So if you haven't figured it out by now, this is a short one-off story. No real links to any previous "Nightmare" works, but there are some connections to my upcoming fan-fic story, "Children of Elm Street," which is set to be published this October. Think of this like a companion piece of sorts to that story, as well as a simple taste of things to come. Happy haunting...

Karen Donaldson stood, motionless, staring blankly at the diner. The neon lights on the roof identified it as the Crave Inn. She had never seen it before, but she couldn't shake her feeling of déjà vu, like something from a half-remembered dream. Almost without realizing it, she began walking through the darkness of the night, towards the seemingly desolate building.

Karen's dark hair, tied back into a pony tail, flopped against the back of her neck as she walked in through the doors. She stepped through the doors and saw only one man sitting at the table on her right.

"Hello?" The man did not respond. "Can you hear me?" Still nothing.

"He can't hear you." Karen turned at the voice. There was a man standing behind the counter. The man was old and balding. He wore a green sweater and a red apron. He was remarkably handsome for his apparently old age, must have been a real lady-killer in his youth. He had blond-grey stubble on his cheeks and a thin, wispy beard on his chin. His body was cast in mostly shadow. He slung a towel over his shoulder as he continued to address Karen.

He must be the cook, Karen thought to herself.

"These kids and their damn iPods," the cook pointed to the man's ears, where a set of white ear-buds were plugged. "Once they get those things on, the world could end and all they would hear are the sultry sounds of Justin Beaver and 1D. God, I fricking miss the old days when that jukebox over there in the corner played Elvis, Janis, and John Lennon and Friends!"

Karen's eyes drifted over to the jukebox in the corner. The lights on it still worked, but the only thing coming out of that machine was silence, and the occasional dust bunny.

"But I'm guessing you didn't come here to hear me rant about technology. What'll it be?" The cook whipped a pad and pen out of his apron pocket as Karen sat down on a bar stool.

"Uhm, I don't have any..." Karen began.

"Money? Oh, don't worry about it. This late at night, you gotta be starving. Whatever you want, it's on the house."

"Thank you. I don't think I've had a real meal in ages. What's fresh?" Karen asked.

"Oh, all of it is," the cook said on his friendly cool voice. "The meat is so fresh, you can still hear it scream... uh, moo. Or, if you're ordering a hotdog, oink." Karen chuckled with the man, but was struck by something... odd.

"I'll have a cheeseburger, no veggies." Karen said.

"Carnivore, huh," the man asked. "Those are my favorite kinds of people. I hate it when people come in and order a Veggie-burger. You wanna know what I give 'em?"

"What?"

"I give 'em a bun piled with pickles, lettuce, and tomato. Then I soak it in ketchup and pickle juice. They never come back."

The cook laughed as he disappeared into the kitchen. He returned less than five minutes later with the juiciest burger Karen had ever seen.

"There you go. Enjoy," the cook said as he disappeared into the kitchen once more.

A few more minutes later, the cook returned with a whole apple pie. He set it down on the counter and Karen could see that it was still steaming. She tossed another bite of the sandwich into her mouth and pushed the plate away.

"That was a damn good burger.

"I, uh... I never did get your name, sweetie." The cook spun the pie on the table.

"It's Karen. Karen Donaldson."

"Well, Karen Donaldson, how bout a slice of pie?"

"No, I couldn't," Karen said. "I gotta go; I'm not even sure where the hell I am."

"No," the man said, his voice deeper and gruff this time. "I insist," he said. He raised his right hand and brought up the strangest cooking utensil Karen had ever seen. It was a dirty leather glove with metal fingers. Each finger had a four or five inch blade on the end that looked razor sharp. The man brought down the index blade into the pie and sliced it across. Karen looked in horror as the pie crust turned into flesh and the filling flowed out a deep crimson with little white specks. Maggots, perhaps? And blood...?

Karen jumped out of her chair and looked at the burger. It had changed from cooked cow to uncooked, raw flesh. Karen ran backwards and crashed into a table, causing it to fall to the ground on top of her.

The cook jumped up onto the counter with athletic ability beyond capabilities of a man his age and the light hit his body fully. His features changed instantly. His face morphed into a nightmare. It was burned to a crisp, red and raw. There was a hole in his cheek and his teeth were dirty and falling apart. He had on a fedora hat and wore a red and green sweater. His pants were black and dirty brown colors and his hands matched his face. The man hopped off the counter and began striding for Karen.

Karen jumped up and ran for the counter. Hopping over it, she landed feet-first on the other side and ran for the kitchen. She burst through the double doors and instantly slipped on a massive puddle. Her head smacked the linoleum, and she reached back to cradle her sore head. When she pulled her hand away, it was covered in blood. And it wasn't hers; the floor was soaked in blood. She almost screamed, but silenced herself. She quickly got to her knees and crawled in between the oven and the fryer, and crouched down. She took ragged breaths as she listened for Krueger. The air was thick and hot, causing Karen's shirt to stick to her skin. She sat in silence for a moment, listening for...

There was a soft moan echoing throughout the kitchen. She looked left and right, searching for the source of the noise, but found none. Slowly, she lifted her head above the fryer.

There were people hung on hooks like slabs of meat, some writhing in their death throes, others still, silent, either dead or unconscious. Every one of them was dripping in blood. One, belonging to a man (so she thought it was a man), began to fall apart before her eyes, the arm rotting away before falling down and landing on the grill, blood boiling and sizzling on the hot surface. The smell of burning flesh violated Karen's nostrils. The fingernails on the hand were overgrown and disgusting. The hand twitched, and the nails made a disgusting sound as they scraped the grill.

Karen screamed. But not because the severed arm moved; Krueger appeared right beside her, filling the space before her as if he had been blinked into existence.

He knelt over her, extending his blades to her face.

"Looks tasty, doesn't it, princess?" The man licked her face with a disgusting tongue.

"Oh God!" Karen screamed. "Help me!"

"No God; just me!

"Ahhh-hahahahahahahaha!"

...

Karen Donaldson woke up in a cold sweat. She bolted upright in her bed, tossing off the clean, white sheets that Westin Hills provided for all their patients, which were now soaked through. Her breath was now shallow and ragged. She looked around at the white walls that made up the room where she and her roommate slept, and tried to steady her breathing by telling herself that she was safe in her room. She reached around on the floor around her bed and grasped at a small inhaler. She put the device to her lips and inhaled two puffs of the albuterol sulfate before coughing hard at the taste of the medication.

"Another nightmare, Karen?" Karen looked over at Amy Sterling, the girl whom she shared a room with. Amy was a pretty girl. She was sixteen years old and petite for her age and height. She had brown hair down to her neck, covering most of the left side of her face as well. She looked good with it, but it was only recently that Karen learned that the long locks served another purpose: to hide four long, hideous looking scars that were the only flaw on Amy's otherwise goddess-like face.

Karen had been here for over six years, having been dumped here by her parents when she was thirteen to be treated for her recurring nightmares, and had been reluctant to ask Amy, who had only been here five months, the story behind the scars. But Karen had a sneaking suspicion that the man who was haunting her nightmares had, at some point in the past, paid Amy a little late night visit...

"Yeah, it was another one," Karen said as she put the inhaler back on the floor. She took a deep breath and exhaled heavily. "They're getting worse, Amy."

"Where did you go this time?" Amy asked.

"Into some sort of diner, the Crave Inn," Karen said. "He chased me into the kitchen."

"Well what happened in there?" Amy asked, itching to hear the details.

"It started with me standing in the middle of a road. I look both ways and the road leads nowhere; it just goes on and on forever, in both directions. Across the street is the diner. I walk in; there are just two people in there: this guy with headphones in his ears and the cook. And the cook, he turns into that monster, the same one from all my other dreams."

"Wow, this is getting serious," Amy said with clear concern in her voice. "Maybe you need to talk to Max."

"No," Karen said, her voice beginning to break. "If I tell Max, then he'll tell Justine, and she'll recommend to Dr. Gossard that I be moved to isolation. Again..."

"Maybe that's what you need, babe," Amy said.

"No, it's not. For some reason, they get worse whenever I go into the isolation room."

"Where is the isolation room?" Amy asked. "I've never seen it, and I'm almost at the six month mark."

"It's up there," Karen said, her voice shaky. "In the tower." Karen nodded towards the barred window. Amy looked through the bars and up to the five-story tower that stood tall over the rest of the Westin Hills complex. It wasn't illuminated, like the rest of the building. Instead, it stood dark, somehow well defined, against the cloudy night sky. Amy felt a shiver run through her spine as she set eyes on it.

"I can see why," Amy commented. "Something just doesn't add up, though," Amy added as she propped her head up with her arm as she lay on the bed. "You haven't dreamed at all since you've been here. And now, all of a sudden, you have nightmares about this guy for a week straight. I mean, why do they start up now?"

"I'm not sure, Amy," Karen said. "But I don't think I even want to go back to sleep."

"But you need your beauty sleep."

Karen froze as Amy spoke. Had she just heard...?

"And you should be talking, Amy," Karen said, now completely unsure of who she was talking to.

"Yes, I should," Amy said again. She was no longer speaking in her own sweet, heavenly voice. Instead, it was heavy and raspy, almost gravel like.

Suddenly, Amy's angelic visage morphed (for lack of a better word) into a twisted perversion of what it had been. It was still Amy, clearly, but it was a dark red color, seeping blood from numerous, seemingly fresh burns. Her entire cheek was gone, revealing sharp, demonic teeth. Lines of flames snaked through her flesh, which looked like it had been shattered and put back together piece by piece. The four scars on her face opened up and began leaking what appeared to be liquid fire.

"What's wrong, Karen?" Amy asked. "You look like you've just seen a ghost."

"I think she has, Amy," came a second voice. The source of the voice suddenly winked into existence besides where Karen was on the bed, crawling away from the monster before her in desperation.

It was the man from her nightmares. The man took his right hand, clad in a dirty glove with metal fingers and long steel blades on each of them, and clamped it down over Karen's mouth.

"And where she's going, she's gonna see a lot of them," Freddy Krueger laughed.

Karen tried to scream, but felt that she couldn't fill her lungs up all the way. In fact, she couldn't breathe at all.

My inhaler...

She could see it on the floor. She had to reach it. She reached out her hand to grab it, but found pain shooting through her torso. It hurt to move.

"Amy," she whispered hoarsely. Amy stood up and walked over to where the inhaler was, and stomped it into pieces. There was a hiss of pressure being released when she crushed the pressurized container.

"You won't need that where you're going," Freddy said. With that, he removed the gloved hand from Karen's mouth, and dug them deep into her chest. Karen could feel the air rush from her punctured lungs. When she looked down, blood was flying out of the holes in her chest, splattering on everything in sight. Amy's face was covered in blood. At least, that was how Karen would remember it for the rest of eternity...

In reality, Amy's face wasn't covered in blood; it was, however, covered in worry as she screamed for the doctors to hurry the fuck up. In her arms, Karen's body was convulsing as Amy tried to put the inhaler in her lips.

"Max!" Amy screamed. "Dr. Gossard! Help!"

The buzzing sound that signaled a sliding keycard filled the room as the door opened and Max, a big African guy with a balding head, rushed in. "What happened?" Max asked.

"I don't fucking know! Just do something!"

"Alright, go find Dr. Gossard! She needs 12CCs of epinephrine!"

Karen suddenly spit on both of them. Max closed his eyes and wiped away the wetness from his face. He looked down at his hands, and realized it was blood. It wasn't until Amy screamed (again) that he realized Karen didn't spit on them; her chest had exploded! Max's jaw dropped when he saw the hole in Karen's chest. Her heart was still beating, but her lungs were collapsed pieces of mush, not inflating like they should if she were still alive. Slowly, her heart began to stop beating. The time between each pump got longer, and longer, and longer, before finally, it stopped moving entirely. Amy continued to cry somewhere off to the side, huddled up in a ball.

Max had been at Westin Hills since the early 80s, and he had seen this before, and hoped he never would again. Yet, it had happened again. And Karen would just be the first. Soon, more would follow, just as violent a death as possible. Max now hoped that he was wrong again. But in his heart, he knew he wasn't.

Freddy Krueger was back!