Elm Street Dreams

Maggie is lying down on her bed on a clear October night in the town of Springwood, Ohio. She just heard the news that her cousin Tommy was wounded by some madman at a highschool party in the town of Crystal Lake out in the middle of nowhere. Maggie is sitting up on her bed scrolling through the social media feed on her phone, anxious and uneasy. All she could think about was how she was supposed to be at that party and how it could have been her who was hurt. Maggie was also very concerned about her cousin and his friends. She was glad that all of them made it out of that situation alive, but rumor has it that others were not so lucky.

Word went around that a few people lost their lives in that incident and Maggie just could not let go of the notion that her cousin could have been one of them. Maggie has not had much sleep thinking about the incident in the past few days, so every now and then she doses off while scrolling through her phone. At one point she dozed off longer than her other moments, but caught herself and opened up her eyes. After opening her eyes and coming to she looked around and it felt like something was different. It was as if there was an ominous presence in the room. She got off her bed and went into her bathroom across the room to throw some water on her face. Strangely enough when she turned on the faucet nothing came out.

This was strange to her because she knew her parents always paid their bills and the sink hadn’t been messing up at any point recently. She decided to give the faucet a subtle tap, but when she did no water came out, instead she was greeted by a large stream of mud and worms. She backed away in shock and disgust and quickly made her way to her phone with the intention of calling someone to do something about the sink, but as she picked the phone and put it to her ear she looked back at the bathroom and saw that mud and worms were gone, as if they were never there to begin with. Now she was confused and slowly walked back in the bathroom to examine the sink.

As Maggie walked back in the bathroom and got close to the sink her TV which was off suddenly turned on and caught her attention. There was a news report about a massacre at Crystal Lake. Her heart dropped when one of the photos of the listed victims was her cousin Tommy. Maggie’s heart dropped and she was overwhelmed. All she could think was “how could that be? This happened a week ago and he made it out alive, I don’t understand.” Before she could continue her thoughts. All the lights and the TV in her room suddenly went out. The room wasn’t just dark, but pitch black and she couldn’t see anything. For a minute she thought she was hallucinating and briefly closed her eyes.

When Maggie reopened her eyes she wasn’t in her room. She was standing in the middle of what looked like a cornfield in the middle of the night. She thought to herself “where am I? Am I dreaming? I must be dreaming”. In the distance of the cornfield she saw lights and what looked like a party and started walking in that direction. When she got there she saw a bunch of cars and beer kegs around. The area was also lit up with torches and littered with dead bodies. One of which was her cousin Tommy. In that moment Maggie realized that she was at Crystal Lake. She knew as bizarre as her surroundings were they couldn’t possibly be real and was extremely curious about where she was and how she ended up there.

Before she could formulate another thought, Maggie was suddenly distracted by a subtle clicking of metal behind her. When she turned around she saw a man wearing a red and green sweater, a dark brown hat and what looked like a clawed glove around his hand. The man was also terribly burned, he looked like a demon and was staring at her with a devilish grin. She wanted to ask what was he but she couldn’t put her words together. The man standing in front of her was Fred Krueger. He was an infamous child murderer from the town of Springwood who was killed by the parents of the town after being exonerated for his crimes. Krueger was eventually granted the power to return in the dreams of the town’s children.

Krueger was so happy to be face to face with Maggie because her grandmother was one of the parents who killed him and he was sure this would be his moment of revenge. He began walking towards Maggie with the intent to end her life. Maggie was scared to death and thinking what could she do to defend herself. As she started backing away she felt the pole of one of the torches by her feet and as Krueger neared her she quickly knelt down, picked up the torch pole and swung it at him hitting him in the face and knocking him down. Krueger quickly recovered and swung his knived fingers in Maggie’s direction, but she swiftly caught his arm as he fell on top of her.

As Maggie fell on her back with Krueger on top of her she was barely holding him back by the chest and his gloved hand as they sharply stared each other in the eye. All Krueger could think about as he looked Maggie in her eyes was how he was going to exact his revenge by any means necessary. All Maggie could think while she stared Krueger in the eyes was he was not going to take her life and she was not going to die in that awful place. With all her might she used her feet to kick him off of her and she grabbed another partially lit torch right next to her and used it to light him on fire as he neared her. What Maggie didn’t realize what that some of the flames from the torch got on her shirt and her she was lightly on fire. Once she became aware of the flames and they touched her skin the pain of the burn woke her up.

Maggie was now back in her room sitting on top of her bed with the lights on and her phone still on the social media page it was on before she dozed off. She realized what had just happened was a dream, but realized it was also something more than that when she looked at her arm and saw it was burned for real just like in the dream. Maggie wanted to believe that the nightmare was over, but now it was clear that it was just beginning.