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It started with a dream.
Thirteen-year-old Bailey Carson woke up screaming one night in Derry, Maine, sweat-soaked and trembling. Her mother thought it was just a bad dream—maybe something she ate, maybe a horror movie she snuck on her tablet.
But Bailey insisted it wasn’t just a dream. She had seen a man with a melted face and blades for fingers, laughing in the shadows of her high school hallway. And behind him, a red balloon floated past a locker soaked in blood.
She wasn’t the first to scream herself awake. Nor would she be the last.
Within days, four other children reported similar dreams. Then, two went missing. Then came the murders—bodies mutilated beyond recognition, limbs severed, charred and flayed like meat left on a grill too long.
The town of Derry had known terror before. But this was something new.
In the sewers beneath the town, It stirred again—Pennywise the Dancing Clown, a creature older than time, a devourer of fear. He had been resting in his cycle of hibernation, defeated years ago by the Losers Club and banished to slumber… until now.
He could feel it: something… else… was here.
Something had invaded his hunting grounds. A parasite. A rival.
Freddy Krueger—murderer, dream demon, nightmare king—had clawed his way into Derry through the psychic scar Pennywise left in the town’s children. Once imprisoned in Springwood’s collective dreams, Freddy had found a fissure, a spiritual rip in the veil between nightmares, and now he was feeding again—on Pennywise’s turf.
At first, Freddy didn’t notice the balloons. Didn’t notice the shifting shadows in the corner of the dreams he invaded. He was too busy slaughtering teens in a sick high school symphony, laughing as he turned lockers into body bags and prom queens into dismembered mannequins.
But then… the dream changed.
The fire faded. The walls bled. And a carousel of shrieking clown faces whirled around him in the dark.
A voice floated through the dream, sweet and wet like rotting sugar:
“Welcome to the real nightmare, Freddy.”
Freddy turned, claws out, sneering. “Who the hell are you supposed to be? Ronald McDonald’s bastard son?”
From the shadows, Pennywise stepped forward, face shifting between clown, leper, spider, and giant-toothed predator.
“I’m the eater of worlds,” it hissed. “And you’re trespassing in my home.”
What followed was war.
Each night, the children of Derry became unwilling witnesses to a supernatural bloodbath. Dreams turned into battlegrounds. Freddy would pull victims into flaming classrooms, only for the walls to melt into circus tents with screaming corpses. Pennywise summoned their worst fears—dead siblings, monstrous parents, drowning, burning, choking—but Freddy fought back, shaping the dreamworld into twisted metal and bone.
They were evenly matched. Freddy controlled the dream. Pennywise was the fear.
Night by night, their powers escalated. Freddy summoned the faces of his past victims to chant mockeries at Pennywise. Pennywise transformed into a writhing storm of limbs and teeth, devouring entire dream neighborhoods.
But both fed on the same thing: fear.
And with two titans fighting for the same meat, the children began to suffer. Their bodies in the waking world twisted in their sleep, bleeding out from invisible wounds. The hospital overflowed with comatose kids. Sleep became a death sentence.
That’s when she appeared—Lila Carter, seventeen, a quiet girl from the edge of town. Her mother was a medium, her father long gone. Lila had always known she was… different. She could control her dreams. Shape them. Enter others’.
And now, she was the only one who could stop what was coming.
Lila began to dreamwalk—entering the nightmares of the afflicted, watching the battles play out between Pennywise and Freddy. But the more she watched, the more she realized: this wasn’t about children anymore. This was about dominion. Freddy wanted to take over the town. Pennywise wanted to remain king.
And Lila had the key.
She devised a plan—a trap within the dreamworld. If she could lure both Freddy and Pennywise into a shared subconscious construct, she could collapse it on them. Imprison them in each other.
So she built a dream: a mockery of Derry, layered with fire and sewers, fog and funhouses. A town of illusions and fear. And then, she waited.
It didn’t take long.
Freddy arrived first, dragging a corpse along by its intestines, smirking. “Alright, dream girl. Let’s party.”
Pennywise emerged moments later, hissing from the shadows, saliva dripping from fangs. “Such sweet fear… in you.”
They lunged for each other—and the trap snapped shut.
The dream twisted violently. Sewer pipes strangled boiler rooms. Flaming classrooms collapsed into infinite tunnels. Freddy slashed at Pennywise’s neck—cutting through illusion after illusion—while Pennywise bit into Freddy’s shoulder and tore out a chunk of soul.
They were screaming, laughing, bleeding—immortal, and yet vulnerable within the dreamscape Lila controlled.
“I’m gonna wear your face like a damn mask!” Freddy roared, blades flashing.
“I’m going to turn your mind into confetti,” Pennywise shrieked, ballooning into a monstrous insectile clown beast.
Lila, in the center of it all, focused her power—focusing on their hatred, on their gluttony for fear. And then she folded the dream on itself.
A black hole opened.
It sucked them both in—claws, teeth, screams, rage. Their bodies twisted together like vines of hate, fusing and writhing in a loop of torment. A paradox. A prison of eternal terror.
When she awoke, Lila gasped—bleeding from her eyes, her fingers trembling. But the nightmares stopped.
The town of Derry returned to silence.
The children slept again.
For now.
But deep beneath the sewer grates, if you listen closely…
You can hear the faint jingle of a carnival.
And the scrape of metal claws on rusted pipe.
“Every fear has a face. But what happens when fear fears itself?”
THE END.
(…or the beginning of something worse.)
English