The night air was cool, the breeze gentle, yet it carried a faint sweetness threaded with blood and rot, like rust mixed with spoiled honey. It made the nose itch and the heart turn cold.
"Hah… hah…"
Harsh, ragged breathing tore through the silence of the night.
"Dorothy" shot through the park gate like a startled weasel and stumbled out into the dark, unlit street beyond.
Every breath dragged great gulps of night air into her burning lungs. Her heart pounded wildly in her chest, as though it might smash through her ribs.
The road lay dead silent in the middle of the night. No headlights, no pedestrians—only a few distant building lights left burning, and widely spaced streetlamps casting lonely circles of dim yellow light. Everything else had been swallowed by thick darkness.
She had escaped… she really had escaped.
Her heart was still hammering madly in her chest, but even so, a dizzy, drained sense of relief rose uncontrollably inside her.
Just remembering those six "things" in the park made her soul tremble.
It was not a matter of stronger or weaker. It was a difference in essence itself.
Especially that seemingly human girl who led them—her presence had been far too terrifying, as if death itself had been made flesh, like a god of death walking the earth, even closer than those wandering black silhouettes to the Shinigami of myth and legend.
Not a single thought of resisting them arose in "Dorothy's" mind. She had turned tail and run without hesitation.
She had poured all her power into using her curse, turning all six of them into puppets.
That had not been an attack so much as a smokescreen or obstruction, meant only to buy her enough time to flee.
One of her thick-soled shoes had flown off while she was running, lost who knew where, but "Dorothy" did not dare slow down for even an instant. She ran with every ounce of strength she could wring from this stolen body, sprinting down the dark, deserted streets.
She ran for her life, not daring to look back. In her ears there was only her own ragged breathing and the pounding roar of her heart. At the same time, she kept a frantic watch on everything around her.
Every sway of a shadow, every faint unexplained sound in the distance, every slightest fluctuation in the air's energy—each of them set alarm bells ringing in "Dorothy's" mind. Those six "monsters" could appear at any moment, from any corner, in any way.
Nor was she running aimlessly. She wanted to find other members of The Replaced, or else some even more vicious evil spirit. There was no way she could survive alone. Only by dragging a few more people down with her and throwing the situation into greater chaos could she hope to seize a sliver of life from the cracks.
"—!"
As though she had stepped on something, "Dorothy" cried out, lost her balance completely, and pitched forward into a great pile of fluffy feathers that still carried a warm, rank animal smell.
"…Feathers?"
Struggling to prop herself up on her hands, "Dorothy" stared in shock at the gray-white feathers sticking to her body, her mind going blank for an instant. Then a stronger fear than before came crashing down over her like icy water. She jerked her head up and looked around.
She was sure that just a moment ago she had been running down a street.
And yet now, she was inside a strange, old wooden room.
The air was heavy and stagnant, thick with dust, old mildew, and an even stronger foul smell, like the mingled stench of a rural slaughterhouse and a chicken coop left uncleared for years.
An iron birdcage hung from a rusted hook, and inside it was a gray-white chicken. The bird did not cluck. It did not move. It only "looked" at her with black beadlike eyes, the emptiness in that stare horrifying.
Below the cage, more feathers lay scattered across the floor, along with slender bones that had been gnawed unnaturally clean, stripped of even the last thread of meat.
In the center of the room, a complete human skeleton was "sitting" in a wooden chair that looked on the verge of collapse, its posture loose, one hand bone still resting against the edge of the armrest.
From a roof beam, a horned skull hung by a hemp rope, turning very slowly, little by little, in the cold draft that had crept in from nowhere, its empty eye sockets sweeping over every inch of the room.
As an evil spirit herself, "Dorothy" realized at once that she had fallen victim to some human's or spirit's curse. Either she had been dragged into someone's haunted space, or she was under an illusion.
"Ggh…"
Fear squeezed her throat and forced out a hoarse, broken sound. Scrambling to her feet on hands and knees, she tried to get out of that hellish place, only to slam straight into a tall figure.
A human-skin mask, crudely stitched together with rough seams, filled her vision. Beneath it loomed a body as massive as a bear, wrapped in a leather apron caked with great splashes of dark red blood, as though it had never once been washed. Some of the stains had already turned black. Others were still fresh, slowly gathering and dripping down.
"No… don't… wait, I…"
The words of her plea tumbled out before she could even organize them, her voice twisted out of shape by sheer terror.
But Leatherface had no interest in hearing her beg. He brought a hammer crashing down on "Dorothy's" head and rendered her unable to move.
Then he hoisted "Dorothy" onto his shoulder. She was small, and thus light enough to carry with ease.
He took her to a room deep within the house.
The walls there were hung with all manner of animal skulls, displayed like trophies. The walls themselves were blood-red, streaked with smears that had not yet dried.
He hung "Dorothy" from a rusted iron hook as thick as a thumb, the way one might hang cured meat. The hook pierced in from behind, punched through the flesh below her right shoulder blade, and jutted grotesquely out near her collarbone.
The iron was cold and rough, wedged deep between bone. Every tiny sway caused by her unconscious trembling brought a fresh wave of pain, as though her soul itself were being torn apart.
"Aah…! AAAAAAH…!!"
Because she was so short, when "Dorothy" was hung from the hook her feet dangled far above the floor. She kicked wildly at empty air, but all that did was make her hanging body swing like a pendulum, worsening the torment in her wound.
The skulls mounted on the walls—the branched antlers of a deer, the tusked head of a boar, a huge cattle skull—stared at the suspended "Dorothy" with hollow sockets, as if foretelling her end.
Or as if waiting for her to join them.
"It hurts…! Let me… let me down…!"
Pain and a deep, suffocating fear finally broke through the blockage in her throat, turning into shrill, off-key screams that echoed through the enclosed room, struck the blood-red walls and white skulls, and were swallowed up again, leaving only hollow reverberations behind.
Instinctively, she reached back for the hook. Her fingers brushed against the cold, rough metal and the mangled warmth of her own flesh, and the sensation, together with the pain, made her snatch her hand away at once. All that remained was an even more hopeless trembling and sobbing that would not form words.
And just as she was about to drown completely in that pure pain and despair, another sound entered the room, slow and implacable.
"…"
At first it was only a vibration, like some beast awakening.
Bzzzz…
Then it rose rapidly, growing clear, carrying the merciless rhythm unique to machinery.
BRRRAAAN—BRRRAAAN—BRRRAAAAN—!!
At last, it became a shrieking, frenzied roar filled with nothing but destruction and the scream of grinding metal.
The chainsaw engine thundered into life, a flood of sound that instantly filled the room and effortlessly drowned out all her screams and pleas.
Leatherface appeared in the doorway, holding the wildly roaring chainsaw in his hand.
In the flickering, unsteady light of the oil lamp, mixed with the cold metallic gleam reflecting off the saw itself, the stitched lines of the human-skin mask on his face seemed warped by light and shadow into a smile that was wholly inhuman, made of nothing but cruelty and indifference.
He began to walk.
One step.
Then another.
Heavy. Steady.
He came toward the center of the room, toward "Dorothy," fixed in place by the iron hook and unable to flee, and the screaming blade slowly rose with his steps, until it pointed at the girl's dangling calf, suspended in midair and convulsing with terror.
"No! No! I'll give the body back to its owner! I really will! I don't want anything anymore! I'll never do evil again! Spare me… please… spare—"
Her wails, her promises, her most abject pleas—all of it had become meaningless, swallowed whole by the deafening roar of the chainsaw.
Leatherface either did not hear her, or else her scream was simply the perfect accompaniment to this cruel ritual. The spinning chain, lined with sharp teeth, came closer and closer to her unprotected ankle, bringing with it waves of heat and the faint stink of burning gasoline.
It touched.
And it was not a clean cut.
First came the sound of cloth being torn apart with ease. Then came the horrifying sensation of skin being chewed and shredded by countless tiny, high-speed teeth.
It was not one single pain.
It was innumerable fine, explosive stabs of agony, all gathering in an instant into one devastating flood.
Then the saw bit into muscle and ground against bone, and she could "hear" the sound of her own bones being cut and crushed—a sickening grinding noise that seemed to travel through her skeleton and ring directly inside her skull.
Pain exploded outward from the point of contact in all directions, instantly drowning every last one of her senses.
It surpassed everything she had ever known about suffering. It was no longer something one could endure, or escape by fainting. It was pure, annihilating violence directed at existence itself.
She wanted to black out, but the repeated surges of agony kept her consciousness hideously clear.
She wanted to die at once, to end this inhuman torment, but her life was being maintained somehow, stubbornly, almost maliciously, at the bare minimum.
She was forced to remain awake, to "enjoy" the process of being dismembered piece by piece.
Her vision blurred, then sharpened, sharp enough to see splintered bone and minced flesh spraying outward with every turn of the saw, blurred enough that the whole world became nothing but that roaring silver and splashing red.
Her scream had long ceased to sound human. Her throat turned raw and bloody, until all that remained were broken, bellows-like gasps squeezed up from the deepest part of her chest, and violent convulsions she could no longer control, like a dying animal.
The cold rough hook. The shrieking chainsaw. The hot liquid spraying everywhere. The sound of bone being ground apart. The endless, overwhelming pain that drowned out everything else…
Those fragments of sensation were all her fading consciousness could still grasp.
"No… no, AAAAAAH!!"
That scream, sharp enough to tear apart the throat itself, exploded out as "Dorothy" shot bolt upright from a hard hospital bed, as if hurled up by an invisible spring.
Cold sweat instantly soaked through the rough blue-and-white striped patient gown, leaving an icy, clammy chill against her skin.
"Dorothy" clutched both arms tightly around herself, her nails digging deep into her flesh without her even noticing. Her body curled in on itself uncontrollably, shuddering violently, as though every muscle and every cell were still remembering and reenacting the convulsions of being carved apart by the chainsaw.
Only after quite some time did that soul-deep phantom of pain finally recede like an ebbing tide, leaving behind the weakness of surviving a disaster and a terror buried to the marrow. Slowly, the fragments of her reason managed to piece themselves back together.
"I… I'm still alive? D-Did someone save me?"
Her voice was hoarse and faint, filled with the dazed relief and disbelief of someone who had crawled back from death. Still shaken, she began to look cautiously around.
Pale walls. Starch-stiff bedsheets. Old-fashioned medical equipment. A thick reek of disinfectant.
This was obviously a hospital room.
In her memory, she had already been cut into pieces of meat…
Could all of that unimaginably vivid pain really have been an illusion?
Had she returned to reality?
Then, from an old television not far away, a voice suddenly rang out and drew "Dorothy's" attention.
"Let me repeat: three girls have been murdered tonight in the town of Haddonfield. The killer is an extremely dangerous mental patient. His name is Michael Myers. Please be advised: he is extremely dangerous…"
Haddonfield.
That did not sound like a Japanese place name at all.
More importantly, when the announcer on the television began describing the appearance of that psychotic killer, "Dorothy" felt a jolt of familiarity.
She had seen that madman.
Just a little while ago, in that park.
He had been one of those six "monsters."
So…
This was another haunted space?
She still had not escaped to safety?
A chill deep enough to pierce bone ran straight through her body. "Dorothy" knew she had to find somewhere safe immediately. She struggled to get out of bed, only for her legs to give out beneath her and send her crashing to the floor.
"What's wrong…? Why is my body so weak?"
Panting, she pulled herself upright against the wall and staggered to the door. Her hand trembling, she yanked it open.
A towering figure was already waiting in the darkness outside.
The instant the door opened, he brought the knife in his hand slashing down at "Dorothy."
---
T/N: LMAOOO NO WAY IS SHE GOING THROUGH ALL THE MOVIES
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