"It wasn't just your innocence No, it wasn't temptation It was just your own way Of placin' the blame on me
Stop thinkin' that it's all the name You keep trading your love for pain Someday her answer will come 'Cause there ain't no way to escape
Baby, I'm a prisoner, oh, chained by love It's so easy to see I can never be free I'm a prisoner chained by love Chained by love
The answer for your loneliness Is only frustration So you gave it all away By placin' the blame on me
Remember how it used to be Your lies won't tie that easily Something's wrong, why can't you see?
There ain't no way to escape
Baby, I'm a prisoner, oh, chained by love It's so easy to see I can never be free I'm a prisoner chained by love Chained by love
It's so easy to see I can never be free I'm a prisoner chained by love 'Cause I'm a prisoner
Did my time so let me be Let me go You're holding me
Someday, her answer will come, you wait Something's wrong, why can't you see That there ain't no way to escape Escape
Baby, I'm a prisoner, oh, chained by love It's so easy to see I can never be free I'm a prisoner chained by love Chained by love
It's so easy to see I can never be free I'm a prisoner chained by love Chained by love
It's so easy to see I can never be free I'm a prisoner chained by love"~Prisoner by Dokken
March 29,1968 6:35 PM
1428 Elm Street
Springwood OH
Loretta Kruger sighed as she removed her pot roast from the oven.
Despite her best efforts,it was always just slightly very noticeable but still short of the standards she had for herself in the kitchen.
Hurriedly she put it on the counter to cool along with the rest of the dinner she had prepared this evening- scalloped potatoes , a watercress salad and orange bunt cake.
Wiping her hands on the blue apron worn over her pretty , long sleeved pink floral dress, she surveyed the meal with a critical eye.
There- along with her freshly made from scratch lemon iced tea , everything should be pretty close to perfect.
Just the way he liked being her Husband- Fred Krueger.
Glancing at the silver metal clock on the opposite kitchen wall, Loretta realized that her husband wouldn't be home from his job at the power plant until 8 PM tonight at the earliest.
Loretta stepped to the door of the kitchen and looked into the living room to check on her 5 year old daughter Katherine.
Katherine was where she had left her - happily coloring in her new coloring book her Father had brought home for her the night before while also watching cartoons on TV.
With another quick look at the clock, Loretta figured that she had just enough time for a glass of the tea she made and a few minutes of relaxing before setting the table and laying out the Dinner in order to have everything ready and waiting when Fred walked in the door.
Pouring her glass , she sank down at the table and stretched. It had been a long day and she was a bit tired.
She had risen early,got Katherine up ,made her breakfast, driven her to school and had rushed back to awaken Fred , make his breakfast and help get him out the door in time for him to make his 8 AM punch in at the plant.
Afterwords followed a long day of laundry and housework and before she knew it , it was time to pick up Katherine from school at 4 pm.
She had made Kat's dinner and fed her early tonight- at 5 PM- because she had hoped to have a nice, quiet dinner alone with her Husband
Tomorrow was a Saturday and he was off from work , Kat was off from school and so why not?
They used to have such Dinners often , even after Katherine was born but now they had become a rarity.
Her husband seemed more and more distant from her everyday and Loretta couldn't figure out why.
She could only trace the noticeable change back to around 2 1/2 years ago.
Maybe it had been coming even longer than that and she just hadn't seen it. Or maybe you just didn't want to , she scolded herself.
Running a hand through her brown shoulder length hair , her thoughts tumbled back through time to when her life with Freddy had begun.
She had been married to Fredrick Charles Krueger since June 1960 but had known him since May 1959 .
She had been 21 year old Loretta Elaine Chapman then.
Her future Husband was 19. The romance had began simply and unassumingly enough.
She was in a time of transition.
After graduating at 18 ,she had worked for a year to earn money to pay for secretarial school.
But now about to go in to her second year and working at the power plant during the summer to earn money to pay for another term, Loretta was no longer sure if she wanted to spend the rest of her life being a secretary.
It was a perfectly respectable profession for a woman of course and for a town like Springwood , it paid as well as you could expect, but somehow her heart was no longer in it.
Her parents were less than pleased with the news and were expecting her to continue on the course she was on , leading to some nasty arguments.
Loretta started working there in Mid May as soon as school let out and almost immediately , was somehow drawn to one of the workers- an aloof ,quiet young man who always seemed to be apart from the rest.
Loretta and the three other secretaries only had brief contact with the workers- they all waited outside the locked gates to be let in, in the morning and the workers came to the office to pick up their paychecks on Friday and on some days the other secretaries ate lunch outside with the workers they happened to be dating- but thats about it.
But somehow on one of her first few mornings and Loretta waited with the crowd to be let in, her eyes fell on Freddy and she felt a powerful pull to him, the seed of an unquenchable curiosity started to take root.
The foreman was late in opening up that morning and as everyone stood grumbling outside the gates,as Loretta looked around in boredom , her eyes fell upon him.
He stood a good distance from the crowd in a corner of the fence, gripping it and looking, just looking at the dusty road that lead down a slight hill from the plant.
He looked as though he was urgently looking for something or someone,but for the life of her Loretta couldn't figure out what.
There wasn't much to see in the surrounding area in the old industrial park where the plant was located, but sure enough every morning , he would repeat the same behavior until the gates were opened and it was time for the work day to begin.
Loretta was puzzled but intrigued and after a few days she asked her fellow secretaries about the young man on a rainy but busy day when they took their lunch in the office.
"Oh that guy!.His name is Freddy Krueger. Yeah, Dave's mentioned him. What a weirdo!" said the senior secretary Jan.
"Yeah, so has Steve. Nobody likes him." the other secretary Priscilla concurred.
"Why?" asked Loretta.
" Well, he's just strange. Doesn't talk to anybody unless he has to, doesn't like to interact with people. Most days he even eats lunch in the boiler room!
"Yeah, Steve told me that although he has a perfectly good house, the supervisor caught him sleeping overnight in the boiler room several times. He even tried to get the supervisor to let him live in it! Gave him some speech about how he could also function as a night watchman for free or some crap. Supervisor said no and that he'd better not be caught sleeping there again because of liability issues. The guys all thought that was weird as hell.
They can't wait to get the hell out of here at the end of the day and that freak wants to live here? Creepy!" Priscilla shared.
Loretta took a minute to mull this over. "Well, maybe he feels at home there for some reason." she reasoned.
"Like I said, what a weirdo!." Jan exclaimed as she bit into her sandwich.
" I wonder if he has a girl?" Loretta wondered out loud.
"Oh sounds like you are interested Lore. Seeing as how you aren't a furnace or a metal pipe, I doubt that you'd be able to catch his eye, but good luck!" the two girls sniggered.
Loretta said no more and resumed eating her lunch, but deep down she was determined to prove them wrong.
The next few weeks sped by and Loretta became more and more interested in Freddy, but found little chance to talk to him.
All she could do was sneak admiring looks at him when she thought he wouldn't see and try to figure out a way to meet him that wouldn't be obvious.
A few times she thought that he looked back but couldn't be sure.
During this waiting period a golden and unexpected opportunity had presented itself.
Loretta had went outside on a breezy Friday afternoon to eat lunch . She wasn't feeling too talkative and just wanted to eat her lunch and get back to work when under a scraggly tree at the far end of the yard, she spotted him sitting and looking distractedly at the contents of his lunchbox.
Taking a deep breath , she gathered up all her courage walked over , said Hello, and asked if she could join him.
"Uh, sure " he said and indicted she should sit beside she did and after a few stilted and awkward minutes a conversation began.
It wasn't much but Loretta went home happy that night, convinced it was a start.
And it was. The rest of the summer and fall, Freddy started showing up under the tree to eat lunch a few times a week. And he and Loretta would eat together and have a little bit of conversation.
After a month of so of this, Freddy haltingly asked Loretta out for a Saturday night Dinner and she happily accepted.
And the date was nice,really dinner, they got Ice cream and walked through the park to the pier.
Before she knew it she was seeing him every Saturday night, then Sunday evenings and finally a night or two during the week and after a short while Loretta knew that she was completely irrevocably in love with Fred Kruger- this young man whose past she knew little about.
Although he asked her questions about her life and past and listened with seeming interest, he was reticent to talk much about his own.
All he would tell her was that he had been given up for adoption at birth , had went through a series of foster homes until being taken in by his longtime foster Father Mr. Underwood at the age of Underwood had died a little over a year ago and Freddy had no other family.
He calmly revealed this fact to her a little over a month into their burgeoning romance when she had cautiously asked about his family.
"Oh, I'm so very sorry. " Loretta said sympathetically putting a hand on Fred's arm in support.
"I'm not" he shrugged."That old bastard never gave a fuck about reason he took me in was for the monthly check from the state which he spent on all the cheap booze he could fucking riddance."He went on to say that the only good thing about "that dirty SOB" is that Underwood had no biological kids and had long ago cut ties with his family so when he died after a short time , the state had decreed that Freddy was as close to a legitimate heir as Underwood had and the house Underwood had owned legally became Freddy's. The house where he still lived.
1428 Elm Street. Something the old bastard would have hated Freddy reflected and laughed hard and long.
Loretta was a little taken aback but asked nothing more about Underwood.
She figured that Fred had said all he felt comfortable saying and if he felt that way towards his foster Father, there must have been a good reason.
She timidly asked if he had any idea about his birth Mother or her family and he responded that he didn't know and didn't care and immediately changed the subject and never asked him about it again , both out of respect and as a result of a chance encounter with an old classmate of hers a short time later.
By this time,it was close to Christmas and Loretta had taken off right after school ended to do a little shopping.
She had saved the buying of Freddy's gift for last. It was something she wanted to savor.
She was browsing along through the men's aisle of Winfield's Department store when she literally bumped into her old co worker Lori.
She hadn't seen her since the end of the summer after graduation . They both had spent those months working at a greasy Diner that was now out of business. But the two girls had always gotten along well and when Lori suggested that they go across the street to the Crave Inn for a cup of hot chocolate and to catch up, Loretta was immediately receptive. After all, she still had days left to buy Fred's gift.
The girls chatted about fairly pleasant things at first- Loretta's schooling ,Lori's job and plans for possible college in the fall.
Then the conversation turned more told Loretta all about her boyfriend Ron whom she had been dating for a year and a half.
"Its gotten very serious . I couldn't be happier . What about you ? Are you dating anybody" Lori asked with a happy smile.
" As a matter of fact I am.I have a wonderful Boyfriend. We've only been dating about 5 months but I love him... I think that he may be the one."
"Thats great Loretta!" Lori enthused seeming generally happy for her."How did you meet him?"
"He works at the power plant where I had a job in the office in the 't you go to SpringWood High? Maybe you might know him?"
"I sure his name? Lori asked.
"Freddy. Freddy Krueger. " Loretta said proudly, expecting to bask in Lori's congratulations and good wishes, but to her surprise the opposite occurred.
Lori gasped out loud and her face went pale with shock. After a few stunned minutes , in a half whisper she said" Loretta.. please tell me that you are kidding me."
Loretta totally confused and alarmed now said" No.. Why would I be.?"
Lori was quiet for a few minutes and said" Well you guessed right. I do know Freddy Kruger. I went to school with him since I moved here in second grade. and I'm here to tell you that you are making the biggest mistake of your life by being involved with him."
"What? Why?" Loretta said a touch of indignation creeping into her voice."
"Well, the guy is disturbed. Always has been. Everyone always disliked was always acting out , saying and doing crazy things.I remember in 4th grade when he killed the classes pet hamster right in front of all of us and never showed any remorse about it. If you want to know the truth, he always scared the hell out me.I was glad when school ended so I didn't have to see him anymore."
As offended and angered as she was at the things that Lori was saying about her darling Fred, an idea began to take shape in Loretta's had went to school with him for a long time, maybe she knew things about his background that Fred would likely never tell her.
Pretending that she was seriously considering what Lori was saying, Loretta asked her what else she knew about him and his background , saying he hadn't told her a whole lot.
Lori chortled "Not a surprise."
"All I know is that the story was that his real Mother was a Nun who used to work in that big tower out on the grounds at Westin know, the one thats been closed now for a long was a lot of men kept there, all of them were deemed criminally insane. Dangerous, nasty types. She got locked in there by accident and over a holiday weekend was raped and beaten by a hundred of those found her about 5 days later and she almost died.
She lived but took a few months to recover and by that time, she was found to be knocked up. She gave Freddy up for adoption and he went through a bunch of foster homes. I remember that he was moved around every few months, it seemed like.
Finally, they put him with old man Underwood over on Elm Street. He was a violent drunk.
Anyway, your man Freddy stayed with him from them on. Underwood committed suicide about 2 months before graduation.
There were rumors around school that freaky Freddy killed him, but nobody ever proved anything."
Lori stopped her monologue and looked at Loretta with expectation.
Surely, this would make her think twice about dating Krueger now.
Loretta had a few more questions of her own though and she peppered Lori with them-"How did people treat Freddy in school? Did he have any friends? How was he treated by Underwood and his other foster parents?"
Lori shook her head and gave a wry laugh."He wasn't treated too always taunted him about being the bastard son of a 100 maniacs as well as for being a psycho freak.
You know, he and his one friend Howard-the other psycho freak of our school- would cut themselves in class and laugh like it was the funniest thing in the they both got off on it somehow. They got sent to the Principal a bunch of times for that.
Don't think he was ever treated too good at home either. He showed up at school often with cuts and it was rough." Lori reported.
Loretta felt a righteous anger course through her and she steamed at Lori" My God, why didn't somebody , anybody do something? Why didn't any of you assholes reach out and help him?"
Lori shrugged and lit a fresh cigarette" Guess nobody cared.. it really wasn't anyone elses maybe he brought it on himself at home if he acted like he did at school." she rationalized.
Loretta grabbed her packages and stood up in anger." Oh Hell no. No child deserves any of that. And you are wrong about Freddy Lori.. oh so is a wonderful man and I love him very much.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go meet my ." she said and flounced out the door.
Freddy was waiting for her at the gates of the power plant and with a hug and a kiss, they drove back to his home together where he changed and they went off to meet her parents for dinner.
Christmas came and went and she and Freddy had a nice one together. He gifted her with some Midnight waltz perfume( a very popular perfume of the day for ladies) and a silver necklace.
After much deliberation she had gotten him a long sleeved plaid shirt and some new work boots.
He seemed happy and thankful for her gifts and she was delighted with hers. Coming from him, knowing that he took the time and effort to pick them out just for her thrilled her to no end.
The next few months passed and her relationship with Freddy continued to never told Freddy about her meeting with was no point.
He had no idea that she knew what she did about his background.
She was angry &disgusted by what Lori has said and her attitude towards him, but while her heart went out to her love Freddy for all he had suffered and always would, it was in his past. She would provide a firm foundation for him in the would give him all the love and support and caring understanding that he had deserved. She and Fred could build a new life together and she could help him overcome the cruelty and abuse that he had suffered. She knew that she could.
In late April one Sunday afternoon, he had called her and asked her to meet him in the he had a surprise for her.
She did and they sat on the grass beside the towering park fountain.
All of a sudden, he said" I have something to ask you Loretta. Something very important."
"Of course Freddy. What is it ?" she asked.
He pulled a small jewelry box out of his shirt pocket and opening it, showed Loretta a small sapphire ring with tiny pearls around it."Loretta, I love you. I want to spend my life with you. You are the only woman I ever loved. Will you marry me?"
Loretta gasped but with happy tears running down her face, she said "Yes, Freddy , yes!" and the couple embraced in a warm hug.'
After that plans for the wedding moved very quickly.
They had little money so , the wedding was a small, simple affair.
Loretta wore a simple but pretty long white dress and white flats purchased at JC Penny for $75 dollars total.
Fred rented a suit . They married in her parents backyard Garden in the first weekend in June.
They immediately moved into the Elm Street had long been neglected by Underwood so Fred dedicated many of his nights and weekends for the first 5 months to fixing it up.
Fred was actually an excellent carpenter but like the rest of his past , he was secretive about where he had learned it. "Just picked it up somewhere." he shrugged when Loretta had asked him about his skills.
Before long, the house looked nearly as good as new and Loretta had made it into a real home. About 8 months after the wedding, Loretta became was a surprise as precautions had been taken, but they both accepted it in stride.
Fred was supportive to her through the pregnancy and in November 1961, Katherine Anne Krueger had been born at SpringWood General Hospital.
Fred was a doting Dad to Kat from day 1 and for the first 3 years or so, they had been a happy family.
Then came the she really looked back, she saw that maybe it had been coming for longer than she thought.
The first big change is that he started spending more and more time alone.
She'd wake up at 3 AM on a weeknight and he'd be gone.
At first she wasn't too concerned.
Freddy had always liked his time alone and he simply claimed that he couldn't sleep and had walked the quiet streets until he was tired.
No harm in that she figured.
One of the things he had shared with her about himself was that for as long as he could remember he had been a night owl and a bit of an insomniac.
He often slept a few hours when he came home from work and grabbed sleep here and there and while Loretta always worried that he wasn't getting the kind of rest he needed, it didn't seem that alarming or unusual.
But then, he started going out alone more often, driving around in the car.
He hardly ever asked her and Kat to come and when she mentioned it , he'd say that he just needed to be alone.
He sometimes would grudgingly ask her and Kat to come but not that often.
After a while Loretta thought that he must be seeing another woman and confronted him and he erupted in all night fury of rage at her .
As the sun rose through the curtains in their bedroom the next morning, a weary Loretta acquiesced to his denials and vowed to never bring the subject up again but inside she still wasn't sure.
Then a few months later, when she went away with Katherine for a weekend to attend a cousin's wedding in another state( Fred had flatly refused to go),she came home to find a strange new room had been constructed in the basement.
It was cinder blocked and not terribly large but Loretta couldn't figure out why it was needed.
Fred snapped that it was his fucking room and he had a right to have one space in this whole house that was his and where he could be alone.
Loretta's heart ached that he would want such a separate space from his family but she reluctantly accepted else could she do?
Fred started spending more and more time in there and kept it doubly locked. For a long time Loretta assumed that he kept pornography there. The hard core kind that one had to go two towns away to Crosslyn to buy and it hurt, really hurt to know that he'd rather look and touch girls on a magazine page than her, his own wife.
But after a while she started to fear that the contents of the porn might be really disturbing or sick. The kind that most people of that time wouldn't even acknowledge existed in any sort of polite company.
He never left the room unlocked and on the few occasions that she got up the courage to look inside while he was at work, she couldn't find the had it well hidden.
Then more trouble started when Loretta started telling Fred she thought it was time they try for another baby. She didn't want Kat to grow up alone without at least one sibling She now realized that in the back of her mind, she had hoped that it would put her marriage back on strong ground as well.
At first Fred said no, it wasn't the right time and they couldn't afford it. Maybe someday.
But she kept on mentioning it until one night he has screamed at her" I said fucking no, not now, maybe not ever!" and she had been scared enough to shut up.
After all, it wasn't like she had a lot of opportunities to conceive anyway she thought wryly to herself. For over a year now , her sex life with her husband had dwindled to a quick sex session approximately once a month.
It seemed like he was only interested when he had a physical itch he needed to was mechanical and fast and was far , far from the tender, passionate ,exciting lovemaking of their happier days.
Any other time she tried to initiate sex between them he would claim to be "too tired". If she tried to push any further than that, he quickly become so angry and irate, that she soon stopped trying.
She couldn't understand why. Of course Loretta realized that she had never been a great beauty.
Prettily plain was about the best compliment you could give her looks and she knew it.
However, once upon a time Fred always told her how beautiful she was to him and while Loretta knew that she no longer had a centerfold type body(she could never lose the last 10, 15 pounds of her baby weight from Kat) was she now really so repulsive to look at and touch that her husband could hardly force himself to make love to her anymore? She feared the answer must be yes.
Over the last few months, Loretta was coming to the hardest, more painful realization of her Husband no longer loved her or had much interest in her.
At best, he treated her with polite disinterest. At worst , she seemed to very easily make his anger go off the scale.
Oh sure ,they still shared the same bedroom and parenting of Kat, but thats about it.
When he wasn't with Katherine, he was caught up in the newspaper or watching TV.
Any free time or time he was willing to be available to anyone went to his daughter.
Loretta didn't begrudge her daughter the time and attention she received from her Father. Not at all.
She was grateful that he loved their girl so much but she couldn't help wishing that he had a little love, time and attention that he wanted to give to her too.
Despite everything, she still deeply loved her Freddy and wished she knew of a way to restore their marriage, to make him love and want her again, but after constant agonizing, over the situation, sadly she did not.
She had tried to be the best Mother, Wife, Lover , everything that she could be but somehow along the way she had fallen short.
Her thoughts were startingly interrupted by an urgent news bulletin coming over the radio that she had often kept on in the kitchen while cooking.
~Voice of Radio broadcaster "Alert. In the latest string of mysterious deaths and disappearances to rock Springwood in recent months, 8 year old Bobby Winters was reported missing by his parents last night.
Last seen walking home from Spring Glade park last night at 7 was last seen wearing blue pants, a blue sweatshirt and blue and yellow 's about 4' 7 in height and has brown hair and you see this child, please contact the Springwood police immediately."~
Loretta switched the radio off , disturbed not only by the terrible child killings that has been rocking this town for many months now, but by the remembrance of yet another problem she had with her spouse.
Until fairly recently, Springwood had been a nice place to live. Sure the people were somewhat close minded and snooty, but it was a clean, attractive, safe, place. A good place to raise a family.
Loretta was terrified by this string of child murders and disappearances. She had great sadness in her heart for the kids who had been killed and vanished into thin air, but her greatest fear was for her own daughter.
She watched Kat very closely but was still afraid that someone she would fall victim to this unknown killer in their midst.
Several times, she tried talking about it with Fred but he didn't seem to share her concern.
" Don't worry . Nothings going to happen to Kat." he said behind the pages of his newspaper the last time she had broached the subject.
"But Fred , how do you know? " she cried. "This person could be anywhere, anyone. They are killing children and Kat could be next!"
With a sigh of impatience , Fred lowered his newspaper ."How many times do I have to tell you, you stupid woman? NOTHING is going to happen to Kat! One of us is almost always with her, she's not allowed to play alone in the yard anymore and she's always supervised at recess at school.
What could happen?"
"Well, you know she likes to spend the night at her friends sometimes and I'm not sure if all their parents would be as careful as us and"...
Her husband cut her off in mid sentence. "NO, thats over! No more sleepovers for Kat somewhere else.
If she insists on seeing those brats, they can come over here. " and again he went back to his newspaper and the discussion was ended.
Loretta was snapped out of her reverie by the slamming of the door . Fred was home. A minute later he appeared in the kitchen. "Hi,Loretta." he muttered as he sat down his metal lunch pail and hung up his jacket on a peg by the door. Loretta carefully studied her 28 year old Husband .
With his blondish curly hair, piercing green eyes , fair skin, and slender build he was still the most beautiful man in the world to her. If only he still saw her the same way, if only she could make him see her that way again, if only, if only.." "Wheres Kat? " he asked . Loretta opened her mouth to answer but at that moment,Katherine having heard her Father's voice from the living room came bursting into the kitchen. "Daddy!" she cried in delight. "Hey Princess" her father grinned sweeping her up in his arms, the two of them chattering excitedly about her day. " Well, looks like its your bedtime sweetie." her Father said with an offhand look at the clock.
"Will you put me to bed Daddy please? And finish the story you read me last night?"
"Of course Kat. " he amiably agreed and swept her over his shoulder.
As they left the room, he turned back slightly to Loretta " Going to put her to bed. Want to watch some tv so please bring my dinner to the living room when I'm done" and then he was gone.
She heard her husband laughing and joking with Kat all the way up the stairs.
Loretta slumped over the sink , barely able to hold back her tears.
So that was only would they not have the quiet dinner together tonight she had so desperately hoped for,she didn't even get a chance to tell him thats what she wanted or ask him if thats something they could have. Just once.
As she started on the Dinner dishes ( he'd be close to an hour putting Kat to bed, she knew from years of experience) hoping to get them done before she put together his Dinner tray, over the sound of the running water and the clattering dishes,she let go and cried.
Low and , having finished the dishes Loretta washed her face and splashed lots of cold water on her face in the bathroom. Looking at her reflection in the mirror she looked almost could hardly tell she'd been crying . Not that she was worried about Fred noticing.
He never looked at her that closely anymore. Squaring her shoulders back resolutely, she left the bathroom.
As she did, she couldn't help but wonder if things would always be this would they get even worse?
Loretta had no idea that her ordeal would soon be over, in a way that she hadn't envisioned in her worst fears and thoughts and that an absolute firestorm was coming that would engulf AND destroy her family and everything else she had ever known in a matter of months.
The END!