my own remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. includes elements from both versions, and plays a lot more on the symbolism of Nancy and Freddy.
"Don't fall asleep. Don't fall asleep," Nancy chanted silently to herself as she turned on the sink in the tiny square bathroom of the local gas station, "Stay awake. Don't fall asleep." She cupped her hands together under the faucet, collecting the icy water in her hands, and splashed it on her face. She repeated this twice, then turned off the water.
Nancy propped her hands on the edges of the porcelain sink, panting. She was so exhausted. She hadn't slept for three days, and it showed. She looked up at the mirror above the sink and examined her haggard appearance. Her skin was dry and her crystal blue eyes were ringed in heavy shadows, making her look almost like a zombie. Her white short-sleeved button-up shirt and jeans were badly wrinkled. Her long dark brown hair fell limply in shaggy greasy strings around her face. It had been a while since she'd washed her hair. The last time she tried to take a bath, she almost drowned. She fell asleep in the tub, no longer than a couple seconds, and he pulled her down under the water.
The Zoneral pills she took earlier were already beginning to wear off and her eyes were starting to droop. She looked up in the mirror, but it wasn't her own reflection she saw. Instead, standing in her place, was the man from her nightmares, the reason why she had been frightened to go to sleep. In the fluorescent light she could clearly see the melted skin of his face tight over his bones and the red and green stripes on his tattered sweater. His reached his right arm through the glass, causing it to shatter, the shards flying out around her. On his hand was a glove with curved blades on the fingers, like giant fingernails, which were heading right towards her eyes. She screamed and flew backward.
Her eyes snapped open and she sucked in a harsh breath, taking a step back from the sink. In the mirror was her own reflection. She had fallen asleep. She reached in her pockets for the bottle of Zoneral. She twisted off the cap and turned the bottle over, but nothing fell out. It was empty. Nancy hissed, "Fuck!" and slammed the bottle down into the trash can beside the toilet. She ran her hands through her hair with a heavy sigh and ran back out to her car. The sky was black with glittering stars. The nighttime darkness didn't help her at all. As she backed out of her parking spot, another car pulled out behind her. She quickly slammed on the brakes, barely missing him.
"Wake up dumbass!" the driver yelled at her through his open window.
"I'm trying." she groaned, rubbing her eyes. She then heard someone tap on her window. She turned to see who it was. The man of her nightmares ripped the door clean off the car and dove inside. Nancy scrambled over to the passenger door, but he was already on top of her, pinning her down. She struggled to get free, but he still kept her held down under him. He used the tip of his finger-knives to brush her hair out of her face. His face hovered an inch over hers. His pale smoky eyes bore into hers. "You can't stay awake forever." he whispered. His voice was rough and gravelly, like even the inside of his throat was burned, making his whisper sound more like a growl. His face moved closer to hers. She sank her nails into the melted flesh of his forehead and dragged her fingers down the left side of his face. His skin peeled off his skull, exposing the bone underneath, and melted in her hand. The corner of his lip on the right side of his face turned up in a grim smile, matching the evil toothy grin on the skinless left half of his face, and laughed in twisted amusement.
Nancy threw herself back against her seat, gasping and panting, wiping the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand. She looked at the door, finding that it was still attached to the car. She fell asleep again. She shrieked at the top of her lungs, "God damn it!" slamming her hands against the wheel. She then noticed the blood and bits of skin under her fingernails. She whispered shakily, "Shit." wiping her fingers on her jeans, and drove out of the parking lot onto the street, making sure to avoid any other cars. She then began to sing her anti-sleeping prayer. "One, two, now he's coming for you," she whispered, tightening her grip on the wheel, "Three, four, better lock the door. Five, six, grab your crucifix. Seven, eight, better stay awake. Nine, ten, never sleep again." She rolled down the windows and blasted the radio, but it wasn't enough. She needed caffeine. Bad.
After a couple minutes of driving, Nancy found a Barnes & Noble. She pulled into an empty spot and ran inside. She rushed up to the counter of the Starbuck's in the corner of the store.
"I need a cup of coffee." Nancy told the girl behind the counter.
"Alright," she said, taking in Nancy's haggard appearance, "how would you like it?"
"I don't care," Nancy answered, "Black's fine. And make it extra grande sized."
"Coming right up." The counter girl filled an extra-grande sized paper cup with steaming black coffee and handed it to Nancy, who immediately started swallowing large mouthfuls. The hot liquid burned the inside of her mouth and throat, but she ignored it and continued gulping it down.
"Don't you want a lid for that?" the counter girl asked.
"No, it's fine." Nancy pulled a ten dollar bill out of her pocket and slammed it down on the counter. "Keep the change." she said.
Nancy began walking down the aisles, sipping the piping hot coffee. She looked up at the clock. Nine forty. As she watched the clock, she saw the seconds hand tick backwards. She squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them again, the clock was ticking normally again. She walked down the health section and took a book titled Sleep off the shelf. She sat in a nearby leather chair, propping the book in her lap and looked in the table of contents. She turned to the chapter on sleep deprivation. It first described the boy who set the record for going the longest without sleeping. He stayed awake for eleven days. After his fourth day he began to hallucinate things like mist swirling around street lights and a coat made of worms. His hallucinations were brought on by things called micro-naps. On the next page it explained that a micro-nap occurred after a person goes without sleep over seventy hours. Their brain will begin to shut down its cognitive functions to recharge itself, which will cause them to experience a dream while they are awake. A micro-nap can last from a few seconds to a few minutes. A shiver went through Nancy's spine.
She set the book back on the shelf, swallowing a couple more mouthfuls of coffee, and looked up at the clock on the wall. Nine forty-seven. She was going on hour seventy-five. She lifted her cup to drink, but when she looked into her cup, it wasn't the black liquid it just was. Instead it was thick and dark red, like blood. She shuddered in disgust. The cup slipped from her fingers and spilt all over the floor. As the liquid spread across the linoleum, it was once again black. "Oh no." she whispered, her voice shaking in sudden panic. She backed down an aisle of books, her hands fisted in her hair against her scalp, hissing, "Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit." She rubbed her eyes, feeling a sudden rush like a wave run through her head.
"Nancy." a voice whispered from behind her. The lights in the store seemed to grow dimmer. The air around her seemed to ripple and pulsate. She turned around and saw something like a transparent shadow forming in midair. The shadow took the shape of the man from her dreams. She looked over at the shelves. Transparent pipes began to form over them. The man started walking towards her. Nancy tried to blink her eyes, hoping everything would go back to normal again, but he was still there. She started backing away from him as he moved towards her. His body was faint and transparent, like he was only partly there. "It's not real," Nancy whispered to herself, "This is only in my mind. It isn't real." He raised his finger-knives and raked them across a transparent pipe. When his blades touched the pipe, everything seemed more solid, more vivid. More real. The knives made a horrid screeching sound that rang dully in Nancy's ears as he advanced towards her. She tried to block out the noise by covering her ears, but she could still hear it. As his blades moved down the pipe, the books fell one by one off the shelf. His hand then swiped from the pipe across the shelf, sending the books flying. Nancy raised her arms to protect herself from the flying books. One hit her arm while one missed and hit her right in the side of her head, sending her falling back. The back of her head cracked against the floor and everything went black.
When her vision cleared, she was laying on the floor of the all-too-familiar boiler room. The burned man stood menacingly over her, a wicked smile stretched across his melted face. Nancy looked around her for the shelves and fluorescent lights of the bookstore, but she wasn't in the bookstore anymore. Now she was surrounded by the flames and steaming pipes of the hellish boiler. The burned man reached his bladed hand out to grab her. Nancy quickly rolled over onto her feet. Her arm grazed against the tips of his finger-knives, slicing the skin on the side of her arm. She gripped her arm, screaming in pain, and starting to run, but was stopped when her body ran into a solid wall. On either side of her were walls of pipes. She was trapped. She ran her hands up and down the solid concrete in an attempt to find some kind of opening, whimpering under her breath, "No. No. No. No."
"Hello Nancy." the man said. Nancy turned to face him, backing against the wall. "Who-who are you?" she asked, her voice shaking. "Don't you remember?" he asked, cocking his head, moving in closer to her. She shook her head stiffly, moving further back until she was fully pressed against the wall. He stood so close to her their bodies almost touched. His hands were on the wall on either side of her head. "Well, I remember you," he said, "Who could forget those pretty blue eyes?" His bare left hand rested on her cheek. His thumb caressed the skin just below her eye. She squeezed her eyes shut. The tip of his index knife then ran along the side of Nancy's left breast. "But I sure don't remember these."
"Please," Nancy whimpered, "Stop." He then brushed his index finger along her chapped bottom lip. She pressed her lips tightly together. "Look at me." he told her. She squeezed her eyelids even tighter together and turned her head away. He grabbed her face by her chin and forced her head to turn to face him. "I said look at me!" he growled, pressing the tip of his finger-knife against her jugular. Nancy gulped loudly and hesitantly peeled open her eyes, and she saw the man's burns were gone. His face was perfectly intact, showing the handsome face of a man in his late twenties. His hair fell over his forehead in light blonde waves above his dark green eyes. "Remember me now?" he asked. His voice was soft and sweet, no longer rough and monstrous. His face felt familiar to her, but she still didn't know him. He grabbed the back of her head and turned her around. She was standing in the yard of a small suburban house on the corner of a street. The sign standing at the corner of the sidewalk read 'Elm St.' Nancy looked behind her, but the man was gone. She looked back to the house and saw him standing behind a tree. He was wearing the same brown hat. A little girl, no older than five or six, was looking around the yard. As Nancy looked closer at the little girl, she realized that little girl was herself. Another little girl with wavy brown hair, which was tied in pigtails on the sides of her head with red ribbons, followed behind the little Nancy.
"Where is he Kathy?" little Nancy asked the other girl.
"I don't know." Kathy answered.
Nancy walked by the tree. The man tapped her shoulder and shouted, "Boo! Got you!" Nancy jumped and squealed. The little girl Kathy wrapped her arms around his right leg. The man laughed, "Hey!" and tried to pry the little girl off his leg, but she kept her death grip on his ankle. Little Nancy leapt onto the man's back while he was bent over, and wrapped her arms around his neck. "Gotcha!" she yelled. The man shouted in surprise and fell over face-down on the grass. He didn't get up.
"Hey, Daddy," Kathy said, shaking his right shoulder, "Come on, get up."
"Yeah," little Nancy said, shaking his other shoulder, "Come on Mister Krueger, wake up!"
"Krueger." Nancy whispered to herself.
Mister Krueger then suddenly rolled over and pounced at little Nancy, yelling "Rar!" Little Nancy squealed as Mister Krueger tackled her to the ground and pinned her down., and giggled loudly as he dug his fingers in her ribs. "I thought I told you to call me Freddy." he said as he tickled little Nancy. "Aaahahahahaa, Kathy help!" little Nancy cried out. Kathy ran up behind Freddy Krueger and dug her little fingers in his ribs. He fell over, laughing uncontrollably. Little Nancy jumped on top of Freddy and started tickling him as well. "Okay, okay," he cackled, "I surrender! I surrender!"
"We used to have so much fun." Nancy heard the man say behind her, his voice once again rough and monstrous. She turned around to face him, finding them both standing in the boiler again. His skin was burned again. "Do you remember Nancy?" he asked, stroking her chin with his thumb. She nodded her head and whispered, "Freddy." He smiled. "What happened to you?" she asked. Freddy's smile then faded, turning into a foul grimace. "Why don't you ask your father?" he growled. Nancy then started to back away in fear. Freddy grabbed her by her throat and pushed her back against a raised his index blade and pushed her hair behind her ear and behind her shoulder, then stroked all four of his finger-knives down her spine, sending a chill through her body. Nancy squeezed her eyelids together and whimpered. She felt her body heating up, but not from the boiler room. He ran the edges of his knives down her arm. She hissed as they went over her fresh cuts. He looked into her eyes. "You're bleeding." he said. He then grabbed her by her shoulders and slammed her back against the wall. "WAKE UP!" he yelled. His voice echoed through her ears as her eyes opened.
please continue; it just gets better from here on.
let me know what y'all think