A Nightmare On Elm Street

don't fall asleep

(EDITED 23/09/22)

I walk across the street from the corner. Alone. Dispirited. I lift my eyes to my home and stop in my tracks.

"Oh gross."

I move across the front yard. Every single window had been covered with brand-new ornamental iron bars, bolted deeply into their frames.

I walk over to the door and give the set of bars a powerful shake. They don't budge. Then I look up to see that the window to my second floor bedroom was barred. And the rose trellis had been ripped down and heaped at the foundation in a tangle of wood, thorns and broken flowers.

I hit the porch pole in anger and enter into the house. "Mother!"

She appears in the hallway. Almost as if she was drunk. "What's with the bars?"

"Security." She says.

"Security? Security from what?" I cry.

"Not what, from whom."

I give her a look. She opens the door to the cellar. "Come down to the cellar with me and I'll tell you."

I immediately follow her. She places herself by what looked like a furnace. "You wanna know who Fred Krueger was? He was a filthy child murderer who killed at least twenty kids in the neighbourhood. Kids we all knew."

"Oh mom." I said quietly

"It drove us crazy when we didn't know who it was but it was even worse after they caught him."

"Did they put him away?"

She drew herself up with a shake. "The lawyers got fat and the judge got famous, but somebody forgot to sign the search warrant in the right place and Krueger was free, just like that."

"What did you do mother?" I say, voice cracking.

"A bunch of us parents tracked him down after they let him out. We found him in an old abandoned boiler room where he used to take his kids."

"Go on." I whisper.

"We took gasoline, we poured it all around the place and made a trail out of it out the door then lit up the whole thing and watched it burn. But he cant get you now. He's dead honey because mommy killed him."

"I even took his knives." She twists around and opens the door on an old furnace -- a furnace unused since the newer gas one nearby was put in. She fishes inside the cavity and within the next moment she pulls out an object wrapped in rags. She carefully opens it and displays the long, rusted blade and their glove-like apparatus. "See?"

I stare at the damn things, chilled.

"So it's okay now. You can sleep."

She shoves the knives into their hiding place and closes the little iron door.

______

I patiently wait for Glen to answer the phone. "Hello?"

"Hi." I sigh.

"Oh hi, how you doing?"

"Fine. Stand by your window so I can see you. You sound a million miles away."

I watch out my window and see Glen open his curtains as he comes into view. "That's much better."

"I see your mom went ape at the security store today. You look like the Prisoner of Zenda or something."

I stay quiet before I hear him speak up again. "How long's it been since you slept?"

"It's coming up on the seventh day." I could see him look down. "It's okay. I checked Guinness. The record's 11."