Author's note: I want do dedicate this chapter to Paula (KrazyKatKrueger), my most loyal reader and reviewer and also one of my best Irish friends (okay, also my only Irish friend, but ya know what I mean…) ;-))). I also want to say Thanks and Hello to all my other readers and reviewers. I really love it to be part of this wonderful ff.net community! But now enough of my blablah, let the story continue…!

Springwood High School

Lost in thoughts Sarah was sitting in the crowded cafeteria. It was school lunch break, and the large hall was filled with hordes of hungry students. Chattering and laughing they were sitting grouped at the tables, eating the menu of the day, which was mashed potatoes with peas and bacon bits. Though, Sarah's plate stood before her on the desk, still untouched. She wasn't hungry. Holding her head in one hand she stared into space, thinking about the last night. And the last nightmare.

God, did she really offered a maniac dream killer to fix his computer? In her dream it seemed to be an almost brilliant idea, her computer knowledge in return for a period of grace, but now, by daylight, it sounded to her rather silly and ludicrous. What if she wasn't able to clean Freddy's computer? What if his operating system and his programs weren't compatible to the internet security tools she used on her own system? And even if her tools worked, what if the viruses in the dream world were so different from the ones in reality that her tools couldn't repair it? If she failed Freddy would most likely kill her unhesitatingly – something which he could do anyway the next time they met. At least he had already done more abominable things than just breaking a simple promise. Even when it was sealed by a bloody handshake that left four painful cuts in her hand.

"Hey, Sarah! What's up?"

A female voice interrupted her musing. It came from a tall, sportive girl with long blonde hair and remarkable green eyes. She wore the traditional cheerleader outfit, a red, short pleated skirt and a yellow t-shirt with a lion printed on it, the emblem of the Springwood High football team. She held a plate with her meal on it in her hands, placing it now next to Sarah's ones while grabbing a free chair to sit down.

"Oh, hi Valerie. I… I was just thinking." said Sarah and tried to smile, but it came out only a as poor grimace. Valerie gave her a wry look from the side.

"Just thinking? You've been like a zombie all day. So tell me, what troubles you so much that you even don't eat anymore?"

Sarah looked up for a moment, trying to find the right words which could explain the whole mess she was in. But everything that came to her mind sounded so dumb and odd. And unbelievable. If someone else had told her what she had undergone in her dream, and what she had promised to do, she would have taken that person for nuts. So how could she expect that Valerie would believe or even understand it? Sighing she finally shook her head.

"It's… it's complicated. You wouldn't believe me anyway!"

"Ah, c'mon, that's not fair! I'm your best friend, you should trust me more than that! I mean, I even told you that I have a crush on Marc from the football team, something I would absolutely deny if anybody else asks me about him."

Valerie looked so indignant, her arms crossed before her chest and her green eyes flashing in hot temper, that Sarah had to give in eventually.

"Okay, I'll tell you." she said, "But you have to promise me that you won't laugh at me or take me for nuts!"

"Sure, I promise. Now tell!"

Sarah sighed once more, searching again for a way to begin with her story before she finally said:

"Well, do you remember the e-mails I got on my computer? The ones you read when you visited me before and told your friends about until I said not to spread it about anymore?"

Valerie nodded: "Yeah, of course. I already apologized for that, I… I didn't know that they were private and confidential. And I didn't tell anyone else since. But… oh no… don't tell me that you have a thing with this psycho guy pretending to be you-know-who, that would be awful!"

"What? No, it's not that!", Sarah rubbed her forehead in an attempt to reduce the headache that was constantly growing inside her head, "This psycho guy as you call him is not just pretending to be you-know-who. He is it, he is really Freddy Krueger!"

Her distressed voice increased in loudness while she spoke, but when she mentioned Freddy's name she lowered it again as she didn't want to attract too much attention from the other students around her. She didn't continue with her explanation but waited for a reaction of Valerie first. Valerie on her part had a mixed expression of disbelief and horror on her face. With her eyes wide opened and her mouth dropped she looked quite distraught, but her dismay was understandable in view of the fact that two of her friends, Caroline and Paula, had been murdered in their sleep only a few months ago. So even if she was no Elm Street child she knew about Freddy, and, what was more important, believed in the stories about him killing in dreams.

"Oh my god!" she finally said and cleared her throat, "You are kidding, aren't you? I'd never thought that these mails could be real. Are you really sure it's not a fake?"

"Yeah. I've got these damned emails straight out of hell, I'm dead man sure there!" replied Sarah and lifted her blue t-shirt, thereby exposing the four cuts on her upper arm. She had bandaged it with some gauze, but since she had to do it with one hand it was kind of clumsy applied and already starting to bleed through. Pointing to her bandage she added:

"See, unfortunately I already met the sender of the messages in my nightmares!"

"Oh my god!" shouted Valerie again and covered her mouth with one hand as she saw the blood trails of the unique slash marks almost every teenager in Springwood would have recognized at once. Sarah dropped the sleeve of her shirt again.

"Yeah. I know. But that's not everything yet by far."

"Not everything? You know what happened to Paula and Caroline, nobody survives these nightmares! You got already hurt. You have to do something, tell your parents, tell the police, someone!"

Valerie was really frightened, and her worry touched Sarah very much. She hugged her shivering friend briefly and said with a shake of her head:

"Neither my parents nor the police can help me now, you know that! They wouldn't believe me, and even if, they couldn't protect me in my sleep. No, I have to deal with this on my own. And I can reassure you, at least in the near future I won't be killed!"

"But… how… what makes you so sure about that?"

"Well, I made a deal with him. My life in return for a little computer repair service."

Valerie's blank look let her laugh briefly, the first time she was laughing today at all. But it felt really good and helped her relaxing a little bit more. More confidently than she herself had been before she explained:

"Let's just say even computer in hell can get viruses and other malicious stuff, so I promised to fix the system if he promises to spare my life."

She didn't mention her fears about the possible incompatibilities she had had before, and she also didn't mention that this arrangement was only temporary, because she didn't want to worry Valerie again.

"But are you sure you can trust him? He is a maniac killer, he could kill you anyway!" Valerie asked skeptical, having the same doubts as Sarah before.

"Well, we sealed the deal with a handshake! That will suffice." replied Sarah and showed Valerie her right hand with the cuts between the fingers, but then she had her shoulders hung and added frankly: "At least I hope so."

The ring of the school bell announced the end of the break. While Sarah picked up her schoolbag and the still untouched meal on her plate she said: "Don't worry, Val. You know I'm a computer nerd. I'll make it."

She waited for Valerie to pick up her plate, too, then they went to the exit and put down their plates on a huge dishes shelf. Hugging Sarah again Valerie said good-bye: "Be careful, okay? I don't want to loose another best friend of mine!"

"I will, Val, for sure!" promised Sarah, before she eventually took her leave and headed to her next lesson.


Sarah's home, Elm Street

The red digits of the alarm clock showed 11:42 p.m. Sarah was sitting on her bed and suppressed a yawn. The afternoon had gone by so fast, after doing her school homework and helping her mother dishing the dinner she had hardly found the time to prepare herself for the coming night – respectively the coming dream. Around her on the bed lied several books about internet security and two computer CD's, which contained the most important tools to fix infected systems. While reading some printouts of an internet research she had done earlier about the latest viruses and trojans of the World Wide Web Sarah yawned again. It was time to sleep.

She put the books and papers aside, keeping only the disks in her hands as she would need them later. But when she just wanted to crawl under her blanket she suddenly froze in the movement. What if she wasn't able to bring the disks into her dream? She had simply assumed that it was possible, but in fact she had not the faintest idea if it really would go well. If not, she would be completely left stranded, because without her tools she had no chance to repair the disaster of a computer Freddy was calling his own.

Unfortunately all she could do was hoping and trying it, and perhaps praying if it went awry. With a last sigh she slipped under the blanket and turned out the bedside lamp. With the disks in her hand she finally fell asleep, and only a short time later her eyes began to move rapidly.

The dream had started…