Sweet Dreams (Are Made of These)

DISCLAIMER: I OWN NOTHING! TITLE IS A SONG TITLE BY THE EURYTHMICS AND ALL CHARACTERS AND SETTINGS BELONG TO WES CRAVEN/NEW LINE CINEMA.

I like to think that Nancy pre-Freddy/nightmares/ANGST would be a bit more carefree and less uptight...

(A short story of how Freddy Krueger was brought back to wreck his revenge on the parents, and children, of Elm Street)

1969

The sun shone bright over Elm Street, illuminating the grass in to electric green stripes where it hit. Little girls played jump rope in their Sunday best, chanting rhymes passed on from generation to generation. The boys stayed on the opposite side of the street from the girls, declaring that the girls 'had cooties' and that they would surely rat them out to their parents for frying bugs underneath magnifying glasses with the help of the suns hot rays.

No child, however, was tempted to venture onto the lawn of 1428 Elm Street and, somehow, the sun seemed to dim a little when it touched the unkempt blades of grass there. To someone from out of town the house would look like any other house that had recently been put up for sale. The yard needing some tender touches, the rose bushes having withered from lack of care, and then there was the house itself which needed a lick of paint here or there. The red had begun to fade from the front door and a few of the green tiles had come loose from the roof. Just a bit shabby but, as the estate agent just loved to say, it could be a cosy haven for the right family!

The residents of Springwood, Ohio knew better. They didn't know it before, but now they damn well knew better.

If anything, they knew too much.

The older children, always a little braver, dodged in and out between parked cars causing their parents to holler various half hearted threats about 'no televisions after supper', and 'no little league games this weekend'. These threats would never be carried out. Not because the parents permitted unruly behaviour or were lax in disciplining their offspring. No, these threats would never be carried out because the parents of Elm Street wanted their children to experience only good things. They wanted their children to always be happy, smiling, safe and carefree.

Safe.

They would be safe now. Surely they would be now? Yes, the definitely would be now that he was gone. He was gone and he wasn't coming back.

The horrors that had transpired between the summer of '67 and Spring of '68 had made sure the parents of Springwood would do their best to cover up the brand of justice they had dished out. Records had been changed, or erased completely. Files had been taken from the Springwood Police Headquarters and destroyed. Some of the families, unable to cope with the aftermath of the 'Springwood Slasher' had moved out of town, hoping to find comfort in a different place, a different state. In a different time, had it been possible.

Nothing remained to show the 'Springwood Slasher' existed. In fact, when the parents themselves passed on, it would be as if it had never happened, that he never had been born. Their children and future generations would be safe from harm. He was never coming home.

The parents had made sure of that.

1984

Marge Thompson groaned as she heard the second box of the day hit the sidewalk and the contents shatter. Looking up from the sink, she narrowed her eyes at the removal men as they scrambled around, almost knocking themselves over trying to pick the unfortunate box up. "God-damned monkeys," she hissed through clenched teeth, "if I wanted to fuck this move up I would have got my God-damn ex-husband to do the job."

She snickered suddenly; it was thanks to said ex-husband that she and her daughter, Nancy, had been able to afford this house in the first place. Thankfully, the place had been cheap, the price lowering year after year due to lack of interest and something the estate agents couldn't quite put their finger on. People who viewed the house had come out shaken, spooked almost, any enthusiasm perspective buyers had seemed to drain as they went from room to room. No one knew what was so off-putting about the old Krueger place. That's not true because you know, don't you Marge? Shaking her head to clear her thoughts, she threw the sodden dishtowel on the counter as she made her way down the path towards the U-Haul truck.

Staring at the walls in front of her, Nancy Thompson sighed. Raised voices drew her attention to the street outside. Great, she thought as she pulled herself up off the bed, drunk again, way to go Mom. They weren't here even five minutes and her mother was making a scene, out there screaming at the removal men, for all the neighbours to see. She looked down to see her mother pulling a box from one of the young men and stumbling up the path with it. Nancy hoped her mother could hold onto that box as drunk as she was, or the removal men would just about bust a gut laughing. Thankfully her mother made it to the kitchen before falling on her ass. Nancy wasn't sure if she missed her Dad just yet, though she hoped that he wouldn't let her down this weekend as he'd promised to take her shopping at the mall with Tina, perhaps with a trip to the multiplex thrown in if he was having one of his 'better' days. Nancy had warned Tina to keep her mouth shut about her new boyfriend, Rod Lane. Apart from the fact that he was older than both of them and a drop-out, he wasn't popular with the Springwood Police Department and Nancy's father happened to be one of the cops who dealt with Lane most. Nancy did wonder why her dad never charged Lane with anything, always taking him back to his mother's house instead and with her dad wearing the apologetic look, not Lane. Turning, she sighed, dropped the cream drape and took a look around her new room.

Plain walls, plain carpet and even plainer furniture, all done in one colour; cream. The previous owners of this house obviously hadn't strayed onto the wild side of life by daring to inject a bit of colour here or there. Saying that, there hadn't been any actual owners of this house since 1968, this was a quick paint-and-carpet job on behalf of a desperate estate agent looking for a quick sell. Nancy found that if you squinted hard enough, you could just make out the very faint outline of a row of teddy bears lining the border of the wallpaper. She figured it wouldn't take too long to find some heavy pink paint to take care of that, a good few coats and it would be more her space and less like some pre-school rec room. As the last of the boxes were brought into the house, she ran downstairs two at a time to help her mother unpack.

The living room looked like a bomb had hit. Boxes and newspaper had landed all over; there was not one square foot of carpet to be seen. "We clean this up Nance and then its dinner. What you say to pizza, my treat huh?" Marge was beginning to sober up and was feeling on the wrong side of embarrassed about the spat with the removal guys earlier. She knew Nancy would have heard; hell the whole neighbourhood would have heard. Her inner voice rolled its eyes, fresh start Marge, hey? Looking up at her daughter, who picking delicately through her things, she extended an olive branch.

"Sure mom, though order from the place on Sycamore okay? The one down by the swimming pool is nasty. You know last year I heard they got caught with stray dogs in the deep freeze? Poochie pizza! Gross!" Nancy escalated with her hands at the last bit of her sentence, sending even more newspaper flying across the room.

"I don't think that's true honey, but we can order from Sycamore if it makes you feel better. Still the same order for you?"

"Mom, if I keep with the extra cheese i'm gonna be a cow. Did you see Tina? She hasn't put an inch on over the summer, not an inch mom! I'm busting out of these jeans as we speak. No ones gonna look at me in school sideways, so you can cancel the prom dress."

Marge was disheartened to hear her daughter run herself down like that. From where she was standing, Nancy had grown into a beautiful young woman with soft curves and thick, wavy hair most girls would kill for. Damn Tina Grey and her not eating bullshit! That girl had problems. Probably caught them from her mother, Marge thought spitefully. Saying that, she couldn't help but thinking it was both a joy and a curse to watch your daughter grow into adulthood. A joy because you loved them so much more than you could love anything else; and a curse because as their looks blossomed, your looks went into the toilet. If Nancy thought she could feel her ass growing, Marge could certainly feel hers dropping south. Marge was aware the copious amounts of cheap vodka she drank didn't help.

"Well honey that's just not true, that Lantz boy was giving you the eye earlier, he's cute-"

"MOM!" Nancy cut in, both flushed and excited that her mom had noticed him looking. It meant she hadn't imagined it, he had been checking her out. Nancy did a mental victory dance, hopefully now she would have a date instead of playing third wheel to Tina and Rod whenever they went out to the movies or wherever. Marge was still rambling on as if Nancy hadn't spoken.

"...doesn't he go to Springwood High? You should be in the same year too; you both went to the same pre-school, though that was too far back for you to remember."

This brought Nancy's head up with a start. Her mother rarely mentioned the years before elementary school and she had never, in Nancy's recollection, even uttered the words pre-school. As if it was a time worth forgetting. Was it a bad time perhaps? Maybe her parent's marriage had started to break down then, who knew?

It was definitely before her mother had started drinking like she had. It wasn't the divorce that had got her mom drinking, and it wasn't the drinking that had split her parents up. There was something in the background, something very few people knew about and those who knew were busy trying to forget. Whatever it was, Nancy didn't care. Her last year of school was coming up, then she was heading to college. Benson was her first choice, she didn't have a second. That's how confident she was. Nancy was a smart girl and her devotion to her studies had paid off. She could, however, take some time off when it came to a certain boy who lived across the street, should it ever happen.

In what felt like much longer than an hour and a half, they were un-packed and the boxes piled at the basement door waiting to be stored. Both Nancy and her mother lay sprawled out on the couch.

"Pizza time honey?" said Marge as she got up and walked over to the handset on the kitchen wall, picked up and dialled. Her brow furrowed as she exchanged hurried words with the staff on the other end of the phone. After a few minutes she hung up, "Dammit!"

"What, mom?"

"No delivery drivers tonight honey, I'll have to take the beast out to pick up. You'll be ok here til I get back?

Teenagers excelled in the art of eye rolling, and Nancy was no exception, "Mom I'm not a kid, I'm fifteen! I think I'll survive twenty minutes while you pick up some food."

"Back soon," Marge called, throwing on her coat and shutting the door behind her with a click. She could remember being fifteen and was thankful Nancy had left it until now to start crushing on the Lantz boy. Marge couldn't have handled the beginning of the influx of hormones and a teenage crush at the same time.

At home, Nancy's stomach growled, when had she last eaten something? This morning? Last night even? Who knew. The longer she sat, the louder the growling got, or so it seemed. She was starving. She looked around for something to keep her occupied. The TV and all the other 'big items' would be arriving before lunch tomorrow, those and her mother's aquarium which she hated. Fish gave her the creeps, what with their just floating there and starting at you all day bullcrap. She shuddered at the thought before seeing the boxes piled up in the hallway.

Bingo.

Lugging the boxes into the basement would earn her brownie points and, hopefully, a bit more cash for new clothes before school started.

The door of the basement was badly in need of a paint job, this was mainly because the door had been taped off during the renovation work that had been done a year or so ago. Taping the door had been at the workers request, and the basement hadn't been touched since the house had been gutted out in 1969. The result was a shitload of tape being ripped off and thus taking most of the paint from the door with it. Nancy let go of the handle as quickly as she had touched it; the thing was ice cold. In fact, there was a chill radiating from under the door, like it was some kind of cold storage rather than a stuffy basement at the peak of an Ohio summer.

The freeze didn't stop there. Nancy shivered as she stepped into the basement.

It was strange that with all her running up and down from hallway to basement and back, her body temperature didn't rise at all. She was almost done when she heard her mother's heels clicking up the path. Rushing, she pushed the last of the boxes under the stairs and turned to go help her mom in the kitchen. What happened next would set of a chain of events which would bring the parents of Elm Street to their knees with grief and fear; a curse, no a plague, that had lay dormant for almost twenty years.

In her haste, Nancy didn't notice the nail spiking out from the cement in the brickwork, waiting to snag cloth or flesh, and snag it did. The cold metal bit into her hand as she swung herself onto the staircase, the blood splashing onto the concrete creating a crimson pool on the cold grey floor.

In a place that was neither limbo nor hell, where the souls of the damned were neither awake nor aware, the twisted pile of flesh and dark matter that was Fredrick Charles Krueger stirred. Writhing and shaping into the male form, a man who was horribly scarred from head to toe, sinewy muscle showing from under the hideous burns on his body.

The darkness around him began to haze in and out as he gained control of his dreamscape. The blurred shapes coming together to represent a basement in which stood a furnace long unused. Opening the door, the man reached inside and with his long, marred fingers he lifted out one item, then another.

The left hand lifted to place a dirty brown fedora on his charred skull, the right hand tensed, then flicked at the wrist to fan out the four razor sharp knives attached to the fingers of the leather glove he wore. Bringing the glove to his mouth, his tongue flicking out serpent-like to lick the blades. Ice blue lidless eyes, yellow where the whites should have been, stared out from under the brim of the fedora, the lipless mouth twisting up into an evil grin showing blackened stumps and withered gums. The voice, cracked and strained from years of silence, echoed round the darkened nothingness of his surroundings.

In the darkness, Freddy laughed.

"Shoot!," Nancy stalled to suck her throbbing hand, stopping only to holler "mom, do we have any band aids here?"

"Sure honey, what happened? Come up quick anyways, the pizza won't stay hot for long."

At the mention of the word hot, it caught Nancy's attention that the temperature in the basement had suddenly got a whole lot warmer. She shrugged it off as she bounded upstairs, must be the exercise burn kicking in.

As she slammed the basement door behind her, she didn't notice more paint flaking off with the impact, nor did she hear the dormant furnace roaring to life, anticipating his arrival. Not far from where Krueger patiently waited for the town's children to sleep, his children began their chilling song

"One, two Freddy's coming for you..."