a trial, though. I wonder what could have..."

The building's front doors burst open. Freddy Krueger raced out, hat in his un-bladed hand to keep from losing it, expression visibly screaming "oh shit oh shit oh shit..." loud enough the survivors could practically hear it. The dream demon was running as fast as his legs could take him, bolting for the trees. Hot on his heels was the Doctor, managing to look absolutely murderous even with his eyes pried open and lips stretched back in a permanent grin. He was absolutely crawling with electricity, weapon upraised and ready to brain the smaller killer. A static blast lit up the immediate area, making Krueger stagger, barely avoiding a swipe from the spiked rod in the other killer's hand. A moment later he was vanishing into the brush, the Doctor still right behind him.

"...And I guess that's proof that really, nobody likes Freddy," Jake said to no one in particular.

A wild yell from somewhere out of sight had all four survivors freezing in place. They listened, wide-eyed, as the yelling continued, interspersed with electrical zapping and crackling, the thud of the Doctor's weapon hitting home, and finally one agonized yowl before silence fell again. A minute later the Doctor strolled back into view, sparks flickering along his exposed arms, half his weapon stained with green fluid. He looked much calmer, with a bit of a swagger in his step. 

The hospital doors swung open a second time as he approached, the Hillbilly staggering out with chainsaw in hand. The survivors all ducked down closer to the ground, watching with wide eyes as the Doctor paused to speak to the sprinter, pointing back the way he had come before clapping the Hillbilly on the upper arm and sauntering back into the building. An instant later, the Hillbilly's chainsaw roared to life.

"KRUEGER!" the deformed killer howled, sprinting off into the brush with chainsaw raised high.

"Somebody's in trouble," Meg whispered as the small group of survivors hastily vacated the area.

It would be quite a while before any of them saw Freddy Krueger on the trial grounds again, and even longer before the dream demon was able to walk normally.

Notes:

I don't like Freddy. You can probably tell.

This chapter was inspired by conversation in one of the Discord groups I am part of