I’m a kid of ten or so; ten in dreamland age but physically as I am now, a full grown man standing at the top of a stairwell of no more than twenty steps staring down into the abyss of darkness we call the basement.
There’s a long buzzing sound from the dryer, cycles end.
With one foot descended, hovering over the carpeted wood, the perspective of the short stairway suddenly changes. The focal point of the doorway extends further and further into a pair of long diagonal lines.
Vertigo.
I miss the step. Leg adjacent leads it’s foot to the next best thing but finds no purchase. I’m falling forward ass over heels over green grass.
It was a school field trip and a group of us had climbed this tall hill. Fear grips me as the other kids start down the steep incline.
What begins as a slowly careful jog, becomes a fast run, then all of us tumbling down the hillside towards the basement door. When I hit the bottom, the sun is in my eyes and my neck aches.
I comb grass from my hair using my fingers, which I notice are wet with blood.
I lie staring up at a light bulb, bleeding from a gash over my left eye. Didn’t even feel it.
Good Shot Freddy.
Not heeding his warning, I enter the room that was once a basement where I once feared retrieving my laundry as a kid. The piping and electrical conduits that supplied power and water to the house lead into a room underneath the stairs.
I hated that room most of all.
The pipes would always make noise; creaking, jiggling, shaking. It was fun to play down there with friends since it was so empty and away from my bothering my father. However, at night the basement was unsafe and unpredictable; there could be anything down there.
Louisiana…. I remember the dark grey wood and the high ceiling of a place I once lived as a child and barely remember.
On cue, there she is, my mother. Beautiful as I remember. Long gorgeous black hair straightened and combed hangs past her shoulders and over the front of a red blouse; a red blouse decorated with tiny yellow flowers.
Mother reaches a hand out to me.
I want nothing but to deny her, but, I long for my mother’s touch. Ever since I was a child, all I wanted was her to embrace me in her arms the way a mother does. All the love; all the forgiveness; all the pain; all of it gone with the feel of her touch.
I reach out. I need this. She’s dead, so what!
Her long manicured nails are within a centimeter of my touch, but I can’t get any closer. I reach out with all my strength, all my might and I cannot meet her hand.
Our eyes lock — hers never left. That half smile/ smirk I inherited from her taunts me in this moment. A painting in still life, frozen in this hell of my induced fever; she sinks further and further into the shadows. The anger returns. The feeling of loss and separation empties of the hope within me.
No!
I run to her.
Mother’s hand disappears into the darkness. I reach inside and find her weightless limb. No, wait, a mouse; it’s a dead mouse.
Where she stood is a nest of dead mice, covered by maggots feeding upon their flesh.
Freddy slashes at my midsection reminding me this shit is real and pain is the cost of believing.
Take it back.
Freddy swings and slashes my arm.
Take it back.
This time I move and dodge.
I’m taking this dream back!
He stammers as if hit by a blow.
Charging forward, I dribble at him, full speed. The ball echoing each time it strikes the cleanly waxed floor.
Freddy wears the jersey of the All American I faced at basketball camp freshman year. Kruger the jersey reads on the back. This All American stood about six foot eight; full of cock but we played with the same ball.
The first round of a one on one tournament I was destined to lose.
My biggest fear is that he would dunk on me in front of my father… He didn’t. The courage I had in that moment to compete — I embrace that. The rubber soles of my size fourteen shoe touches down on the free-throw line, as I leap into the air, and I soar. Not like Jordan, but with the power and grace of Larry Johnson.
Grandmama.
(Bowling pins)
My knee connects with Freddy’s mangled nose. He rears backward and slams up against the padded wall erected behind him.
Freddy lunges forward ricocheting off the wall, slashing at the empty space before him when the basketball bounces off his brown fedora.
He looks up.
From his blind spot, I appear swinging from the rim and floor him with a powerful dropkick.
King Kong aint got nuthin’ on me, I scream while standing over him.
AAAAAAAH!!!
Oh, my Jesus help!
I sprint through a parking garage. Overhead, the parallel fluorescents flicker as Freddy gives chase.
There it is a 1976 Honda Accord, grey and shabby even in the best of light, my first car.
I get inside the car and look the door. When I reach for seat belt, there he is. Freddy, at the door, glaring at me through the glass.
Pound! Pound! Pound!
Freddy strikes the glass over and over again, but the glass will not break.
We meet eyes again. I wink. This sends the disfigured child molester batty; he goes apeshit tugging at my door.
I struggle with the seatbelt. Click, I look up and Freddy’s gone.
A moment to passes before I reach the key towards the ignition. Ahead of the car, into the garage, the tube lights overhead flicker violently until darkness engulfs everything into a chasm of uncertainty.
With the key in the ignition and a snap of the wrist to the right the engine sparks to life, then fails. Another flick and the engine fails again. One more, and here’s Freddy!, sitting in the passenger seat next to me. The engine revs. Freddy pushes his blade towards my face. Clink! Just an inch shy of my face the three blades stop; the glow from the radio LCD morphs around their shiny metal surface.
The dome light turns on.
A roll cage protects me.
Wait a minute… You look a little crispy from that sick burn!
The RPM ramps up. My foot moves to the clutch as my hand maneuvers the gear shift into position.
Peaches- Fuck the pain away plays on the radio. Not the best drive angry song but it’ll do.
We’re driving fast as Freddy continues to poke at the roll cage with his claws.
The speedometer reads 88 mph. I watch a lightning storm up ahead and notice a clock tower.
As we speed by, I read the time: big hand on the single roman numeral; little hand after the numeral IV.
Directly, up ahead stands the infamous statue of Rocky standing tall and proud, gloves to the heavens,
silhouetted by a background of lightning flashes.
Hey, you might wanna buckle up!
There’s another crash of lightning before we slam into the base of the statue.
I awaken with a start and heave in a deep breath. My wife stands next to me holding paddles; her gaze transfixed on the man sitting in the chair next to me, Freddy-Kruger.
Hurry up, we have to chain him down.
Quickly, Val and I wrap chains — a lot of chains — around Freddy’s lifeless body. After we’re done she and I stand back and watch, waiting for him to awake. When he begins to stir, Val hands me a remote control.
I thumb the buttons.
On a large screen, before Freddy Kruger appears on the screen, it’s the opening credits of Freddy Got Fingered.
Good shot Freddy.
I drape an arm around my wife’s shoulder. She grabs my hand and we collectively stroll out of this dilapidated building where Freddy sits alone with a television and Tom Green’s first movie on an infinite loop.